The Nichols House Museum occupies an impressive four-story town house constructed in 1804 by famed Boston architect Charles Bulfinch. In 1885, the house became home to Dr. Arthur Nichols and was later inherited by his eldest daughter, Rose Standish Nichols, the noted landscape architect, writer and suffragist. Rose Nichols cared for the house until her death in 1960.

Since 1961, the Nichols House Museum has been open to the public as an historic house museum reflecting the domestic life of a typical family of Beacon Hill during Boston’s Progressive Era. The house is furnished with priceless possessions accumulated over several generations. The collection includes fine European and American furniture from the 17th to 19th centuries, ancestral portraits, Flemish tapestries, oriental rugs, European and Asian art, and works by America’s foremost sculptor of the 19th century, Augustus Saint Gaudens.

The Nichols House Museum’s interpretation focuses on women’s history and highlights the accomplishments of Rose Nichols and her sisters, Marian Nichols and Margaret Nichols Shurcliff, who strongly advocated for the enfranchisement of their gender. The museum puts forth themes such as women as collectors, social progress, and the emergence of the middle class.

Ours will be an object-based tour with the museum’s curator that will focus on the highlights of the collection on view, as well as noteworthy objects and ephemera pulled from museum storage. We’ll get an up-close look at these items and go into much greater depth than is offered during their public tours.

Our thanks to Laura Cunningham, Programs and Collections Coordinator at the Nichols House Museum, and her colleagues for making this tour possible.

This tour can accommodate a maximum of 15 people.

When

November 3 at 1 p.m. and lasting about two hours.

Where

55 Mount Vernon Street in Boston

Registration

Registration is required. The cost is $8.