How long has it been since you visited the incredible three-generational time capsule house museum in Ellsworth, The Black House, or as it is now called, Woodlawn? At least ten years? Never? No wonder. It wasn’t particularly inviting.
For 70 years a board of directors, the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, maintained the museum, employing year-round caretakers and using the services of a dedicated group of volunteers, but lacking the funds to support the museum’s maintenance.
Five years ago, Woodlawn began to pull itself together. It reached out to more area residents interested in preserving this marvelous house and collection, started a million-dollar fundraising campaign, $800,000 of which has been completed, and hired its first-ever trained museum professionals: Director Joshua Torrance and Collections Manager Rosamond Rea, who started part-time to catalog Woodlawn’s extensive and varied collection.
Torrance said the turnaround “all started with the board of trustees, who had a vision. They did not want Woodlawn to be a sleepy house museum. They wanted it to be a vibrant part of this community. Now we’re about creating a sense of place for our young people, a sense of research, a place of quiet reflection. It’s a place we hope inspires people.” He added that the staff views Woodlawn primarily as a place of education, but equally as a recreational opportunity.
Five years later, the newly inviting and utterly fascinating Black House still needs help. It has sustained moisture damage from the years it staggered along without the funding to make necessary repairs. And there’s conservation work on the collection to be done too.
The house itself is imposing: brick with Ionic columns facing its rolling lawns, part of an 180-acre park that once had a view of the Union River. Woodlawn’s first owner, Col. John Black, made his fortune in the lumber business and shipped his product out of Ellsworth on his vessels.
Woodlawn houses a fine and extensive collection of period American furniture that predates the 1827-built house. Although Col. Black’s son, George Nixon Black, continued to build the family’s wealth, it was his son, the third generation owner, George Nixon Black, Jr., who added wonderfully to the family’s collection. He became so interested in the Colonial Revival that began with this country’s centennial celebration in 1876 that he moved much of Woodlawn’s Victorian furniture out of sight and furnished the house with fine examples of early New England furniture, some dating back as far as the late 17th century. But the museum’s pride of place goes to two sets of balloon-seat, pad-foot Boston Queen Anne chairs and an earlier pair with Spanish feet along with an admirable lighting collection consisting primarily of many pairs of burning fluid lamps, perhaps better described as lamps with chimneys and blown and cut glass globes or shades.
Collections Manager Rea said the house was fitted for gas in the mid-1860s, but there seems to be no evidence of the gas pipes. She said Nixon Black, who maintained his primary residence in Boston, “liked to rough it” when he visited the Ellsworth house, using only oil and candles, hence the extensive lighting collection.
One of the house’s architectural glories is its elegant elliptical staircase with colonial portraits lining its winding walls, including a copy of the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. Rea said Stuart painted at least 90 portraits of the first president. George Nixon Black, Jr. owned an original, which he gave to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. “We don’t know who made the copy at Woodlawn,” she said. “We assume he had a copy made.” A miniature painting of Washington on view in the parlor appears to have been a presentation piece.
“It has been suggested by knowledgeable people that it could have been made by Charles Wilson Peale,” Rea said.
Because the house was lived in by three successive generations of the Black family, New Englanders who kept sales receipts for just about everything they bought and who apparently threw little away, Rea and Torrance have found ample proofs to back up their research.
The textiles in the house are worn and faded, but original. Upstairs, each bed still boasts its elegant bed hangings, now brown with age. Apparently no one ever thought of shielding the textiles from the bleaching effects of sunlight until it was too late. Still, the original blue and ivory fringe from the master bedroom’s bed hangings can be seen in extra fabric stored in a chest of drawers.
A pantry holds a grand collection of “everyday” blue-and-white Canton and other Chinese export porcelain, including platters, serving pieces, place settings, and at least a dozen egg cups, and English Staffordshire transfer printed china. It also houses a variety of both American blown and Irish cut glass.
Two outbuildings, a sleigh barn and a carriage house, hold six sleighs and six carriages, all once family owned. The museum gift shop offers cards, gifts such as Canton-pattern cocktail napkins, books, and children’s toys, the types and styles of which change each year. The Museum is open daily except Mondays from May 1 to October 31.
Woodlawn’s park is open to the public from dawn to dusk every day of the year. “One of the great joys I’ve had in executing the trustees’ vision is inviting people to visit Woodlawn and letting them know that it is theirs,” Torrance said. “George Nixon Black, Jr., in his will, stated that Woodlawn was to be used and maintained as a public park.”
It must be a joy to work in such an atmosphere. It certainly is a joy to visit this fascinating house museum.
For information call 207-667-8671 or visit www.woodlawnmuseum.org. Individual memberships are $35; Family ones are $50. Memberships and donations are tax-free.