Just perfect for a small wedding, bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, or party
I visited the historic, 22-room Nesmith House in Lowell for the first time this spring. What a splendid place it is. Like all old homes, it has its stories, and an irresistible sense of romance and mystery.
I visited the historic, 22-room Nesmith House in Lowell for the first time this spring. What a splendid place it is. Like all old homes, it has its stories, and an irresistible sense of romance and mystery.
This Greek Revival 1850’s mansion sits atop a hill in the Bellevidere district overlooking downtown Lowell and the Lowell Mills. What more fitting vista for its original owner, the industrialist and politically engaged John Nesmith.
The house, long neglected, was restored to vivid life in the mid 1990s when interior designers redid it, room by room – each to his or her own taste. If it’s a bit of a mélange of styles –ranging from period pieces, a few ornate ones original to the house, to art deco, with a lot of Victoriana along the way, somehow it all flows. In short, the house, like any beauty with good bones, wears its plumage well. From its graceful winding staircase and stained glass dome, to its overstuffed sofas and chairs, ornate rugs, wallpapers, paintings, and endless smaller treasures– the details and opulence beckon and delight. In addition, they urge: sit down, stay a while, have a sip of something cool or hot, depending on the weather, and enjoy the company.
The Nesmith House definitely deserves a visit and more than a passing thought as a venue for intimate occasions. Fifty guests can sit in comfort and style at small tables in the charming round dining room; for stand up affairs, the house can handle eighty. It has a large contemporary kitchen, incidentally – a caterer’s dream; and a way of making things look grand. While old-fashioned flowers like hydrangea and lilies, delphinium, stock, snapdragons, and roses fit right in, a clean arrangement of callas in dashing yellow, for example, or a sheaf of white gladiolas would make an attention-grabbing counterpoint. The flowers should simply make a statement in themselves.
What brought me to the Nesmith House? A late April shower for a June bride. The bride’s colors were pink and white with a soupcon of lime green; the look, to go with the house (and the bride’s favorite flowers): feminine and romantic.
For the entrance hall I used approximately two dozen pink Canterbury bells mingled with lime green viburnum and narrow ferns in a clear glass cylinder. The hall is elegant but not overpowering, and although Canterbury bells are delicate, en masse they stood up to some background busyness
For the bride’s table, a low arrangement of massive white hydrangea, a dozen light Orlando (pale pink) roses, French tulips (white with dark pink edges) and more viburnum created a cool, frothy focus. The colors echoed those of the room. Ferns lined the vase, a six-inch cylinder, to hide the flower stems and add another, watery texture. And for the buffet table, stargazer lilies, the bride’s favorite, along with roses and tulips in another tall cylinder.
What will bring me back for a second look? – Oh, the sheer pleasure of stepping across the threshold into another age. And a happy feeling about the place. The staff at Nesmith House appear to love this glorious building, the caterers that day, Two Chefs Are Better Than One, seemed at home, and the house, owned and used for visitors’ accommodations (it has some 11 bedrooms) by Middlesex Community College Foundation, had the well-kept feeling of a living museum.
