Storied Building Turns 200
Phelps House in The Age of Madison by David Chase
The handsome home of Andover’s Head of School, Phelps House bears the name of its longest occupant, the Reverend Doctor Austin Phelps, Bartlet Professor of Homiletics (preaching) at Andover Theological Seminary. He lived here from 1848 until 1890. But Phelps House has an earlier history, dating to James Madison’s era and the Seminary’s beginnings on the Phillips Academy campus. The house was begun in 1809 and completed in 1811. Andover Theological Seminary (ATS) was the brainchild of Phillips Academy’s founders and other conservative Calvinists seeking to stem the tide of liberalization transforming New England religion during the early nineteenth century. A bastion of Puritan zeal, ATS remained influential for 75 years. Phelps House was one of many gifts provided by the Seminary’s most generous early patron, William Bartlet, a wealthy Newburyport merchant. Bartlet was hell-bent on hiring as Bartlet Professor a famous fire-and-brimstone divine—“the Prince of Preachers”—Edward Dorr Griffin, and the trustees accepted Bartlet’s choice. But Griffin was reluctant to come. He was being courted by a Boston group establishing an orthodox parish, known as Park Street Church, to replace city parishes that had gone Unitarian. Undeterred, Bartlet offered to let Griffin preach at Park Street and promised to underwrite whatever house and garden on Andover Hill Dr. Griffin might desire. Griffin agreed to come. What we know as Phelps House—with its imposing facade, fine Federal woodwork, and terraced gardens—was the result. Griffin was spellbinding in the pulpit but hard to take. An enormous man with an ego to match, he could not get along with his colleagues and quit his professorship just as the house was completed. Consequently, the first resident of Phelps House was the second Bartlet Professor, Seminary president Ebenezer Porter. Rev. Porter’s study in the south wing of Phelps House became the Seminary faculty room. Here important initiatives were launched in what amounted to a Calvinist Counter-Reformation: temperance groups, the first religious newspaper, the American Tract Society, divinity student scholarships, missions to the American frontier and around the globe.
Edward Dorr Griffin
William Bartlet had allowed Edward Dorr Griffin to design what was to have been Griffin’s Andover home. It is thought Griffin turned for help to Peter Banner, architect and builder of the Park Street Church where Griffin preached. The church was built in 1809 while the Andover house was being designed. To erect the house, William Bartlet hired men he knew in Newburyport, chief among them contractor Andrews Palmer and master carpenter David Hidden. Over the course of two years, David Hidden recorded in his ledger the days he and his crew worked on Phelps House. His normal per diem charge was $1.06. But Hidden charged William Bartlet $1.09, “3 cents more,” he wrote in a memo to himself, “on account of rum.” On account of rum? It was traditional for workers to receive cash wages plus a daily ration of rum. Bartlet was a teetotaler; he wouldn’t give his employees liquor. No matter: David Hidden charged Bartlet extra and bought his own rum. Phelps House is 200 years old this year and has been the home of the last five Andover heads of school. S ee more photos of the restored interior at www.andover.edu/magazine.
Andover | Fall 2010
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