“Stonehurst,” the romantic name the Paine family chose for their 109-acre country place, paid homage to the elemental beauty of their stony, glaciated land on a “wooded hill,” or hurst in old English.

Here for six months of the year, family members and friends found welcome refuge from urban heat and congestion and the demanding social rituals of the Victorian era.

Completed in 1886, Stonehurst is a masterpiece of integrated design crowning the career-long collaboration of two Boston-based visionaries, architect Henry Hobson Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose work continues to inspire culturally and environmentally sensitive design.

This Romanesque-Byzantine structure is the only house in New England designed by H. H. Richardson that is open to the public. In addition to the early-modern interior, which is unequaled in the work of Richardson.

Stonehurst, the Robert Treat Paine Estate • 577 Beaver Street, Waltham, MA 02154

Reception: 150

Seated: 150