atHome with History (continued)

china, has a goal of a “corner cupboard in every room” for her extensive and lovely collections of Limoges, Delft, Spode, Meissenware and Royal Doulton china.

All of the furniture in the Inn has been donated by Baha’i members. According to Ruth, a whole houseful of furniture was donated by a family before their move back to Australia. The floors are richly covered in many silk and wool Persian carpets. Some furnishings are period pieces appropriate to this 19th century Inn; another Baha’i member donated an even older milk-painted hutch. Of course, Ruth has filled it with a china collection.

Ruth points out that “None of this belongs to us. It belongs to the Faith. It stays.” the basic tenets of the Baha’i faith: unity of the world’s races, equality of men and women, elimination of prejudice and universal compulsory education.”

The Gammons have chosen period-appropriate colors for the first-floor rooms, one of which is where Abdu’l Baha visited and is a little shrine to him. According to Ruth, no representation or other manifestations of the Bab or Abdu’l are permitted. However, nine-pointed star symbols of the Faith, showing its openness to all religions, are hung throughout the Inn.

The lively rooms on the second floor are painted in what the Gammons jokingly call “Necco Wafer” colors. An interesting decoration is a birdhouse replica of the Inn, crafted by the famous Jim Sovik. Another is the white adoption celebration dress for the Gammons’ daughter, handmade by Ruth in the style of Samantha, an American Girl Doll.

The Gammons’ caretakers’ apartment connects to the Inn through the large kitchen behind the oversized beehive brick fireplace. The kitchen’s vaulted ceiling exposes hand-hewn beams. The long table neatly displays Ruth’s jigsaw puzzle in process.

In 2005, after many repairs and upgrades, Baha’i members Ruth and Phillip Gammons, the current caretakers, moved into the east wing apartment, probably built on the footprint of the original 1790 building. Ruth notes that when the Inn was donated, “The upstairs was a mess. There had been an auction; items had been stripped from the house.” Phillip adds, “The National Organization sent crews to do the repairs.”

He helped the plasterers, and some original horse hair and lath plaster was saved. Original railings, moldings and floors were preserved. A falling-down fire escape on the back of the Inn was replaced. A future goal is to reopen the Inn’s center staircase, which had been closed to meet fire regulations.

Despite the Inn having undergone renovations in 1890 and many changes by prior owners, the Baha’i have retained the beauty of its old bones. Fireplaces in most rooms gleam, including a rebuilt beehive fireplace, though the chimneys have been capped for safety. The Inn’s 12 rooms have been meticulously rehabilitated and detailed. They shine with the loving care of the Gammons.

Phillip maintains the grounds, and Ruth, a collector of

When the Inn was donated to the Baha’i in 2005, Phil and Ruth worked for the National Organization in Wilmette, Illinois. Since they were originally from the Northeast, they jumped at the chance to move back and be caretakers.

Though they both grew up in the Congregational Church, they learned about Baha’i after they met in Connecticut. They joined because of the Baha’i vision for the future: equality, justice, brotherhood, and a strong loyalty to the Earth.

Ruth says, “We view the universe as a generous place, and the source of that generosity is God. There’s unlimited room for the just and fair distribution of wealth.”

She sees the Baha’i goal of empowering Indigenous people with local needs, such as water access, solar power and schools, not as a type of colonialism because the Baha’i are not attempting to superimpose their system.

“We help them and go home,” she notes.

The Gammons not only take care of the Inn but are also the president and treasurer of the Dublin Friends of the Library. The Inn is more than a memorial to the visit of Abdu’l Baha; it hosts conferences and meetings of the Faith.

Phillip notes, “Every Sunday, we have devotions and children’s classes.”

Ruth adds, “We want people to know who we are but in a quiet way.” The building is open for quiet meditation and prayer.

THE DUBLIN INN HISTORY: AT A GLANCE

The Dublin Inn is a New England-style Federal House on the National Register of Historic Places. Its brick end walls feature especially tall, blind or shallow arches. It is a local builders’ interpretation of the Boston-Salem high style (probably Master Carpenter Rufus Piper and Mason Asa Fisk), influenced by the plans of Charles Bullfinch, architect of the US Capitol Dome.

Primarily a working inn for 75 years, then also a Post Office for 24 years, after Dr. Asa Heald was appointed Postmaster by President Franklin Pierce, a fellow alum from Bowdoin College. The Inn served triple duty as Heald’s doctor’s office. Originally, it was known as Heald’s Inn and stagecoach stop, then The Monadnock Hotel, then French’s Tavern, until 1940. A 1922 ad in the Automobile Green Book (Trip 16), the ALA’s Official Guide, showcased French’s Tavern’s fresh dairy and garden products from its own farm, as well as golf, tennis, riding, and mountain climbing.

The three-story, hipped roofed building has a frame one-and-a-half story east wing, thought to be the original 1790 house or its footprint. Some Inn windows are local versions of Palladian windows. A semi-elliptical fan tops the main doorway. It had a hand-hewn wooden shingle roof. Originally, like most stagecoach inns, it had a thirdfloor ballroom with an ash-sprung floor and an arched ceiling.

In 1907 part of the Inn was leased to the German Ambassador, Count Von Sternberg. Dublin summer colony artists Alexander James and Richard Meryman worked in a studio behind the Inn from 1918-1922. After its years as an Inn, the building became a real estate white elephant, offered for sale over and over. Buyers with high hopes purchased it and undertook repairs, but the Inn repeatedly bounced back to the market until saved, repaired, and now deeply loved by the Baha’i.

This happy ending and bright future for the Dublin Inn, one of New England’s best examples of a 19thcentury Inn, could never have been foreseen but is a gift for all of Dublin. Learn more at dublininn.org. Learn more about the Baha’i Faith at bahai.org.

In the fall of 2006, when Ivy Vann and her husband Hugh Beyer bought their expansive 6,000-square-foot home on Summer Street in Peterborough, they thought it was temporary. They were working on developing a housing community on High Street and needed a place to live in the meantime.

Ultimately the housing plan never panned out, but the couple’s personal and professional pursuits led them to transform the Summer Street home into a microcosm of the living community they had envisioned.

The property’s story started as a single-family built for a wealthy manufacturer.

“Interestingly enough, a lot of the original details are still there,” Vann notes. “Every room has the closed coal grate with art tile around it.”

Unfortunately, the original windows were exchanged for vinyl at some point, but the surroundings remain intact.

“I’d give anything to have the wooden windows that house had,” Vann says.

While some of the house’s updates couldn’t be reversed, Vann and Beyer were quick to tackle others. Between October, when they purchased, and December, when they officially moved in, they took out five bathrooms and pulled up a ton of dated carpeting.

“Every room had been turned into a bedroom because it was a B&B, and they all had terrible quarter bathrooms,” Vann says.

On the ground floor, there were two rooms she suspected had been double parlors in the property’s heyday.

“So I used chalk, drew on the wall, and said to the carpenters: ‘I want you to open up the wall.’”

They called her a couple of hours later, shocked to have discovered existing framing for an opening; her intuition had been right.

On the same floor, they also discovered that two bedrooms in the back had initially been divided into four small rooms adjacent to the stairs. These were likely maid’s quarters when the house was first built.

In its current iteration, that main floor has four bedrooms and two and a half baths.

“We also have two gorgeous screen porches, and the first warm day we get in April, we move outside, and we sleep outside,” Vann says.

While she would sleep that way year-round, her husband makes the call around Thanksgiving, and they settle back indoors.

It’s been a seasonal ritual since they moved in after that initial restructuring in 2006. One of their