Rangeley: a romantic residential park in Winchester, Massachusetts

Magazine Antiques, August, 1997 by Maureen Meister

In 1875 a wealthy Boston lumber dealer, David Nelson Skillings (1818-1880), began developing his country estate in nearby Winchester, Massachusetts, into a romantically planned residential park. Located some eight miles northwest of Boston, Rangeley, as the park was named, was widely praised as a model to be imitated, not only in Boston but nationally as well.

Characterized by winding roads and open, parklike settings uninterrupted by fences and hedges, nineteenth-century romantically planned residential communities were inspired by the writings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English theorists and by a variety of English examples.(1) The first such planned community in America was Llewellyn Park, begun in 1853 in West Orange, New Jersey,(2) and followed in the next two decades by Lake Forest, Illinois (1856); Berkeley, California (1866); Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts (1866); and Riverside, Illinois (1868).(3)

A less well-known example of the phenomenon, Rangeley is all the more significant for the ways in which it differed from the other communities.(4) It was comparatively small, embracing only about 25 acres, whereas by 1870 Llewellyn Park had grown to 750 acres and Riverside encompassed 1,600. While the property in the larger communities was subdivided and the lots sold to individual buyers, Rangeley was entirely owned and maintained by Skillings, who leased the houses. Moreover, because of its central location within Winchester, Rangeley served the town as a park - an innovative concept at a time when urban parks were being constructed but before the widespread creation of suburban park systems.

Rangeley is also important because of its proximity to Boston when the city was playing a pivotal role in American architecture. New ideas were being disseminated both by young architects trained at the recently established school of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and by the many experienced architects who were to leave Boston in later years.(5)

Skillings moved to Winchester in the mid-1850s, drawn not only by its bucolic hills and lakes but also by the fact that there was regular train service to Boston. By 1865 he had built a mansion on his large tract of land near the center of town,(6) and ten years later he began the transformation of the estate into a residential park,(7) assisted by George Dutton Rand, a Boston architect.

The development of Rangeley began with the construction of a rolling, winding road edged with cobblestone gutters. Rand then turned to designing the houses: first, a frame house in the Italianate style; followed between 1875 and 1876 by two brick houses, Ruskinian Gothic in design (Pls. I, V),(8) which were distinguished by medieval detailing, bands of tar-dipped brick, and brownstone trim, one with a chimney embellished with encaustic tiles (Pl. III). Between 1876 and 1877, two more brick houses were built - a Ruskinian Gothic two-family structure (Pl. II and [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]) and a hybrid combining the tardipped brick of the Ruskinian Gothic with round arches and a turret [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 4-6 OMITTED].(9)

Skillings's next step was to construct a social center for the community. Designed by Rand, the building was finished by the fall of 1877, and Skillings named it Rangeley Hall [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 7, 8 OMITTED].(10) Broad and low, with a round-arched window under the gable, Rangeley Hall reflected the new aesthetic of the Queen Anne revival. It contained a large room with a stage at one end and a fireplace at the other and was used regularly as a kindergarten as well as for concerts, dances, and theatrical performances.

In 1879 Skillings bought a neighbors house and property and incorporated them into the park, renting the existing house and constructing a frame house nearby.(11) Another brick house was under construction in the winter of 1879 and 1880, when Skillings fell sick, dying in early March 1880. The ownership of Rangeley then passed to his children.(12) Completed later in 1880, the house (Pl. IV and [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]) reflects the influence of the work of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886).(13) Its asymmetrically sloping roof line and projecting gable are reminiscent of Richardson's William Watts Sherman house, built in Newport, Rhode Island, between 1874 and 1876, while the recessed door beyond a wide arch owes a debt to the rectory Richardson was building at the time for Trinity Church in Boston.

Thus, by the end of 1880 Rangeley consisted of the original Skillings mansion, seven single-family houses, one two-family house, and the social hall, all scattered in an open landscape. The buildings were sited with a regard for the natural topography, some on hills and others in low, sheltered areas, in accord with the principles advocated by the early nineteenth-century theorist Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), whom Rand greatly admired,(14) as well as by the more recent writings of Frank J. Scott (1826-1919), whose Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds (1870) also promoted the advantages of an integrated landscape.