Designed in 1870/71 by Richard Morris Hunt as a summer house for the Haskell Family (Dr. Henry Hill Haskell – an ophthalmologist - and his wife Marian Louise Munger Haskell), who lived at 34 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, this home overlooking Whale Beach (now Eisman’s Beach) and Jeffries’ Point, has been known as Beachhurst for the past 150 years.
According to local historian Waldo Thompson writing in 1885, Beachhurst was “designed by Hunt, the distinguished New York architect…It is one of the handsomest and most convenient along the North Shore” (Thompson, p. 205).**
Hunt also designed the base for the Statue of Liberty and Biltmore House for George Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Carolina plus The Breakers for Cornelius Vanderbilt in Newport, Rhode Island and the Newport Museum, which is reminiscent of Beachhurst.
Over the last few years, the present owners have returned much of the character to the structure, removing the aluminum siding and bringing back the pattern of vertical, horizontal and diagonal boards applied over horizontal siding. The complex and asymmetrical composition consists of two 2 ½-story offset masses, both capped by a jerkinhead (clipped gable) roof with gable dormers and tall brick chimneys rising from the steep roof slopes. Projecting from the center of the façade is a single-story porte cochère constructed of square chamfered posts with a grid of other members, brackets and bullseye medallions. There are brackets at the overhangs, trusses in the gables, recessed panel corner boards and stick “X” balustrades atop projecting porches. The main entry is flanked by stained glass sidelights. Adjacent to the entrance is a rectangular, shed roofed oriel window supported by large knee braces and decorated by panels. Windows contain modern 1/1 sash and there are also several French doors. The rear tower and porches are no longer extant.
A granite block wall runs along the sidewalk with rounded posts with rough-faced sides marking the ends of the curved driveway. As originally designed the property included an elegant stable/carriage house on the opposite side of the street (no longer extant).
*Source: Massachusetts Historical Commission
** Waldo Thompson, Sketches of Swampscott (copyright 1885; p. 205)
