Hancock Manor - Demolition and Legacy

Demolition and Legacy

In 1859, Governor Nathaniel Banks proposed that the Commonwealth should purchase it for a governor's mansion, and the heirs offered it at a low valuation of $100,000. An influential joint committee of the Legislature reported favorably upon the measure, but it met with strong opposition from the rural districts and was defeated. A suggestion was also offered to make it a museum for the collection of Revolutionary relics. Though it had fallen into neglect, the house was excellently preserved: the interior woodwork was sound, the chamber of Lafayette remained as when he slept in it, the apartment in which Hancock died was intact; the audience hall was the same in which Washington, d'Estaing, Brissot, Percy, and many more had stood; the entrance hall, in which Hancock's body had lain in state for eight days, continued to open upon the broad staircase. It contained much of the furnishings and decorations of his time, with the family portraits by Copley and Smybert.

State action failing, the land which it occupied was sold for $125,000 on February 18, 1863, during the Civil War. For some months it served as a museum of historical relics and efforts were made by the city to secure objects found inside the building. The heirs offered the mansion, with the pictures and some other objects of historical interest, as a free gift, with the intent of preserving it as a memento of Colonial and Revolutionary history. A scheme for its removal and re-erection elsewhere failed; the Legislature did not want to invest $12,000 to have the house transferred to another location. On June 16, 1863, at one o'clock, the Hancock Manor was sold at public auction and was purchased for $230. The terms of the sale were cash down and the purchaser, Willard Dalrymple, had ten days to have everything removed. The building was torn down despite public outcry and souvenirs of it were actively sought as it fell. The knocker on the front door was given to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a friend of the Hancock family, who placed it on his home in Cambridge, where it remained until it too was demolished. The flight of stone steps which led up to the entrance was purchased at the public auction and relocated to the outside of Pinebank Mansion in Jamaica Plain, torn down in 2007.

The purchasers of the land, James Madison Beebe (No. 30) and Gardner Brewer (No. 29), two leading Boston merchants, erected a stately double brownstone house for their occupancy. Messrs. Ginn and Company publishers became established at No. 29 in 1901. For fifteen years their business offices fully occupied the spacious interior of the former Brewer residence which stood on the site of the Hancock Manor. In 1916 the marble extension of the Bulfinch Front of the State House to the west, and the taking of the surrounding grounds, necessitated the elimination of Hancock Avenue (a footway connecting Beacon and Mt. Vernon streets) and the removal of several of the houses, including 29 and 30 Beacon St.

The Hancock Manor's demolition spurred a historic preservation movement that would help save buildings like the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House within the next two decades. An 18" x 21" bronze plaque, located on the iron wall below the State House's marble west wing, indicates the mansion's former location. It reads: "Here stood the residence of John Hancock, a prominent and patriotic Merchant of Boston, the first Signer of the Declaration of American Independence, and First Governor of Massachusetts, under the State Constitution".

A replica of the building, known as the Hancock House, was constructed in Ticonderoga, New York in 1926 from the original plans, for use as a museum; it is still in use, presently as the home of the Ticonderoga Historical Society.