Estate Living in a Historic Mansion in Cambridge, Massachusetts

"Every man believes instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments
in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

-- James Russell Lowell
“New England Two Centuries Ago”
Literary Essays, Volume I

Now you might think that lightning cannot strike twice. But for us it did. While I was a law student, I worked for the school’s dean to help pay my tuition bills. I didn’t qualify for financial aid because I was married, and I could find no merit scholarships for law school. With the help of my wife, we eked it out.

Unexpectedly during my last year in school there, the dean was named to be Harvard University’s new president. The dean immediately began worrying about how he would persuade his young family to leave their cozy home on Belmont Hill to live in Harvard Yard where the current president had been besieged by student demonstrators.

Gradually, he developed a different plan. Harvard owned Elmwood, the historic home of the poet, James Russell Lowell, located on large, leafy grounds in Cambridge about a mile from Harvard Square. Although Elmwood was near a busy intersection, it was much more of a place for a family than Harvard Yard and its restless students. My boss, Derek Bok, decided that he would live in Elmwood instead and began plans to prepare the home for his arrival. The house would be torn up for months as the inside and out were improved and updated. No one had lived in the house for decades so a lot needed to be done. He was worried about how everything could be kept safe during the construction.

I immediately remembered that our good friends, Paul and Nancy Dredge, needed a place to stay for the summer while their apartment was refurbished by the university. I asked them if they would be willing to house sit for the new president, and offered to relay the news to Derek. Nancy was a secretary to one of the professors at the law school, and I was sure that they would be seen as good people for the task. The Dredges agreed, and I told Derek I had a solution for him.

His eyes widened as I made my suggestion. He immediately countered with the observation that I had a great idea, but it needed one change to make it perfect – my wife and I should live in Elmwood and give our friends our apartment for the several months involved. My jaw went slack and I told him I would have to ask my wife. We agreed that this was the opportunity of a lifetime and quickly consented to become presidential house sitters. About all we had to do was to call the police if we saw anyone lurking who made us nervous. And we had the mansion to ourselves for the four months we lived there except for days when workers needed to make changes inside the house. Even then, they always left our floor alone when we were home.

Sissela Bok, Derek’s wife and a highly esteemed author and professor whose father was Gunnar Myrdal, visited often to supervise the work. While there, she helped us learn about Elmwood. She showed us holes inside the house from balls shot from Revolutionary muskets when the house’s Tory owners were threatened. Elmwood later served as a Revolutionary Army hospital, and there are other scars she showed us along one stairwell from bayonets employed by some of the hospital’s guards. We also learned that Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and later a governor of Massachusetts and vice president of the United States under James Madison, had once lived in patrician style inside the house on Elmwood’s then almost 100 acres. Gerry is best remembered today by the term, gerrymandering, which refers to changing the boundaries of an electoral district to favor one political party over another. It’s an old political practice that doesn’t seem to be going away.

Everyone we had ever met suddenly wanted to visit us and tour the house (which was closed to the public). We entertained guests almost every week, and they always insisted that they would bring the food and beverages because my wife was pregnant and nauseous a lot of the time. So we entertained royally at no expense to us. We also dined out for years at our friends’ homes on reciprocity from that spring and summer.

Okay, you probably didn’t go to Harvard, and you probably don’t work for people who own or have access to mansions. You can still live in a mansion . . . at least for awhile.

Did you know that there are jobs for house sitters? Mansion owners are especially likely to be looking for them because many of them travel a lot. The owners often need someone to water the plants once a week, keep the place looking like someone is living in it and forward any important messages. You could devote a week or two of your time doing this when you aren’t very busy at your regular work. If you have a family, you could schedule the work for when your children will be away at camp or otherwise occupied away from home. Or for a country state, you could do your mansion sitting during summer vacation when your children could join you without missing school.

A golf pro once taught me an even better lesson. He had to live on a limited budget, but while the winter winds were whistling through bare branches in Massachusetts he was basking in the sun in Florida. Over the years he had asked thousands of people about themselves, and knew which ones owned nice vacation properties in Florida. If he wanted to travel to a different part of the state, he would just ask someone who owned property there if he could borrow the place for a few days and the owners would usually oblige except when they were in town. The first time I did this with him I was amazed to realize that we were borrowing the beautiful country home of a couple who had been neighbors and friends of mine for many years. But I never had bothered to learn about their vacation home. Silly me!

Another approach to mansion living was revealed to me still years later. A California client came to town and asked me to meet with a man who was looking to enter into a partnership with my client. We were invited to the potential partner’s home for dinner as a way to start the discussions. The potential partner lived on an enormous estate in the country north of Boston. There were horses in the stables, riding trails everywhere, gorgeous gardens and a lush forest. The home reminded me of something out of a James Bond movie about a rich villain.

Over dinner, I found myself meeting the children’s tutor who was a teacher at a local private school. It turned out that the house had a lot of extra bedrooms. The family provided free room and board for the tutor in exchange for his being willing to help the children with their homework. The tutor liked to teach so this was easy duty for him. And the food and accommodations were matchless. Surely, you know or could find out enough about some subjects to be a live-in tutor for children. Otherwise, many elderly people who live alone are happy to provide similar accommodations for someone so that they will not be alone at night.

Recently, I ran into a man who had worked for the CEO of a consulting organization who decided to move the company into a home in his luxurious neighborhood. That left the CEO with one extra mansion where no one was staying at night. The CEO invited his single employee to move into the new home, and the employee lived there for 14 years with daily maid service and a cooked breakfast.

While I was looking for an agent for this book (before meeting the remarkable Peter Miller), one agent told me she liked the book idea because it reminded her of all her years house-sitting in empty movie star mansions in Beverly Hills. The sellers wanted someone to be in the houses while they were on the market, and she had lots of privacy in one wing of 40,000 square foot homes.

Just the other day, I was in contact with the National Trust and they told me about a program where some state historical associations will let you live in a historic mansion for life as the curator . . . in exchange for your paying for some of the mansion's preservation. The cost is usually much less than the rent on a home . . . or mortgage payments. Check it out!

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2005 Donald W. Mitchell