Goodbye to Charles Bulfinch

For a century this stately brick building, now Portsmouth Historical Society, served as the Portsmouth Public Library. Before that it was Portsmouth Academy. For a few proud years the building wore this handsome sign that read: “Charles Bulfinch, Architect, 1809.” Bulfinch (1763-1844) is known locally as the designer of  the Massachusetts State House, the expanded Faneuil Hall, University Hall at Harvard, and many stately Boston homes. He is best known for the iconic United States Capitol building in Washington, DC.  

Charles Bulfinch has been described as the first native-born American to make his living as an architect. ”His works,” according to Wikipedia, “are notable for their simplicity, balance, and good taste, and as the origin of a distinctive Federal style of classical domes, columns, and ornament that dominated early 19th-century American architecture.” So, it’s a bummer that, in fact, Charles Bulfinch did not design this building that continues to serve Portsmouth so well.  

In 1966, a local historian discovered evidence that proved the Bulfinch claim was, well, bull. The building was actually designed by James Nutter of Newington, NH. Nutter was a house carpenter or “joiner” and later a Methodist minister. He was paid $20 to design the building in 1809.  Nutter reportedly based his plan on a building at Phillips Exeter Academy that no longer stands.

The revelation that the city’s famed “Bulfinch Library” was an imposter was front page news at the time. Librarian and local historian Dorothy Vaughan, who was also president of Strawbery Banke Museum, resisted the facts. She insisted that Bulfinch “might” have visited Portsmouth or possibly inspired the design, and she kept the sign in its hallowed place about the ancient door.  The documents proving that Nutter designed the building were presented to the city librarian in order to close the case, but they mysteriously disappeared from the library collection.

Luckily, the evidence had been photographed by an architectural historian who was curator of Strawbery Banke Museum. When the gold-leafed Bulfinch sign finally came down in the 1980s under city librarian Sherman Pridham, Portsmouth Herald columnist Raymond Brighton praised the act as the killing of a “sacred cow” and the end of “one of Portsmouth’s most carefully nurtured delusions.”  

The missing documents that proved Mr. Nutter had, indeed, designed the 1810-era Portsmouth Academy building were rediscovered in 2007. They were found among the items donated to the NH Historical Society by the late Dorothy Vaughan, who died in 2004 just shy of her 100th birthday.  

The renovated and repurposed structure is actually two buildings. The year the Portsmouth Academy opened in 1810, grocer Thomas Morton built a fashionable brick residence next door. Only two years later, as America entered the War of 1812 and the Portsmouth economy began to falter, Morton sold his house. It had 12 more owners and a number of additions before it was purchased by the city. A 10,000 square foot addition connected the two buildings in 1976 to expand the public library.. The offices of the Star Island Corporation now occupy the Morton portion of the building building.

 
Copyright J, Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.