The Kyes-Sage House

From family home to law office to cat shelter to book shop

Picturesque, charming, quaint — the white frame cottage beside the Peterborough (NH) Library delights the eye with its whimsical gingerbread trim. Above each window, pointed gothic black arches filled with sunburst fan shutters harken back to the gothic cathedrals that inspired its carpenter gothic architectural style. Tear-drop ball pendants trimming all the eaves recall the Victorian’s weakness for tassels and fringe: passementerie.

Though perhaps the last best example of Carpenter Gothic in Peterborough, this cottage built in 1846 by Timothy White was almost demolished. Saved by a 1998 campaign that raised $50,000 for repairs, the little cottage earned a new life as a used bookshop. Since 2000, book sales have funded library programs and even helped contribute to the construction of the new Peterborough Library.

The Peterborough Library Trustees purchased the Kyes-Sage House after the death of Catherine Sage. In 1999, they eyed removing the cottage for much-needed parking spaces, but some townspeople objected: The cottage should be saved! Moved? Restored? Though citizens voted to allow trustees to raze the building, they quickly formed Friends of the

Sage House (including Francie Von Mertens, Duffy and Rick Monahon and others) and called for a special town meeting to reverse the decision. There, they presented a proposal, promising money for repairs, and the town approved it.

But what would they use the building for? Ann Geisel, the library’s then-director, suggested using it as a bookshop to sell its used books. When Geisel and her husband Bob started carting away old boxes, one broke and out tumbled old photo negatives. Geisel traced the negatives back to the Kyes family. Karl Kyes’ grandson, John Elberfeld, donated his grandfather’s desk, compiled and donated a family history book, and framed family photos, gracing the cottage with strong links to its past.

After Geisel passed away in 1999, Vicky Goss stepped in to shepherd Geisel’s vision and began the Bookworms Committee. They started moving 7,000 books from the library to the cottage bookshop. In the Fall of 2000, they opened the doors of the Kyes-Sage House.

Run by the all-volunteer Bookworms Committee, the bookshop succeeded immediately, raising money that funds the children’s reading and other programs, museum passes, technology updates and the new library building. Chris Mann, a newly elected library trustee and lead volunteer of the Bookworms Committee, praised the volunteers: “They are well-read, love books. Lots of them are former librarians and teachers.”

By the end of 2021, the Friends, in part through bookshop sales, raised a whopping $243,000.

Carol Boyle, chair of the Friends of the Peterborough Library, which runs the bookshop, talked about the state of the Kyes-Sage house when the library trustees bought it. The former owner, Catherine Sage, a prominent lawyer, stored law files there but also used it as a shelter for her many cats. Sage left a window open, “and the many cats came and went as they pleased,” Boyle says.

After purchase, the double-story barn connected to the back ell of the house was removed, as was a free-standing one-story barn, and the space was used for parking. While the new library was being built, the construction manager used Kyes-Sage House as a headquarters.

The back 1/3 of the house, which used to be the children’s section, was lost to a pellet heating plant for the new library. The shrinking footprint meant the volunteers had to pare down the bookshop’s offerings. They culled self-help, cookbooks, arts and crafts, and all non-fiction except history.

Other repairs include a repainted interior, refinished floors and mini-split heating/air conditioning units. Carol Boyle notes that they had voted not to redo the unused second floor. The staircase is too steep for safety, and water-damaged plaster is too expensive to repair. But she adds, “It’s not a scary old house! The house has good vibes. It’s a warm, welcoming house.”

Some of Carol Boyle’s favorite parts of the bookshop are its detailed woodwork around the windows and doors and the entertaining raised dot moldings on the staircase risers. The distinctive ornate screen door is original and was rebuilt entirely by Frank Jenkins, who donated his time and skills.

Boyle stressed how much the volunteers love the bookshop: “They have a real passion for their work!”

Therapeutic Horsemanship Lessons

Located in Keene, NH www.truehopeth.org We’re excited to announce a collaboration with Cooper’s Crossroad for 2023!

New students and volunteers are always welcome!

Who were Kyes and Sage?

By Nancy McGartland

Two owners give the cottage its name. Karl Kyes (pictured, above, as a baby), a long-time dentist in Peterborough, and his wife Violet have lived in the house since 1913, according to their granddaughter, Peterborough resident

Anne Huberman. Anne recalls how her grandfather never sent bills for his services. Patients either paid him when the work was done or not, sometimes paying with pies or vegetables left on the porch. He had Anne’s picture in his office, and his patients knew her face, stopping her in the street to say, “Your grandfather made my false teeth!”

Anne spent her childhood summers at the 14 Church St. cottage, exploring its nooks and crannies, especially Tim’s Room, where her grandparents kept everything they didn’t want to throw away, including an old windup Victrola and a pre-carved grave headstone, complete except for final dates! She recalls that her grandparents called the front porch “the piazza” and sat in rocking chairs to watch the world go by. Anne recalls how her mother, Catherine, used to walk to town across the long-gone railroad bridge at the back of the house; she says you can still see the old railroad bridge posts in the river bed when the water is low.

Her grandfather was a lifelong prankster. When he was a teen, he snuck out the back staircase to play jokes, once tying a cow’s tail to the Unitarian church’s bell rope! He glued a 50-cent piece to the floor in his office just to watch people bend down to try and pick it up. At their lake house, he built a screen porch around a birch tree rather than cutting it down. Anne recalls the cottage’s staircase’s newel post, topped by a round ivory button. Her grandfather told her it was a mortgage button, showing that the mortgage had been paid, rolled up and stashed in the hollow post — yet another one of his many jokes.

When Karl Kyes passed, his daughter sold the cottage in 1963 to Catherine Sage, New Hampshire’s first female attorney and the first woman to serve on Peterborough’s Board of Selectmen. She used it as her law office, later for storage, and then as a shelter for her many cats.

Anne remembers that when Elizabeth Yates, the author of Amos Fortune, was a library trustee, she wanted to buy the house to tear it down for parking.

Catherine Sage refused. She didn’t live there, she replied, “but her cats did!” Would she sell the barn, then? “No, my pets are buried there!”

In an undated article by Jessie Salisbury, a local history writer, Catherine Sage recalled a letter she found in the barn, asking Karl Kyes to check and fix the teeth of all the men drafted in WWII and to send the bill to the government. “But he never did,” she said in the article. “People told me he never sent any bills.” Sage found the house to have a “gentle feeling,” as if “someone once lived there who was very happy there.” She thought the house should be preserved: “Something old should remain.”

To host or not to host? Many homeowners toy with the idea of using part of their home as an Airbnb. Earn extra income, meet interesting people — it definitely has its perks. But first and foremost, experienced hosts say you must be sure you are comfortable inviting people you don’t know into your home.

For Josh Cline of Stoddard, New Hampshire, hosting people at his Upton Farm & Forest home was always the idea. In 1990, he was given a couple of acres of his family’s farmland to build a home.

“The stipulation was no power lines, and it had to look like the old, historic house that’s still there,” he explains. Solar was really the only option, so he became one of the early adopters.

“It’s been 33 years now, and I’m all off-grid,” he says.

In keeping with the historic feel, he built his house using a heritage construction style called post-and-beam, a classic timber frame approach. He included a private mini house connected to his own with the intention of opening a bed and breakfast.

“As plans are wont to happen, I didn’t get around