The Coolidge Estate, located in Topsfield, Massachusetts, is the former property of William A. Coolidge, a lawyer, financier, and art collector. Encompassing 571 acres (2.31 km2), it includes a 24-room Georgian-style mansion designed by architect Phillip Richardson in 1921, other buildings, and landscaping by the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted. The brick mansion includes 14 bedrooms, six fireplaces, parquet floors, hand-carved wood paneling, and extensive gardens. When Coolidge died in 1992, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology inherited the property. In 2000, MIT and the Essex County Greenbelt Association, a conservation organization and private, non-profit land trust, concluded an agreement to restrict further development, and the former estate, which includes over a mile of land along the Ipswich River, is now one of the largest conservation areas in private hands in Massachusetts.
Famous quotes containing the words coolidge and/or estate:
“We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content,
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent,
The poor estate scorns Fortune’s angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.”
—Robert Greene (1558?–1592)