The Crane Estate
290 Argilla Road
Ipswich, MA 01938
Phone: 978-356-4351
www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/north-shore/castle-hill-crane.html
Of all the houses in this book, this may be the one with the most dramatic setting. This is a 2,100-acre estate. The Great House sits atop a 165-acre drumlin and is surrounded by a vast expanse of gardens, salt marshes, beaches, a bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.
The story of this magnificent property begins in 1637, when it was deeded to John Winthrop (1606–1676), the founder of Ipswich. The land went through several owners before it was bought in 1910 by Richard Teller Crane (1873–1931). He was based in Chicago and was heir to and president of the Crane Company, which manufactured plumbing fixtures. On top of the hill, he built an Italian Renaissance–style villa with stucco walls and a red-tile roof. His wife Florence (1893–1949) disliked the house. Mr. Crane asked her to live within it for ten years. He promised her that if she still didn’t like it at the end of the trial period, he would have the villa demolished and build another house on its site to her liking. She agreed.
Ten years passed and she got her wish. In 1924 the villa was demolished, and the seventeenth-century Jacobean-style house that replaced it was completed four years later. The architect was David Adler (1882–1949) of Chicago. The interior is fitted with wood paneling from English homes, including carvings in the library by the eighteenth-century English master Grinling Gibbons (1648–1721).
The landscape architects were the Olmsted Brothers (see page 64). Extending out from the terrace at the back of the house is a Grand Allée (160 feet wide and half a mile long), which slopes down the hill to the water. It is flanked by trees and marble statues. The property includes a casino with a saltwater pool and twenty-one outbuildings.
Mr. Crane died in 1931, and Mrs. Crane followed him in 1949. She willed the estate to The Trustees of Reservations.