Current Initiatives
The inspiring origin story behind Moses Stevens' Osgood Hill: Oscar Wilde's House Beautiful. Presented as a program of the North Andover Improvement Society in December 2020.
The late 1800’s was a compelling period when the battle over the preservation of historic buildings was first fought in the U.S., after the outcry when John Hancock’s original mansion in Boston’s Back Bay was torn down in 1863. Moses Stevens was fully aware of the permanent challenge that Osgood Hill would bring to North Andover residents of the future. The issue, including how and what decisions were made affecting the preservation and purpose of old buildings in towns, reflected questions about broader social and economic values and priorities at the time, and still do today.
Moses Stevens understood the necessity to preserve and protect the land that today is 153 acres of woods and parkland with the creation of Osgood Hill, but his efforts in providing the town of North Andover with a unique treasure of its’ own, guaranteed the gift of history, culture, and education to future generations that most towns in America do not have.
He created a link to the past to be preserved, while improving the town’s future prospects. Each of Osgood Hill’s estate buildings has its own significance and is unique in its’ own right, not least that its owner was Moses Stevens.
The Osgood Hill estate was designed and still exists in the style of the Aesthetic Movement, a movement that lasted less than 30 years, and the mansion today represents one of the finest examples of Aesthetic design that still exists today, anywhere.
Osgood Hill is a noted historic landmark, has witnessed many of the highs and lows of the North Andover community, and may have even hosted the most notable historical events that changed history, as it was designed to do.
Oscar Wilde's House Beautiful, Manifest
There was no more prominent Aesthete who lived and breathed aestheticism as audaciously as Oscar Wilde. First lecturing on clothing and fashion design, Oscar Wilde returned to Boston three times to lecture on the movement between 1882 and 1883. His lectures on “The House Beautiful” featured the early Aesthetic art movement for house building and design, where local flora and fauna were celebrated in beautiful textures and carvings. His lectures had strong reviews in the international press including the Boston Globe and Herald at the time.
Oscar Wilde during that time, also picked a Boston-based publisher, James R. Osgood to publish his first book. Osgood was also Mark Twain’s publisher at the time, and a distant relative of Charlotte Osgood, Moses' wife, of another of North Andover's most prominent families.
In articles and letters, Wilde wrote of his experiences during his North American lecture series and described how he and his lecture was received with excitement and passion from town elders and business magnates alike who corralled around him after these events and asked his advice on aesthetic design, big plans for town museums, cultural institutions and schools of handicrafts that he wished to see around the country, for the benefit and enrichment of all.
Even without finding Moses Stevens’ program or ticket from one or two of these events in the North Andover Historical Society archives, every room of the mansion shares a secret; a detail, a feature, a material, or the all-encompassing experience of aesthetic beauty that we have all experienced when the sun shines over Osgood Hill.
Was Oscar the intended Honored Guest at Osgood Hill in the late 1880's? Hundreds of sunflowers might have you believe so…
