New Castle Wentworth Coolidge Mansion
— — the yellow that outlasted a colony.
Not only on a wall.
“A long yellow house on Little Harbor, the building grown one wing at a time across the eighteenth century. Benning Wentworth, the first royal governor of New Hampshire, lived here from 1750 until he died in 1770. The harbor still answers to the tide. Boats still pass. The colour is the same warm ochre the original paintwork chose.
New Castle Wentworth Coolidge Mansion, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion sits on Little Harbor in Portsmouth, a short causeway from New Castle island and roughly two miles from the city center. Benning Wentworth, the first royal governor of New Hampshire, lived here from 1750 until 1770. The forty-room frame house is one of the few surviving royal governors' residences in the United States. The Coolidge family bought it in 1886 and gave it to the state of New Hampshire in 1954. It is now a state historic site operated by NH State Parks.
The house faces south across Little Harbor, an inlet of the Piscataqua River estuary that opens to the Atlantic past New Castle. The water is brackish, tidal, and busy enough to have carried timber, fish, and dispatches from London for two centuries before the mansion's first board went down. Sagamore Creek joins it from the west. The view from the lawn has changed less than most of the New Hampshire coast; the state's eighteen miles of shoreline are the shortest of any seacoast state.
The mansion grounds are open all year during daylight hours; the house itself is open for guided tours from Memorial Day weekend through Columbus Day, Friday through Sunday, with a small admission. The lilac garden on the south side holds some of the oldest cultivated lilacs in North America, brought from England in the 1750s; the purple lilac became the state flower of New Hampshire in 1919. The Coolidge Center near the entrance runs seasonal exhibitions. Little Harbor Road is the only approach; parking is at the visitor center.