History in houses: Woodlawn in Ellsworth, Maine

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2003 by William Nathaniel Banks

The interiors of Woodlawn are finished in elegant neoclassical style. The entrance in the south wing gives onto John Black's office on the left, and on the right is an impressive doorway (see P1. IV) with an elliptical fanlight that is a slight variation on a Benjamin design. This door leads into the main house. Opening off a long hail are the adjoining dining room (Pls. VI, VII) and parlor (Pls. VIII, XI) in an arrangement duplicating Benjamin's floor plan. Both rooms have imposing mantels with Doric columns (see Pls. VI, XI). The mottled gray marble was probably quarried at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania The mantels in the less formal rooms are wooden.

Across the hail from the parlor and dining room a gracefully curving staircase ascends to the second story (see Pls. III, VIII). On Benjamin's plan there are five bedchambers on what he calls the "chamber floor." Woodlawn also has five bedrooms. The elegant small bathroom with a porthole window was installed about 1910 (Pl XV).

In September 1827 John and Mary Black went on a shopping spree in Boston to furnish their house appropriately Among the Black family papers at Woodlawn are a bill to John Black from the Furniture Warehouse, 6 Milk Street, Boston, for $438.80, and a bill to his wife from Samuel Beal at his furniture warehouse on the corner of Hanover and Elm Streets for $195.99. Both bills are dated September 21, 1827, and include bedsteads, fancy chairs, a bureau, a pair of Grecian card tables, a hat tree, and washstands. Some of these pieces in the house today are labeled by their makers.

In the dining room (Pls. VI, VII) is a fine mahogany pedestal table with gilt-brass paw feet that cost fifty dollars and was made by William Fisk, who has been described as one "of the most prolific of first-class Boston cabinetmakers." (4) Black paid twenty-six dollars for the brass andirons, stamped "John Molineux/Boston," and the matching, but unstamped, shovel and tongs. An unsigned portrait of John Black hangs over the massive sideboard, which cost forty-five dollars. On the opposite wall between the windows is a portrait of Mary Cobb Black (see Pl. VII), probably by the same artist who painted her husband.

The Argand lamps in the dining room and parlor are especially interesting. The pair on the table to the left of the dining room mantel both bear a brass label embossed "JOHN. B. JONES/BOSTON." John B. Jones Jr. (1782- 1854) was a silversmith and importer from whom Mary Black bought, in September 1827, soup ladles and dessert spoons as well as the lamps. In 1835, Jones formed a partnership called Jones, Lows and Ball. The brass label on one of the twin-burner lamps on the dining room mantel is embossed "Jones, Lows & Ball .Boston," while the label on the other reads "MANUFACTURED BY/H. N. HOOPER & CO/BOSTON." Apparently the lamps were made by Henry N. Hooper and Company and sold by Jones, Lows and Ball. Since that partnership was dissolved in 1840, it is evident that between 1835 and 1840 the Blacks were still patronizing the Jones shop.