page_title: Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion
section_title: The Formal Wing
hierarchical_section_title: Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion / Organization of the house / The Formal Wing
caption_attribution_description: English: Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion, eighteenth-century great parlor, reputed to have been used for meetings of governor Benning Wentworth's council.
context_page_description: Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion is a 40-room clapboard house which was built as the home, offices and working farm of colonial Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. It is located on the water at 375 Little Harbor Road, about two miles southeast of the center of Portsmouth. It is one of the few royal governors' residences to survive almost unchanged. The site is a New Hampshire state park, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1968. Today, the New Hampshire Bureau of Historic Sites manages the site with the assistance of the Wentworth-Coolidge Commission, a group of volunteer civic and business leaders appointed by the Governor.
context_section_description: The wing nearest the water appears to be assembled from yet another recycled frame. It consists of a tall vestibule, a grand saloon, and a long room with two small ancillary rooms, plus attics.
  The exterior of the entry has a formal frame of pilasters and pediment. Of the several exterior doors, this is the sole one with such elaboration, signaling its priority above the other doors, a pattern that continues within. This door does not face out over the adjacent water, but is turned toward the wharves and a now-extinct original approach drive, both visible and convenient to arrivals by either water or land routes.
  Within, the vestibule is finished with a balustered stair, built-in benches, and gun racks above the doors. The benches seem to take the place of the plain uncomfortable chairs that were a standard feature in both European and American houses. These were for servants to wait in, before the invention of bell-pulls allowed them to wait out of sight. (Bell pulls were added to the house later.) They also provided seating for visitors and petitioners waiting to be admitted to inner rooms. The tight space in this vestibule does not allow room for the Windsor chairs enumerated in inventories of the front halls of many larger New England houses of this era.
  The gun racks, when outfitted with flintlocks, made an impressive display and reminded those who entered that the governor was head of the colony's militia, with authority to appoint militia officers. As late as the Coolidge ownership, these racks were filled with ten flintlock muskets with bayonets, marked, in French, "Manufactury of the King at Ste. Etienne, 1759." This led to the tradition that the guns were seized in the capture of the French fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, Canada, in either the campaign of 1745 (locally led) or the campaign of 1758. Whether or not true, the story was consonant with the Colonial Revival love of the past.
  To the right of this vestibule are the mansion's largest rooms, parallel to the water's edge. Both these rooms have the highest ceilings in the house, rich woodwork, and very tall windows. Both have built-in corner cupboards, reputedly used for presenting and serving punch, indicating the rooms' probable use for entertainment.
  The first room is square. It equates to a British saloon, but in New England parlance was probably called a "parlor", or perhaps "great parlor" to distinguish it from two smaller parlors in another part of the house. Today, the room is traditionally known as the Council Chamber, arising from the folklore that Wentworth convened his council meetings here.
  There is no evidence that his council ever met here, and ample evidence that it met in various taverns in town, as cited above. Nonetheless, the room has a political quality about it that seems deliberate. Preceded by the gun rack in the vestibule, the political theme continues in a large full-length portrait of Benning Wentworth, painted by Joseph Blackburn in 1760, that originally hung in this room. The original is now in the New Hampshire Historical Society, and a reproduction hangs its place. It hangs in the sole wall space in the mansion of sufficient height and breadth to accommodate it. Its size is compelling, 7 feet (2.1 m) tall and 4 feet (1.2 m) wide, with a broad gold frame. It presents Benning in life size, but seems larger than life because it hangs above floor level.
  In the portrait, Wentworth poses in an elegant frock coat of blue silk with gold braid, silk stockings, ruffled shirt cuffs, powdered wig and cane. Behind him is a red curtain, traditionally used to indicate authority and power. Today such use of red is recognized in the phrase "red carpet treatment" and readily witnessed on television at state ceremonies at the White House or royal events in Great Britain. A local person in Wentworth's day, accustomed to seeing him in the special canopied pew with carved royal seal overhead at Queen's Chapel, would have connected this red curtain to the red pulpit curtains and cushion on which the Bible rested in churches and meetinghouses
caption: Great parlor as outfitted in the 1980s to suggest a fictive meeting of the governor's council. Reconstructed buffet visible in back corner.
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