Full Moon Tour at Gore Place

Send to Friend

Write Review

Report Error

Tours

We have Not Yet Posted This Year's Information for This Event Yet

If new information for this event is already available for this year, please let us know.

Official Website: Full Moon Tour at Gore Place
Occurs at: Gore Place Mansion
Location: 52 Gore Place, Waltham, MA directions
Phone:(781) 894-2798
Date: Friday, August 31, 2007
Hours: The doors open at 6:30pm. The tour begins at 7:00pm.
In/Outdoor: Indoor, Outdoor
Cost: $$ see below

Experience one of New England's most beautiful homes as a visitor might have in the early part of the 19th century at a Gore Place Full Moon Tour.

On Friday, August 31 at 7:00pm Gore Place, the Federal period house museum in Waltham, will offer a special evening tour of the 1806 mansion. Follow a guide in period costume for a tour of the beautiful summer home of Governor Christopher Gore and his wife Rebecca.

The house, furnished in period style, features marble floors, a spiral staircase and an oval drawing room. You'll experience the house much as a visitor might on a winter's evening in the early 19th century.

For more information call : (781) 894-2798 or visit the museum’s website at: www.goreplace.org.

About Gore Place:
The Mansion at.Gore Place was built in 1806 and served as a summer home for Christopher and Rebecca Gore where the Gores entertained such notable dignitaries as the Marquis de Lafayette, Daniel Webster, and James Monroe.

Today the house and grounds are owned and operated by the Gore Place Society, a nonprofit members organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Gore Place.

Today the house is furnished with fine art and antiques of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Christopher and Rebecca Gore had no children, so after Mrs. Gore's death, in accordance with her husband's will, the house and all its contents were sold at auction. A few of their possessions survived in the hands of nieces, nephews, friends, and neighbors and have been returned to Gore Place. After 1834 Gore Place became home to several other families.

In 1921 it passed out of private hands when the Waltham Country Club established a golf course and tennis courts on the grounds. During the Depression, the country club failed and the property fell into disrepair. In 1935, the bank was about to tear down the buildings and sell off the land for housing, when Mrs. Helen Patterson gathered her friends and the financial resources necessary to preserve it. The Gore Place Society was founded that same year. For more than sixty years, Gore Place has been lovingly restored and open to the public as one of the great estates of the Federal era.

About the Gores:
Christopher Gore was born in Boston in 1758, the tenth of thirteen children of Frances and John Gore. John Gore, a successful merchant and artisan, was able to send Christopher to Harvard College (class of 1776). Christopher served in the Continental Army as a clerk with the artillery regiment of his brother-in-law Thomas Craft.

After the war, Christopher Gore chose the law as his profession and apprenticed himself for £100 to John Lowell. He was admitted as an attorney to the Bar of Suffolk County and opened his office on State Street in Boston.

Gore was unquestionably bright and ambitious, but several factors helped the young lawyer's practice to flourish. Many of Boston's older lawyers were Tories and by leaving the country, they left their clients to the younger generation. The Revolutionary War increased the city's wealth and also the demand for services such as Gore could provide. Gore also invested in revolutionary scrip and the many new mills and toll roads that sprang up on rural land west of Boston. His fortune grew rapidly.

Cost

Top

$12 adults, $10 seniors, $8 children

Location

Top

52 Gore Place, Waltham, MA map

Gore Place is located at 52 Gore Street, just off Route 20 (Main Street) near the Waltham/Watertown line. By public transportation: Take the Red Line to Central Square. Take the 70 or 70A bus toward Waltham. Gore Street is 1-1/4 miles West of Watertown Square.