Date: Sun 14-Jun-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LAURAB

Quick Words:

Cummings

Full Text:

Bott Lowell Cummings

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SOUTH DEERFIELD, MASS.-- On a quiet street in South Deerfield, Abbott Lowell

Cummings tends to the 40-foot herbaceous border leading to his home, a

chocolate-brown cape with apple-green trim. A sash of gold and purple irises

is in bloom right now. By summer it will be replaced by bright red poppies.

Intensive cultivation of a few choice varieties, culminating in a breathtaking

and progressively varied display, suits Cummings, an architectural historian

who has spent half a century toiling the fields of New England's domestic

culture.

Teacher, scholar, and museum professional by equal measure, Cummings will be

honored at Winterthur on June 20 when the Wilmington, Del., museum presents

him with the Henry Francis du Pont Award. The evening ceremony will follow a

day-long seminar on "The House and It Surroundings." Several colleagues and

former students -- Earle Shettleworth, Christopher Monkhouse, Edward S. Cooke,

Jr, Richard Candee, Jane C. Nylander, Bernard L. Herman, Brock Jobe, and

Richard C. Nylander among them -- will celebrate the historian's

contributions. The day's events are funded in part by Ronald Bourgeault and

the Croll Foundation.

"This year we are honoring one of America's best teachers in architectural

history and the decorative arts," says Brock Jobe, deputy director for

collections, conservation, and interpretation at Winterthur. "His enthusiasm

and knowledge are remarkable. His teaching and lecturing skills are unrivaled.

His greatest strengths are most apparent in the field."

Cummings chose the road less traveled, enjoying a more than usual number of

scenic diversions on the way to his destination, teaching and the study of New

England architecture. Throughout his professional life he has assumed

unexpected responsibilities. To each post he has in turn brought unusual

dimension.

"This represents a new but very appropriate direction for us," Jobe says of

Winterthur's choice. Previous recipients of the du Pont Award -- Bertram and

Nina Fletcher Little, Pamela Cunningham Copeland, Frank Horton, Alice

Winchester, Clement E. Conger, Wendell Garrett, and the Sack family -- have

all been involved, in one way or another, in building collections.

"Abbott is much more of a pure academic than the others," Jobe continues, "but

an academic with a love of history, architecture, and the way in which

decorative arts, or household furnishings, relate to the buildings where they

lie. He has a remarkable track record."

It is tempting to say that Abbott Lowell Cummings may be known by his name --

assured in its footing, stately in its cadence, a triumvirate of New England

traditionalism. He has lived a life marked by clarity and conviction, the

underpinning of which was early and unwavering self-knowledge.

As an adolescent, Cummings joined the Society for the Preservation of New

England Antiquities, where he later worked for nearly three decades. Before he

turned 20, he was a fixture at the town clerk's office in Southington, Conn.,

tracing the titles of Eighteenth Century structures once in his family.

In his June 20 remarks at Winterthur, the historian will acknowledge the

individuals who most shaped his life: his grandmother, Lucretia Amelia Stow

Cummings; Elmer Keith; and Clarence Ward. From these three he learned to

investigate, record, and transmit.

Born in St Albans, Vt., in 1923 and educated at the Hoosac School in New York,

Cummings spent winters with his parents in Bennington, Vt., and summers with

his grandmother in Southington. "At a personal level, my grandmother had as

much influence as anyone on my life. She was a scientist by training, a Vassar

graduate who had studied astronomy. She drilled into me the need to be very

factual. I also fell right in with all her genealogical interests," the

scholar says.

Elmer Keith, a Wallingford, Conn., antiquarian and collector, taught Cummings

to deconstruct a building, forcing it to yield up centuries of secrets buried

beneath repairs and later additions. "That is where Abbott is at his best,"

notes Edward S. Cooke, Jr, the Charles Montgomery associate professor of

American decorative arts at Yale. "He goes into a house, scrambles all over

it, bubbles up with ideas, inspires his students to look and think. It's an

extraordinary quality he has."

"It never really occurred to me that I wouldn't teach," says Cummings, who

studied American art and architectural history at Oberlin College before

receiving his doctoral degree from Ohio State University in 1950.

Clarence Ward, best known for his writings on French medieval building, was

his academic mentor. "I wanted to model myself on him. He was an excellent

lecturer. He inspired you to pick a subject and do something with it. You felt

that he had singled you out as the very best person to tackle a project. He

had a real feel for his students -- motivating them, inspiring them, and all

the rest of it," Cummings says.

Having written his thesis on Seventeenth Century Massachusetts buildings and

his dissertation on the Federal architect Asher Benjamin, Cummings took a

teaching post at Antioch College in 1948. His memorable first class included

Eliot Fremont-Smith, later editor of The New York Times Book Review; Bob

Vogel, who would become chief curator of industrial history at the Smithsonian

Institution; Mike Spock, son of the legendary pediatrician and later a

director of the Children's Museum in Boston; and Cory Scott, better known

today as the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Cummings had been at Antioch for several years when the Korean War broke out.

As it gained momentum in 1951, schools began cutting staff. Out of work and

with a folder full of rejection letters from universities across the country,

Cummings reluctantly entered the museum field, but at the highest level. His

first job was as an assistant curator in the American Wing at New York's

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"I didn't have a strong grounding in the decorative arts, but they apparently

liked me," says Cummings, for whom the offer was one of series of

serendipitous successes. His starting salary was $4,200. "I made a sacrifice

which would have been unconscionable had I married and had a family," he now

acknowledges.

Though he remained at the American Wing for four years, the historian dreamed

of returning to his first love. The opportunity presented itself in 1955, when

Bertram K. Little, director of the Society for the Preservation of New England

Antiquities, asked Cummings to join SPNEA as assistant director and editor of

Old-Time New England. He succeeded Little as director in 1970.

Bert and Nina Fletcher Little, scholarly collectors who shaped an entire

generation of dealers, had a profound influence on Cummings, as well. "Nina

was one of the most extraordinary women many of us have ever known," he says.

"She made it perfectly clear to dealers just what it was that she collected.

She wasn't interested in having them parade a lot of undocumented stuff under

her nose. Over and beyond that she was a warm person. When you went to the

Littles' home for the weekend, it was full of all the people you loved best."

"Bert and Nina's relationship is one which I have thought about many times,"

he continues. "I was a frequent guest in their house. Bert and I would be

going off on a field trip and he would say, `Come out for dinner beforehand.

We'll leave right after breakfast.' Many times I would come downstairs in the

morning to find Bert and Nina deep in conversation. It was the most loving,

fascinating, man-wife relationship I have ever known."

Founded in 1910, SPNEA today owns and operates 35 historic house museums in

five states, ranging from the circa 1654 Coffin House in Newbury to the 1938

Gropius House in Lincoln, Mass. "The principal work of all directors since my

day has been judiciously cutting that organization down to size," says

Cummings, who helped devise a way to discard properties that were draining

institutional resources.

"You can quietly deaccession a painting or pewter mug, but you can't dispose

of a house without the whole membership being up in arms," he explains. With

preservation attorney Albert B. Wolfe, Cummings found a legal solution that

allowed SPNEA to sell properties but impose restrictions on future occupants.

"It immediately satisfied the entire dissident element in the society," the

former director concludes.

At the same time, Cummings began expanding SPNEA's capabilities. "When Abbott

came here there were just a few people with a collection of buildings and

objects to take care of. The whole museum field was beginning to be

professionalized, and the public was demanding much more from museums. Under

Abbott, the staff increased dramatically and we started our consulting

services, which has grown into our conservation department," says Richard

Nylander, chief curator and director of collections, on SPNEA's staff for 31

years.

Cummings' contributions are perhaps best reflected in the properties

themselves. "He has always been fascinated in the connection between

furnishings and buildings," remarks Brock Jobe. "Several buildings -- Codman,

Gropius, and Wheeler -- came with their contents. They were wonderful

architectural statements, but their value was enhanced by the survival of

their original furnishings. Abbott has always seen the importance of

preserving the total environment."

"He ushered in the new philosophy to preserve intact and not restore," notes

Jane Nylander, SPNEA's current president. In 1969, SPNEA acquired Codman

House, which came with a 9,000-object collection and a layered history.

"Codman House was so overwhelming in what had happened to it that the only way

to show it was as received," reflects Richard Nylander. "Abbott loved to learn

how a building began, but he had great respect for later additions."

Cummings' exacting scholarship dramatically shaped the 1796 Harrison Gray Otis

House in Cambridge. "Abbott had just reviewed all the samples of original

wallpapers and was anxious to get them reproduced," Richard Nylander recalls.

"In the end, it was so much brighter and more garish than other Federal period

restorations. People were shocked."

"The Gedney House in Salem, Mass., is the one to understand him by," insists

Ned Cooke, who, like Brock Jobe, first met Cummings while touring New England

with classmates from Winterthur. "The Gedney House is not about furnishing,

its about framing and how one peels off and reveals evidence. If you want to

recreate an environment where you see Abbott getting most excited, the Gedney

House is it."

In stark evolutionary terms, the next turning point in Cummings' life was the

gradual reawakening of his desire to teach. At SPNEA, he had acquired a

reputation as a brilliant lecturer, but he yearned to do more. Having served

as an instructor in Louis Jones' summer program in American material culture

at the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, N.Y., Cummings

began imagining a similar "school without walls" that would tap the talents of

Boston's architectural and decorative arts community. All he lacked was the

support of a degree-granting institution.

When a Harvard colleague expressed little enthusiasm for the plan, Cummings

confided his ambitions to a friend, John Armstrong of Boston University.

Founded in 1971 by Cummings, Armstrong and David Hall, Boston University's New

England and American Studies Program celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1996.

"Though it never fully became the university without walls that I had

imagined, it hatched a wonderful program in historic preservation and has

settled down comfortably," Cummings says.

"The Boston University experience saved my life, and that brings us to the

final chapter," notes the scholar, who has spoken for nearly two hours without

misplacing so much as a comma. In 1981, Cummings received a call from Yale

University professor Jules Prown inviting him to teach a course in New England

architectural history in the spring of 1982. The request led to Cummings' 1984

appointment as the first Charles F. Montgomery professor of American

decorative arts, a position he held until his retirement in 1992.

Ned Cooke, who succeeded the architectural historian as Yale's only professor

of American decorative arts, believes that Cummings slid easily into the role

first defined by Montgomery, who died in 1978 after a long and colorful career

as a dealer, curator, and teacher. "The field has changed from one that is

connoisseurship-driven to one that is pursuing multidisciplinary work," says

Cooke, who strives to perpetuate Montgomery's connnoisseurship and Cummings'

archaeological interests while introducing more contextual and theoretical

aspects of study.

Though his first ambition was to teach, Cummings' legacy may be the dozens of

books and scholarly articles he has produced since 1953. "He was adamant about

documentation. I think he opened a whole group of people up to early

buildings, and early building techniques, through his writing," says Richard

Nylander.

Cooke, who has studied Cummings' work more closely than most, says three

publications stand above all others: The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay,

1625-1715, published in 1979; Bed Hangings: A Treatise on Fabrics And Styles

In The Curtaining Of Beds, 1650-1850, compiled in 1961 following a symposium

Cummings organized with Nina Little; and Rural Household Inventories:

Establishing The Names, Uses and Furnishings of Rooms In The Colonial New

England Home, 1675-1725, published in 1964. "There is still so much respect

for his integrity," Cooke says, noting the author's straightforward,

stone-by-stone approach.

In the years since his retirement from Yale, Cummings' routine has changed

little. He spends much of each day writing, and is at the moment completing a

family genealogy. The massive study will be published by the New England

Historic Genealogical Society, one of the dozens of professional organizations

on whose board he has served. As co-founder and first president of the

American Vernacular Architectural Forum, he continues to inspire others. In

return, scholarly forums -- such as SPNEA's biennial Abbott Lowell Cummings

Symposium in Material Life in Early New England -- have been established in

his honor.

"Abbott is always willing to listen. He is cautious about overstatement, and

he instills that in others. He is consistent. When he disagrees, there is a

gentleness about it that makes you feel that he has given it thought. He

doesn't intimidate. He encourages people to open their minds," says Susan

McGowan, who frankly acknowledges Cummings' critical contribution to Family &

Landscape: Deerfield Homelots From 1671, the book she wrote with Amelia F.

Miller, published in 1996.

The wilderness that backs up to Cummings' Deerfield home is gradually being

subdued. Each morning, this persistent observer of life clears, plants, and

tends his beds. Finches, hummingbirds, and bluebirds -- attracted by the

feeders he has set up around his property -- keep him company. Slowly,

structure is appearing in the inchoate green, one which Cummings delights in

shaping.