If some one willed you a
town house on condition that you live in it for
the rest of your life, chances are you'd pass up
the privilege in favor of maintaining your
mobility and keeping out from under the
overhead. But, if the same dwelling were offered
along with $1,000,000 in cash, you'd probably
accept and regard the restrictions lightly.
That's exactly how it happened to the late Mr.
and Mrs. Arthur E. Childs of Worcester,
Massachusetts, soon after the turn of the
century. A brilliant inventor and financier, Mr.
Childs had purchased extensive acreage in
Harrisville, New Hampshire, with the intent of
building a hunting lodge....So, rather than
spend his retirement in Worcester just because
the rent was free, he schemed with his wife and
his lawyers to get around the will by moving the
mansion to New Hampshire.
The structure was dismantled with great care,
all key members being numbered. Then everything,
including stones from the foundation, was hauled
to Harrisville over the Boston & Maine railroad.
And by the time it was all put together again on
its new site opposite Mt. Monadnock, at an
elevation of 1900 feet, the Childs had spent
$150,000. But that was only the
beginning...Before they were through with
developing their new "rent-free" estate, they
sunk approximately $1,500,000 into this fabulous
property.
Our story begins more than 100 years ago.
Records on file with the Worcester Antiquarian
Society reveal that the Harrisville mansion was
originally built by one William A. Wheeler
"before 1851," near Lincoln Square. It was sold
in 1865 to Philip L. Moen who, in turn, willed
it in 1891 to his fourth child, Alice Grant
Moen, under provision already stated. The house
was built of wood, adorned with massive
ornamental trim in the grand manner of the
period.
Having become associated with the Washburn &
Moen Manufacturing Co., aggressive Arthur Childs
entered our picture via the widely-approved
stratagem of marrying the boss's daughter. But
nobody was going to push Arthur Childs around,
not even a ghost! Ultimately a prime organizer
of the New England Power Association and the
Columbia National Life Insurance Co., he was
also a talented electrical engineer whose ideas
readily produced profits...So, when he and his
wealthy wife could no longer resist the urge to
settle on the sylvan slopes at Harrisville,
along about 1909, Mr. Childs simply laid it on
the line with his attorneys, architects,
builders and the Boston & Maine railway.
Before the fifty or more wagon-loads of
dismantled parts were hauled away from the
Harrisville railroad station by oxen, horses and
mules, a driveway one and a quarter miles long
had to be hacked out of the hillside. Although
we could find no one in Harrisville who actually
took part in this tremendous job of
transportation, there seems little doubt that
the procession was reminiscent of the wagon
treks of the old west.
Countless barrels of water also had to be hauled
over the grades for animals and men during those
first weeks before an adequate well was dug. And
every time a driver paused to rest his lathered
beasts, he had to place huge blocks behind the
wheels to hold his tonnage against the risk of
backsliding into the teams which followed.
Except during the very worst winter weather,
there never was any letup on building activity
around this great estate (later known as
Aldworth Manor) until the late 20's. Hardly
recognizable today as the original mid-19th
century classic, the Childs incorporated many
changes in its exterior to reflect their passion
for the Spanish-Italian Renaissance period. The
wooden walls of the house had been painted a
sombre gray at Worcester but they matured in
Harrisville with a mellow stucco finish (now
ivy-covered), a regal balcony supported by
pillars and a Cuban tiled roof.
The surrounding flower gardens, too, are formal
Italian, terraced and accented with marble
statuary. With more than ten acres of lawn
included, the landscaping alone is said to have
cost $50,000.
Once inside, however, old Mr. Moen would
probably have to admit that he found things much
as they had been originally at Worcester. The
ceilings above reception hall, living rooms and
dining room all feature massive exposed beams.
Too bad they can't tell us about both the grim
and the gay currents of life which coursed
beneath them during a century of looking and
listening! Many elegant ladies and more than a
few industrial manipulators must have sipped
their champagne before Aldworth's five polished
marble fireplaces.
Plagued from the start by lack of water, Mr.
Childs finally overcame this problem by drilling
a well 600 feet down into the bowels of his
private mountain. Above this he erected a
seventy-five-foot tower to house a tank to
insure ample pressure by gravity to his many
elegant bathrooms. Adequately insulated to
prevent freezing in sub-zero temperatures, this
tower is constructed like a lighthouse and
affords an unobstructed view of the surrounding
countryside.
By the time the last outbuilding was completed,
just before the stock market crashed in 1929,
the Childs were employing seventeen hands on the
grounds and ten servants inside. Whether or not
this staggering payroll was a contributing cause
we'll never know, but Arthur Childs lived on in
elegance only until 1934, when he died in
Boston. And his wife, whose father had
unwittingly set the stage for this bizarre
adventure, outlived her husband by only a few
years.
Operated as a private sanitarium for about
twenty years following Mrs. Childs' death,
Harrisville's fabulous hilltop mansion has
recently been re-opened as a boarding school for
boys. The Thomas More School is named for Sir
Thomas More, a philosopher and statesman under
Henry VIII (who might well have found these
surroundings fit for a king). So well-endowed
with heritage, the old Moen manor should serve
well in the field of education...Its lessons are
already legion.
After the Thomas Moore boarding school move the
property was sold to Antioch College and was
later purchased by Mountain Missionary Institute
otherwise know as MMI. MMI is currently selling
the property to a new organization called New
England Wellness and Education Center or NEWEC.
Please visit the rest of the NEWEC website to
see what we are doing. |
