Richardson’s House on Sippican Harbor, Revisited: Notes since 2010

Date: Nov 12, 2025

Location:

Zoom (virtual) , United States

The New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to host Mark Wright's virtual talk "Richardson's House on Sippican Harbor, Revisited: Notes since 2010" on November 12 at 7 PM EST. Please register at https://www.nesah.org/event-6384181 to receive a Zoom link. 

In his article "H. H. Richardson’s House for Rev’d Browne, Rediscovered" (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March 2010), Wright presented one of Richardson’s most enigmatic and consequential works. His graphic reconstruction of the house as it was originally built was grounded in then-newly-identified 19th- and early 20th-century photographs, archival research, and close examination and measurement of the surviving, altered building. To fill the house in mind’s eye with the family for whom it was created, he explored the lives of Richardson’s clients and their neighbors. This perspective engendered a lively picture of the house’s place in the physical and social landscape, and led to a fuller understanding of how the commission's design influenced the architect’s rivals and followers, and – perhaps most importantly – their clients. Consideration of the house in the context of some of H. H. Richardson’s better-known work of the period between 1879 and 1882 showed that this tiny commission was central to the architect’s development as a mature artist.

It is a fitting time for an update. At the time of the article's publication, the house had recently changed hands and its future was uncertain. In 2019 a hastily mounted but successful social media and letter-writing campaign convinced the owners to withdraw their application for a permit to demolish the house outright, and to look instead for an institutionally supportable use for the cultural asset of which they’d discovered themselves to be stewards. The town has become more engaged in an ongoing effort to assure the building’s preservation. It has been nominated to the Preservation Massachusetts Most Endangered Historic Resources Program. And, over the last 15 years, Mr. Wright has enriched his own understanding both of the process of its design – including fruitful improvisation based on input from the owner and contractor – and of how the unique shingle detailing with which H. H. Richardson treated this house (and no other) behaved in changing sunshine. The talk is based on one Wright recently delivered to a lay audience in Marion, Massachusetts, sponsored by the Sippican Historical Society.

Mark Wright is an architect in private practice. He was educated at the Rice University School of Architecture (BA '80, BArch '82), then had the good fortune to spend his first professional decade with Kliment & Halsband. Since 2003, Wright & Robinson Architects has worked to bring 21st century families and their 19th century houses into happy mutual accommodation. Wright's technical understanding of the Queen Anne and Shingle Style architecture of the towns along the Wachtung Ridge undergirds his work on Richardson's Percy Browne house and his ongoing research into houses by Charles Follen McKim, John Charles Olmsted, and Frederick B. White.