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| The Red Study |
This blog post is a preview of an article that originally appeared in the Boston Pride Guide 2018.
Be sure to follow the link at the end of the preview to read the rest of the article.
As you
wind your way up the staircase of the Gibson House Museum, you leave behind the
public spaces of this elegant Back Bay townhouse and enter the family’s private
quarters. The third floor was formerly the master bedroom suite—two separate
bedrooms linked by a shared bathroom, as was common in wealthy 19th-century
homes—of Charles Hammond Gibson, Sr. and Rosamond Warren Gibson, from their marriage
in 1871 until Charles’s death in 1916.
What used to be Charles
Gibson, Sr.’s bedroom is now the Red Study. It’s an apt name. The carpet is
crimson; the walls and drapes a rust-red. The room is packed tightly with furniture:
armchairs—also red—by the small fireplace, a desk, and several tables. Even a
sofa is tucked in. In the years following Charles, Sr.’s death, this room
became the domain of Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. Known by his family as
“Charlie,” he was the second of Charles and Rosamond’s three children, born in
1874. We can learn much about Charlie simply by looking at the objects that
fill this brooding, close space: his books on the desk, with several ashtrays
nearby; his portable projector on the center table; framed letters from
American and British notables, thanking him for his thoughtful words; a memento
from the Revolutionary War. Charlie’s story is both at the heart of the museum—he
was, after all, the museum’s first curator—and shrouded in some mystery, as his
status as a lifelong bachelor provoked some rumor and conjecture over the
years.
-Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator
To read the rest of this article, visit: Boston Pride Guide 2018.
