Rangeley: a romantic residential park in Winchester, Massachusetts

Magazine Antiques, August, 1997 by Maureen Meister

In 1888 Skillings's daughter asked Rand to design three more rental houses for Rangeley. Sited on a ridge, they were in the colonial revival style, again up-to-date in their design (see Pl. VIII).(30) A map of 1889 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED] suggests that subdivision was being considered at that time, but it did not happen. In the late 1890s a guidebook reflected the continuing appeal of Rangeley, which was described as "a quarter of English parklike characteristics, on rolling highland embellished with masses of stately trees."(31)

In 1901 Rangeley was sold to a developer,(32) but town leaders were distressed and went looking for a buyer who would maintain the enclave as a whole. Edwin Ginn (1838-1914), the textbook publisher who in 1879 had acquired land that backed up on Rangeley and rebuilt the house on it, bought the Rangeley property, assuring the town that he would keep it virtually "as an open park."(33) Developers purchased the property in the 1920s, after Ginn's death, and various changes have ensued over the years. During the Great Depression several buildings, including the Skillings mansion, were razed. However, the lots near the main road remain large, and certain aspects of the landscape have been maintained, although fences and hedges now contradict the planners' concept of an open, integrated landscape. Still, the surviving houses, mature trees, and winding road continue to offer strollers and joggers from the larger community the opportunity to enjoy Rangeley's charms.(34)

1 For an analysis of English models see Gillian Darley, Villages of Visions (Architectural Press, London, 1975).

2 For more about Llewellyn Park see Susan Henderson, "Hewellyn Park, Suburban Idyll," Journal of Garden History, vol. 7, no. 3 (July-September 1987), pp. 221-243; ANTIQUES, January 1975, pp. 142-158; and Richard Guy Wilson, "Idealism and the Origin of the First American Suburb: Llewellyn Park, New Jersey," American Art Journal, vol. 11 (October 1979), pp. 79-90.

3 For more about these communities see Christopher Tunnard, "The Romantic Suburb in America," Magazine of Art, vol. 40, no. 5 (May 1947), pp. 184-187; John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1965), pp. 339348; John Archer, "Country and City in the American Romantic Suburb," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 42, no. 2 (May 1983), pp. 139156. Recent books that have considered romantically planned communities include Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford University Press, New York, 1985); David Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1986); and John R. Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1988).

4 Rangeley is not discussed in any of the sources cited in n. 3. Its creation has been noted, although not explored, in Henry Smith Chapman, History of Winchester, Massachusetts (1936; Town of Winchester, Winchester, Massachusetts, 1975), pp. 203-204, 209-210; and Winchester, Massachusetts: The Architectural Heritage of a Victorian Town (Winchester Historical Society, Winchester, 1988), pp. 54-59.