New Hampshire Historical Society’s HQ is a Gem!
The New Hampshire Historical Society’s 1911 30 Park Street building, located in the heart of the city’s monumental civic district, is well worth a visit for it grandeur and collections
The New Hampshire Historical Society’s 1911 30 Park Street building, located in the heart of the city’s monumental civic district, is well worth a visit for it grandeur and collections. This 1909-1911 landmark building, funded by Edward and Julia Tuck, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Tuck Library building today is home to exhibits about New Hampshire’s history, art, and culture. You can see the best of hundreds of objects, photographs, and documents.
The New Hampshire Historical Society is the state's primary organization for collecting, preserving, and sharing Granite State history. The New Hampshire Historical Society was founded in 1823 to collect and share information on New Hampshire’s past. It eventually outgrew its original digs, and by the start of the last century, planned a classic building to house it collection, and act as a place to share and entertain.
Benefactors Edward and Julia Tuck asked architect Guy Lowell (who also designed the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) to design a elegant fireproof library for the Society “embodying the best of its kind.” The Neo-Classical building, with exterior of local granite juxtaposed an interior of fine Italian marble. Then, the Tucks commissioned New Hampshire sculptor Daniel Chester French to design the lovely frontispiece over the main doorway. Carved from a single block of granite, the work is inspired by both ancient and modern history and is carved from local stone.
According to James L. Garvin: On November 23, 1911, at the last possible moment before the Tucks had to meet their ship for the return to France, the New Hampshire Historical Society building was dedicated with impressive orations and ceremonies that were memorialized in a book-length publication. That publication, like the building itself, is a polished and perfect product of its era. Neither edifice nor book betrays the slightest hint of the long-sustained struggle embodied in the Society’s home. In completion, as Edward Tuck said, the New Hampshire Historical Society’s building stood “in its perfection of artistic design and of material execution, [as] a source of gratification and pride for all time to the people of New Hampshire”
Due to the COVID-19 health crisis, the New Hampshire Historical Society's research library only is open by advance appointment. The Society's exhibition galleries are closed at this time. For the most up-to-date information visit nhhistory.org. (https://www.nhhistory.org/Visit/Hours-Directions)
