No. 5166 Painting of the Swann House on the face of a brick from the house
Edward A. Huebener, a former Board member of the Dorchester Historical Society, was a collector of materials relating to Dorchester history including a very large collection of graphic materials, including prints and photographs, now owned by the Society. His very own contribution to this group of materials was the idea of taking a brick from a house that had been demolished and asking a local illustrator to paint a picture of the house upon the brick. The painted bricks may be viewed at the Dorchester Historical Society.
The Swan House was located on Dudley Street at the corner of Howard across from the Morton-Taylor House and can be located in the detail from the 1874 Hopkins atlas. In 1874, the house was owned by person named Cilley.
No. 2282 Detail from the 1874 atlas
The house was built about 1796 as a summer home for James and Hepzibah Swan following a design ascribed to Charles Bulfinch.
A balustrade, as shown on the wings, originally encircled the top as well. The center of the house was round and contained only one room, the colonial dining hall. The dining hall was thirty-two feet in diameter, two stories high, with a huge dome-shaped ceiling. A design that Bulfinch made popular was the one with a projecting saloon, most commonly of oval or circular form. Among the houses he designed was the Swan House in Dorchester with the projecting saloon in the center of the garden front. General Lafayette, General Henry Knox and many other Revolutionary war heroes were entertained here.
No. 3582 Swann House
Colonel James Swan was a native of Scotland, who came to Boston in his boyhood. He was one of the Tea Party in 1773 and fought at Bunker Hill. He was Secretary of War for Massachusetts in 1777 and afterward adjutant-general of the state. Hepzibah Swan was one of the Mt. Vernon Proprietors, a group that developed part of Beacon Hill in Boston.
No. 3585 Elevation Plan of Swan House Published in Fiske, Kimball. Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic. (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922).
In the late 1780s, oppressed with heavy debts, Colonel Swan went to Paris with letters of introduction to Lafayette and other prominent men and eventually worked his way into a partnership in the firm of Dallarde, Swan et Compagnie, one of the firms that furnished supplies to the new French government after the French Revolution. When a business partner filed suit against him in 1808, Swan chose to go to a high-class debtor?s prison at St. Pelagie instead of settling the claim. He stayed there for 22 years and died in 1831, just one year after his release. Hepzibah had lived in the house in Dorchester until her death in 1825.
A collection of 18th century French furniture that had been owned by Thierry de Ville d?Avray, the general administrator of the crown furniture for Louis XVI, was purchased by the Swans after the monarchy was abolished, and this collection was passed down to Swan heirs. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has acquired the pieces and restored them.
No. 21926 armchair from the Swann collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
No. 942 Swann House Photograph of the Swann House published in Some Old Dorchester Houses / By Marion A. McBride. May, 1890, New England Magazine.
No. 943 Photograph of the back of the Swann House published in Some Old Dorchester Houses / By Marion A. McBride. May, 1890, New England Magazine.