NICKELS-SORTWELL HOUSE, at 121 Main St., Wiscasset.
The public is invited to celebrate the start of summer at Castle Tucker and Nickels-Sortwell House on Saturday. Free guided tours will be given at each house on the half hour from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Castle Tucker
Castle Tucker, located at 2 Lee St. in Wiscasset, is filled with the original furnishings and decoration of the Tucker family, who lived there for over 140 years. One of the most complete and original Victorian homes in the United States, the house was built in 1807 by one of Wiscasset’s most prominent citizens — lawyer, Congressman and Judge Silas Lee. Lee had already built several houses in town including a Georgian style house on High Street when he spent years acquiring land parcels for the estate that was quite possibly his architectural dream house.
In 1858, Captain Richard Tucker Jr., scion of a prominent Wiscasset shipping family, bought the house for his new and growing family. The Tuckers updated and redecorated to reflect the styles of their time, much of it in a style popularized by one of the earliest American lifestyle connoisseurs, Andrew Jackson Downing. Very little was changed in the house after 1900, including a kitchen with four generations of kitchen technology still in place where it was used.
Preserved by three generations of Tucker women, Castle Tucker is now a historic house museum shown after the family left it in 1997. This year, Historic New England is opening an additional room in the mansion to tell the story of the preservation challenges presented by the house.
Nickels-Sortwell House
Nickels-Sortwell House, at 121 Main St. in Wiscasset, began as the trophy home of shipping magnate Captain William Nickels at the height of Wiscasset’s fortunes as a thriving seaport in 1807. After Nickels’ death in 1815, a series of owners operated the house as a hotel until it was purchased in 1899 by industrialist and former mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alvin Sortwell, as a summer home for his large family. Mayor Sortwell’s wife, Gertrude, and daughter, Frances, restored the house over the years, decorating and furnishing it in Colonial Revival style. The Sortwell family enjoyed the mansion as a private home and family gathering place until 1956, when it was given to Historic New England. Nickels- Sortwell House offers a picture of life in the Gilded Age through the early 20th century, when Wiscasset was a summer getaway filled with people relaxing, yachting and entertaining.
For the past two years, the Garden Club of Wiscasset has been working with Historic New England to restore the Nickels-Sortwell garden to the way it looked in the 1930s for a Sortwell family wedding. This year, you can see their work-in-progress in full bloom in the newly restored terrace and back gardens.
For more information and a full calendar of summer programs, call (207) 882-7169 or visit HistoricNewEngland.org.
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