The House at Lobster Cove: Reconstructing an Epic Shingle-Style Home

At the age of 23, laying blasting caps herself to dislodge some impertinent granite, Jane Goodrich began in 1983 the physical odyssey of reconstructing Kragsyde – perhaps the most extraordinary Shingle Style home ever built – 100 years after the original “cottage” had been erected in Manchester, Massachusetts. For our November HRC meeting, Jane will share stories of a personal effort spanning over 20 years that included meticulous research, mixing mortar for 40-feet tall chimneys, painting hundreds of window mullions and setting countless ceramic tiles -- not to mention meeting the challenges of quirky New England weather.

The co-owner of Saturn Press, a Swan's Island, Maine letterpress greeting card company founded in 1986, Jane maintained her full-time “day job” throughout the Kragsyde reconstruction project, but her three decades of construction, decorating and occupancy of the house also drew her inexorably to the life of George Nixon Black Jr., the mysterious and reclusive millionaire who commissioned Peabody and Stearns to design what became the quintessential Shingle Style summer residence. Thus began another odyssey of research and writing about a man born in Maine (near the Kragsyde re-creation) who left behind no personal papers, yet was Boston's biggest taxpayer in the 1890s, and one of its greatest philanthropists. The House at Lobster Cove, Jane's novel released in May 2017, is the culmination of her Kragsyde efforts. Relying on literary prose, she creatively rendered Mr. Black's biography as fiction with historically accurate events and people.

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