#1    The Historical Building

Visitors to the Peterborough Historical Society often comment, “I had no idea all of this was here!”  As we celebrate our 105^th anniversary in 2007, all of us at the Historical Society wanted to share the broad and diverse holdings of Peterborough’s oldest cultural institution.  After more than a century, the Historical Society has amassed an amazing collection of objects, photographs, and documents that illuminate our shared heritage in the Monadnock region.  

But with more than 10,000 museum objects and 60,000 documents and photos the big question is where to begin?  For number one of 105 Great Things, we have chosen our largest and most valuable object, the Historical Building at 19 Grove Street.

The Historical Society was founded in 1902 but did not move to our permanent home until the early 1920s, when the Historical Building, commissioned and built by Clara Foster Bass (1844-1933), was completed.  Bass was a descendant of the Smith family, one of Peterborough’s founding families.  The daughter of a wealthy Chicago merchant, she returned to her family’s ancestral home and became active in Peterborough’s civic life.  By 1914, the fledgling Historical Society was outgrowing it’s quarters in the building at 14 Grove Street.  Bass commissioned Boston architects Little & Russell to design a Colonial Revival style building that looked back to the great public architecture of Boston in the 18^th century. Her intention was to create a permanent home for the Historical Society and a meeting place for the social and intellectual pursuits of the town’s people.

A fire at the Victorian-style town hall in the winter of 1916 prompted the town fathers to also look to Little & Russell to create a new Town Hall.  The two buildings were designed and constructed simultaneously.  The new ‘look’ was quickly adopted by others along Grove Street including the Guernsey Cattle Building at 20 Grove Street (also designed by Little & Russell), the old bank building at 14 Grove Street which received an updated façade that reflects the Colonial Revival style, the First National Bank Building at 21 Grove, and the Post Office.  In fact, the Historical Building set the style for the wonderful downtown streetscape that defines Peterborough today.