Preview our upcoming evening with Edgar Allan Poe:
Public Hearings for New High School on Adjacent Land
Funds Received for Roof Preservation Design
Thanks to a grant from the Waltham Community Preservation Committee, the City of Waltham has hired a preservation architect to help secure the failing roof at Stonehurst.
The complex, shallow-pitched, wood-shingled roof is inherently problematic. During the severe weather conditions of the winter of 2015, the main roof was put to the test and portions failed. On the north side, enormous ice dams crept under the wooden roof shingles, shorting out historic light fixtures, warping floor boards, loosening plaster ceilings and walls, and peeling painted surfaces.
The architectural firm Red Hawk Studios, Inc. is now designing roof modifications and repairs that will prevent further ice and water damage to the interiors and avert the threat of damage to structural members and collections. Thank you CPC members!
Stonehurst on Film
In October, be sure to be on the look out for Stonehurst on This Old House. National Public Television recently filmed a segment of this popular series at Stonehurst, presenting it as a high-style archetype for their vernacular Arts & Crafts project house in Arlington.
When you are watching the new Ghostbusters III movie scheduled to be released in July, you'll need to look more carefully for Stonehurst. The scenes at Columbia University were actually filmed right here in Waltham!
Ghostbusters visit Stonehurst!
As you watch the new Ghostbusters III movie in the movie theatre next July, be sure to be on the lookout for Stonehurst, the stage set in several scenes.
Before Columbia Pictures came to town, we had been under the impression that the iconic interiors of Stonehurst would be unmistakable no matter the furnishings or camera angle.
Talented set designers completely transformed four rooms in the house to simulate senior staff offices and the alumni hall of Columbia University. Fitted with carefully selected furniture and drapery, the warm and welcoming house became grand and imposing.
If you remember, the first Ghostbusters movie began at Columbia, where Bill Murray, Dan Akyroyd and Harold Ramis held faculty positions in the science department. When the eccentric parapsychologists lost their teaching positions, they joined together to start a business as Ghostbusters to catch evil spirits taking over Manhattan.
In the new film, Kristin Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, an author on the paranormal and professor at Columbia who is laughed out of her faculty position. A bust of Harold Ramus stands outside her office (filmed in one of the bedrooms here).
As far as we know, ghosts weren’t players in the scenes filmed in Stonehurst. Maybe we're in for a surprise!