Growing Things "Rare, Foreign, and Tender": The Early Nineteenth-Century Greenhouse at Gore Place, Waltham Massachusetts

Excavations and ground penetrating radar at Gore Place in Waltham, Massachusetts, uncovered part of an early 19th-century greenhouse (ca. 1806 to the early 1840s) constructed by Christopher and Rebecca Gore. Documentary, archaeological, and geophysical data suggest that the greenhouse was a formal space intended to display exotic plants and that it was built in the relatively new lean-to style, with a tall back wall and a short front wall. The artifact assemblage included tools and small finds related to the greenhouse operation, as well as the remains of at least 149 planting pots. The greenhouse was constructed during a period of intense interest in agricultural experimentation by members of the Massachusetts commercial and political elite, including Gore. Scholars have argued that these men used the positive associations of agriculture to offset some of the contemporary negative connotations of commerce. This article examines the greenhouse in the light of this scientific agricultural movement but also argues that the greenhouse was an extension of the social space of the house and posits that Rebecca Gore may have played a significant role in managing it. Grâce à des fouilles et à l’utilisation de géoradar au site de Gore Place à Waltham dans l’état du Massachusetts, une partie de la serre construite par Christopher et Rebecca Gore au début du 19ième siècle (de ca. 1806 au début des années 1840) a été mise au jour. Les données documentaires, archéologiques et géophysiques suggèrent que la serre était un espace formel prévu pour exhiber des plantes exotiques et qu’elle avait été construite selon un type de construction relativement nouveau à l’époque qu’est la serre à un versant, i.e. une serre dont le mur de l’arrière est plus haut que celui de l’avant. L’assemblage des artefacts comprend des outils et des menus objets liés aux opérations d’une serre, de même que des vestiges d’au moins 149 pots à plante. La serre fut construite à une époque pendant laquelle les membres de l’élite commerciale et politique du Massachussetts, incluant Gore, étaient grandement intéressés à faire des expériences de nature agricole. Des érudits ont avancé que ces hommes utilisaient les associations positives liées à l’agriculture afin de contrer les connotations négatives liées au commerce à l’époque. Cet article examine la serre dans le cadre de ce mouvement agricole scientifique, mais propose aussi que la serre fût en quelque sorte une extension de l’espace social de la maison et que Rebecca Gore a probablement joué un rôle important dans sa gestion. Northeast Historical Archaeology/Vol. 38, 2009 71 Christopher Gore was a lawyer and politician by profession (Pinkney 1969), yet he invested a great amount of energy in his farm, as he called it, as did many of his peers. Gore was a founding member of the MSPA, and his greenhouse, probably built in 1805-1806, was constructed in the context of this rising social interest in agriculture and horticulture. The greenhouse studied here was the second of three on the property. It fell out of use in the early 1840s and was probably demolished by 1856. The existence of the greenhouse is known from historic maps; however, there are few other references to it in primary documents. For this reason, and because the few discussions of other New England greenhouse excavations are limited to the gray literature (Pinello 1999), the Gore Place archaeological data are valuable. Although only a small part of the building was uncovered, the excavations and associated ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey yielded information about the greenhouse’s structure and environs and a large assemblage of artifacts including planting pots, gardening tools, and animal bones that may have been stockpiled for soil enrichment. This artifact assemblage will be analyzed within a contextual framework of other period sources on greenhouses to reconstruct this specialized building form and to interpret the activities that took place in and around it. Sources include standing buildings, 19th-century gardening manuals (Cobbett 2003 [1821]; Hibbert and Buist 1834; Loudon 1805, 1817, 1825; M’Mahon 1857), excavations at other greenhouses in eastern North America (Beaudet 1990; Bescherer, Kratzer, and Goodwin 1990; Pinello 1999; Pogue 2009), and primary documents. In addition to presenting information on this specialized building type and assemblage, the article also analyzes the ways that the Gores’ greenhouse functioned within Bostonarea elite life. Other scholars have analyzed the meanings of gardens and landscape features at elite homes and found that these need to be understood in their specific cultural contexts (Ernstein 2004; Leone 1984; Yamin 1996; Yentsch 1990). With its controlled environments Figure 1. Gore Place during the 1920s while the property was used as a golf course. The house was built by the Gores in 1805-1806. View looking north. (Courtesy of Gore Place Society, Waltham, MA.) 72 Beranek et al./Growing Things “Rare, Foreign, and Tender” and exotic plants, Gore’s greenhouse was certainly a part of the scientific or experimental agriculture movement promoted by the MSPA. Scientific agriculture is a movement associated primarily with the male members of the MSPA; however, circumstantial evidence from Gore Place and data from other properties indicate that women often were involved in greenhouse management. Further, this article argues that the greenhouse at Gore Place was part of broader elite sociability in ways employed by both men and women; gardens and greenhouses were settings that highlighted the novel and the exotic; the time and capital required to raise these rare plants to maturity required access to long-established wealth. A Short History of Gore Place Christopher Gore (1758-1827) was a Boston-born lawyer, politician, and statesman (see Pinkney 1969 for an account of his professional life). He served on the Jay Treaty commission and spent the period between 1796 and 1804 in England. After returning from England, he served terms in the Massachusetts Senate, in the U.S. Senate, and as governor of Massachusetts (a one-year term in 1809). He and his wife Rebecca (d. 1834) purchased several lots totaling 50 acres in Waltham in 1786, eventually expanding to 197 acres of farmland and additional wood lots. The Gores were mostly absent from the property until they returned from England in 1804. Their first house in Waltham burned in 1799 while they were still abroad. After their return, they built a new house, which still stands. Situated on a terrace overlooking the Charles River, this grand brick mansion has a central block with fashionable oval rooms and east and west wings. Completed in 1806, the house included state-of-the-art domestic technologies for heat, hot water, laundry, and cooking. The Gores maintained a home in Boston and used the Waltham property as a summer home until 1816 at which point it became their primary residence. The property, now known as Gore Place (fig. 1), was one of a number of Federal period country estates in the greater Boston area. The Gores’ interest in the latest domestic technology was mirrored by an interest in agricultural improvements. As part of their program of landscape manipulation, agriculture, and horticulture, the Gores built a fruit wall and grapery (probably in the 1790s), laid out a vegetable garden, a formal flower garden, and agricultural fields, and constructed a series of greenhouses (Brockway 2001; Smith and Dubell 2006; Smith, Beranek, and Steinberg 2010). Based on documentary sources (Lyman 1834-1838) (fig. 2), the fruit wall consisted of a central span and two flanking wings, probably of brick, north of the house. The warm, southfacing side of such walls was used to shelter fruit trees; a grapery could be much more elaborate, with heating systems, large drainage fields, and structural elements (Kratzer 1995). We do not know the level of elaboration of Gore’s fruit wall and grapery. The area between the house and fruit wall was the site of a formal garden. The earliest greenhouse on the property was attached to one of the wings of the main house and was reportedly the source of the 1799 fire that destroyed the house. The second greenhouse was built along the entrance drive, probably at the same time that the new house was built in 1805-1806 and is the one discussed in this article (fig. 2). It consists of a single building with a small extension, surrounded by an enclosure. The third greenhouse complex Figure 2. Detail of Plan of Theodore Lyman Estate ca. 1834-1838. This plan shows the property at the time that Lyman purchased it from the Gore estate and depicts the stable and greenhouse along the entrance drive, the fruit wall, and the house. (Courtesy of Gore Place Society, Waltham, MA.) Northeast Historical Archaeology/Vol. 38, 2009 73 was constructed against the fruit wall. An 1841 map shows structures built along the central and western spans (Greene 1853). Some version of these greenhouses, which eventually ran the whole length of the fruit wall, survived into the early 20th century. The level of Gore’s personal involvement in this scientific and agrarian lifestyle is demonstrated in letters to his friend Rufus King (Gore 1766-1899), and the scope of his farm activities is documented in the daily journal of one of his farm managers during the 1820s, Jacob Farwell (Farwell 1822-1826). In her recent analysis of these documents, Viens (2010) argues that Gore’s principal agricultural activities were organized to produce items for sale in the Boston market. To support his agricultural enterprise, Gore adopted new practices (producing compost manure, rotating crops) and tools (the horse-drawn hay rake, iron plows, and a straw cutter for producing animal feed) before they were in common use by other Massachusetts farmers (Viens 2010). The production and application of manure (a mixture of animal dung, plant materials, and mineral additives) were o