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Gore Place, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Architectual plans for Gore Place.

Detail of Gore Place gardens.

Gore Place is a historic country house located at 52 Gore Street, Waltham, Massachusetts. It is owned and operated by the nonprofit Gore Place Society. The grounds are open to the public daily without charge; an admission fee is charged for house tours.

The mansion was built in 1806 as a summer home for Massachusetts lawyer and politician Christopher Gore. In this house the Gores entertained various notables including the Marquis de Lafayette, Daniel Webster, and James Monroe.

The dowry from Gore's 1785 wedding to Rebecca Amory Payne helped pay for their first purchase of Waltham land. They gradually enlarged their holdings to 400 acres. In 1793 the Gores built a wooden mansion to replace an earlier farmhouse on the site. A large carriage house built at the same time remains to this day.

In 1796 President George Washington appointed Gore to a diplomatic position in England, where the Gores lived for eight years. In 1799, their wooden mansion burned down, and they began to plan a new mansion for the site. The Gores had visited many country homes in England and traveled through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The work of Sir John Soane probably influenced the new mansion's design, although a Parisian architect, Jacques-Guillaume Legrand, is said to have assisted Mrs. Gore in drawing up the final plans. The Gores returned to Massachusetts in 1804 and work on the new brick mansion commenced in 1805. Construction costs totaled just under $24,000.

The house design consists of a large, central block with two long and low symmetrical wings. A bowed facade faces south onto the house's lawn, with entryway at the north face. Inside the house features an interplay of geometrical shapes, including oval parlors with restrained neoclassical ornamentation. At the center are its principal rooms, including the Great Hall, oval drawing room, and parlor, all built with high ceilings (15 feet 2 inches) and tall windows. The bed chambers and a family sitting room, on the floor above, have much lower ceilings but offer excellent views of the grounds.

The gardens and grounds appear influenced by the work of Sir Humphry Repton, an English landscape architect then at the height of his popularity. Repton advocated broad lawns, open fields, ponds, clumps of trees, and inconspicuous gardens. Gore was keenly interested in agriculture, and cultivated various fruits, vegetables, and grain on the estate.