In an era before government-sponsored welfare, wealthy late 19th-century idealists like Robert Treat Paine personally took on some of the most difficult societal problems. Paine was exceptionally dedicated to the task, pioneering organized charity, affordable housing, cooperative loan and building associations, clubs and institutes for the working class and even the peace movement. 

 Working with some of the most important artists and intellectuals of late 19th-century America, architect Henry Hobson Richardson, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and Reverend Phillips Brooks, Paine left an architectural legacy as well as a philosophical one: from hundreds of low income homes in Roxbury to some of our most memorable icons of American design. 

 Ann Clifford, the curator of Paine’s country house, Stonehurst, will explore the ideology behind Trinity Church in Boston, Stonehurst in Waltham, and social institutions established by Robert Treat Paine.

Copies of the new guidebook by Ann Clifford and Thomas M. Paine, Stonehurst: The Robert Treat Paine Estate: An American Masterwork by H.H. Richardson and F.L. Olmsted, will be available to purchase.

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Info:  781-314-3492 X2

>
 

Waltham Public School Programs

Waltham third-graders playing on Glacier Rock

Because Stonehurst is municipally owned, its relationship with the local public school system is unusually close.  School programs are presently offered to all of Waltham's third-grade students and to several Waltham high school classes.  Schools from towns outside of Waltham interested in participating in our "Shaped By Nature" program for grades 3-5 may contact Stonehurst at 781-314-3293 for more information about scheduling and tailoring this program to meet specific needs.

This school program, designed for grades 3-5 uses historical artifacts, documents and the the city-owned site itself to teach timeless ideas about our relationship to the natural and built environment.

Stonehurst teachers visit each classroom beforehand to introduce students to museum archival practices and the importance of primary source materials in learning about the past.  Students are introduced to Lily Paine, the youngest daughter of the Paine family, through hands-on artifacts and Lily's travel journal, which she hand wrote during a trip her family took to Europe and the Middle East in 1890-91.  Through Lily's own words, students come to see that Lily was a child who not only admired and respected, but lived in complete harmony with nature.

Lily's father Robert Treat Paine, was a philanthropist and housing reformer. Her family loved the natural world and believed that all living things are shaped by their environment. They hired architect Henry Hobson Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted who shared their love of nature to design their country home, an earth-friendly house in Waltham built of boulders taken directly from its hilltop site. Within and without, Stonehurst has strong connections to the earth.

Visiting the estate itself, students look through the lens of history at sundials, life cycles, vernal pools, open space and architecture designed for healthy living, and learn that habitats for humans--like all organisms--provide for their basic needs.

These "old" ideas that are so powerfully expressed at Stonehurst are forward looking even today.

A collaboration between the Waltham Public School System, the Friends of Stonehurst and the City of Waltham, Jeannette A. McCarthy, Mayor.