Did you know that nationally renowned 19th century architect Henry Hobson Richardson designed one of his first Shingle Style houses right here in Marion, Massachusetts?
The Reverend Percy Browne House at 192 Front Street (sometimes referred to as the TenBrook House for a later owner and now owned by Tabor Academy) is just that.
Constructed in 1881-82, it is an exceptionally well-documented and well-preserved example of Richardson’s domestic designs. It was enlarged and altered between 1903 and 1921, but the alterations were carefully designed to harmonize with the original building fabric, plan, and silhouette, according to the Massachusetts Historical Commission Inventory Form B.
Local lore has it that the house was designed on a wager made by local summer resident Reverend Percy Browne and his friend Mr. Richardson. Browne wagered that Richardson could not design a house for under $2,500. Apparently Reverend Browne lost the bet but gained the house instead, per historian Mark Wright’s analysis.
Why is this house so important, one might ask? For one, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886) is considered the most accomplished and forward-looking American architect of the 19th century. As described by noted architectural historian James F. O’Gorman:
“Richardson attained the status of premier architect in his own day and has retained that reputation in ours. … He established a kind of apostolic architectural succession that embraced Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Like theirs, his work stood out in both character and quality from that of his contemporaries. He was the first to define American architecture as distinct from its European origins … and his work … continues to attract acclamation throughout the world.”
And secondly, the house itself is an early experiment in what later came to be known as the Shingle Style when so named in the 1950s by Vincent Scully, Jr. The style is characterized by simplified volumes clad in a generally uninterrupted skin of oiled or stained shingles. It became popular between the 1880s and 1910s and may possibly have been inspired as a larger and grander reinterpretation of the picturesque gambrel and salt box forms so prevalent in early 18th century New England architecture.
Richardson’s biographer Mariana Van Rensselaer aptly captured the building’s significance in this charming 1888 description:
“Its foundations follow with delightful frankness the variations of the ground upon which it stands, while its good proportions and the harmonious arrangement of its roof-lines gives it that truly architectural character in which dignity may lie for even the most modest building. … It explains itself at once as a gentleman’s summer home, but with a simplicity which does not put the humble village neighbor out of countenance. … The longer one studies this little house, the more one likes it, the more typical it seems of that sort of excellence which the American owner so often craves – artistic treatment combined with cheapness, comfort with small dimensions, beauty with simplicity, refinement without decoration.
Indeed, a landmark of our very own to admire, to appreciate, and for which we as a community now all have a responsibility to preserve and protect for future generations.
By Meg Steinberg, Marion Historical Commission