Boston House Museums

The Gibson House was built in Back Bay in 1860. The National Park Service declared the Gibson House a National Historic Landmark in 2001. It is a unique single-family residence that has its kitchen, scullery, butler’s pantry and water closets, as well as formal rooms and private family quarters, filled with the Gibsons’ original furniture and personal possessions.

The Gibson House represents American domestic life during the 1850s-70s at its most vertical. It was built during the popularization of row housing and consists of six floors that were all designed to serve different functions. In 1855, to accommodate the city’s growth, homes in the Back Bay were equipped with the most up-to-date conveniences including gas lighting and running water provided by public gas lines and a 96-mile water and sewer system. There was no air conditioning at that time, so in the summer there was no cooling system. Modern heat was eventually added in the 1930s.

In this home, the kitchen was in the basement because that’s where the servants did all of their work. They cooked and washed the laundry in the ground floor. There is also an area in the back of the house where the trash could be taken out. Because the servants were either always on the top or bottom floors doing work, they had a bell call system in every room of the house. Before electricity each person could call one another from different rooms using bells connected with wires.

The outside of this house does no justice for the beauty that exists inside. The front of the house outside is very plain and basic. It consists of a small, fenced in front yard leading up to the red brick row house. There is one sign in the front yard to acknowledge its importance of being a famous museum. The tasteful interiors are ornate with black-walnut woodwork, elegant Japanese wallpapers, imported carpets, and an abundance of furniture, paintings, sculpture, photographs, silver, porcelain, curios, and 18th-century family heirlooms. This house is also unique because it is the only one still left with a sky light, allowing bright daylight to shine throughout the house. It’s the only sky light left because after the great fire houses were prohibited from having one, seeing as smoke rises and it would burn the house down. There is also a grand staircase that leads from the first to the second floor. Even though there are six floors, the grand staircase is mainly there for an attractive initial appearance. The stairs to the other four floors are on the side of the house. They are the less elegant stairs in which the servants used to travel up and down the floors.

The presentation of the house is very successful. Maintaining most of the family’s original antique furniture and imported artifacts keeps it historic and traditional. It even still has some of the original under-carpeting throughout the house. The tour guide showed a picture of what the house looked like in 1917 and it’s almost exactly the same. The sustained preservation is very effective for the museum. The entire home has been able to stay preserved thanks to Save America’s Treasures who recently gave a matching grant to the association.

The tour guide was extremely effective. He knew much of the history on the family and of the house itself, so it kept the tour interesting as well as very informative. The website gives a lot of the information that the tour gave, but it’s not the same affect as actually taking the tour. The website talks about each room and the history of the family and house, but actually seeing all of the artifacts and memorabilia throughout the house give it more meaning. The only fault of the entire tour is that there are no free brochures. Anything worth looking at was $5, but thankfully the actual tour was effective on its own. This house is very glamorous and it is clear why it has remained a preserved historic museum. It is much more elegant than Paul Revere’s home which is located in the North End.

Paul Revere’s home was built in 1680 on the site of the former parsonage of the Second Church of Boston. The original home was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1676 and a large and fashionable new home was built at the same location four years later. Today that home is still standing at 19 North Square and has become a national historic landmark. It is downtown Boston's oldest building and one of the few remaining from an early era in the history of colonial America.

Paul Revere owned the home from 1770 to 1800. Revere sold it in 1800 and it soon became used for various convenient stores. In 1902, Paul Revere's great-grandson, John P.