395 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA, USA

Frederick Ayer Mansion

The Frederick Ayer Mansion is a National Historic Landmark on 395 Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

The mansion was the home of Frederick Ayer, owner of the American Woolen Company, and features well preserved design work by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.


Historical significance

The Ayer Mansion was built in 1900, designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany in a partnership with Alfred J. Manning. It is one of three surviving examples of Tiffany designed interiors. The other two sites are the Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain House) in Hartford, Connecticut (1881), and the Ferry House in Seattle, Washington (1903–1906). What makes the Ayer Mansion so unusual is that Tiffany also designed exterior mosaics for the property. The only other building known to have included this feature by Tiffany was his private residence, Laurelton Hall, which was destroyed in a fire in the 1950s. Individual components from Laurelton Hall survive in museums, but the Ayer Mansion is now the only place that has intact in situ interior and exterior components designed by Tiffany.

The mansion was sold by the family after Frederick's death in 1918 and converted to office space. The Trimount Foundation and Bayridge Residence and Cultural Center, affiliates of the Roman Catholic Opus Dei organization, purchased the Ayer mansion and adjacent buildings in 1964. They are currently operated as private residential facilities for area college students, although tours are occasionally given of the public spaces where Tiffany-designed elements have been preserved.

Preservation

Since its purchase by the Trimount and Bayridge Residence and Cultural Center, several renovations have been done to the buildings. The first renovation occurred in 1971–72 when the two buildings were joined. In 1999, Jean Carroon Architects conducted an assessment of the building's preservation needs as well as detailed proposal on how to achieve it. The first of the projects outlined was the restoration of a 24-foot lay light which had been concealed for fifty years. Also renovated was the front living room in 2000. The drop ceiling installed when the building was converted into offices was removed to reveal the original floral-patterned ceiling, and the parquet floor was also restored. The mosaic on the interior hall was restored in 2002.

Currently, efforts are being made to restore the exterior of the building. The project will include repairing 4 out of the 7 mosaics on the exterior balcony which have been damaged or lost due to water infiltration; recreation of the two missing stained glass screens on the first floor; restoration of the remaining window on the first floor; and recreation of the missing stained glass screen along the top floor.

National Register of Historic Places - Frederick Ayer Mansion

Statement of Significance:

Completed in 1901, the Frederick Ayer Mansion possesses integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. As the only known surviving example of exterior ornamentation designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and one of his most intact and complete residential interior designs, the Ayer Mansion has attracted the attention of numerous historians. Tiffany expert Alice Frelinghuysen considers it one of his most lavish existing creations and architectural historians Bainbridge Bunting and Douglass Shand Tucci each have noted its importance in the context of local architectural development. Built by Frederick Ayer, a prominent businessman of the late nineteenth century with interests in a wide variety of industries, the Ayer Mansion is also associated with developments in regional economic history.

Louis Comfort Tiffany: A Pioneer of Interior Design
The Frederick Ayer Mansion at 395 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, (1899 -1901) is a rare example of Louis Comfort Tiffany's exterior and interior residential design that survives in situ. A master of surface ornament and color, Tiffany was a pioneer of the interior design profession. His work with the Associated Artists (1879-1883) established a new respect for American decorative arts on the international stage and provided the basis for a long successful career. Tiffany was the "most fashionable purveyor of taste" during America's Gilded Age,7 having renovated the White House under President Arthur (1882), as well as having created apartments and homes for America's most influential families. His design studios catered to a post-Civil War clientele that was eager to announce its wealth and social standing through prominent, forward-looking commissions.

According to historian Neil Harris, Tiffany also exploited the nascent mass media and new photographic technologies to become one of the first "celebrity designers" of the industrial age. 8 Tiffany is known to have collaborated with such notable architects as Stanford White, Bernard Maybeck, Peabody and Stearns, George B. Post, and Edward T. and William A. Potter. He also collaborated on window designs with painters Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Paul Serusier. Such exposure ensured that Tiffany's influence extended to every type of public and private institution including houses of worship, theaters, social clubs, universities, memorials, and mausolea.

Tiffany's innovations in glass making and interior design garnered almost immediate international recognition. Exhibits of his glass and mosaics won frequent awards at International Expositions from the 1890s through the 1910s. Following a triumphant 1892 exhibition in Paris organized to solidify Tiffany's continental market appeal, the dealer Siegfried Bing became the designer's sole European distributor. According to Alice Frelinghuysen, curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, European representation ensured that "his work was widely known and critiqued with acclaim throughout America and around the world."

Photo by Leslie Donovan