Glencoe

Glencoe was the fulfilled vision of local store merchant John Coe. Coe also engaged in shipbuilding in Durham and hotel administration, running the first Senter House in Center Harbor, and the Hotel Marlboro in Boston before taking up permanent residency in the town about 1850. Over many years, the mansion achieved fame as an historic landmark, with members of the Coe family hosting three Presidents of the United States—Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant, and Grover Cleveland—and numerous literary figures, including John Greenleaf Whittier, Lucy Larcom, Rev. Thomas Starr King, Celia Thaxter, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In addition, according to local historians, the house was a stop on the Underground Railroad for those escaping to Canada during the Civil War era. In 1957, after the death of the last family owner, Fred Sumner Coe, the rich Victorian furnishings and other contents of the building were sold at auction, and it subsequently became a women’s dormitory for Belknap College, a new local institution. Upon the closing of the college in 1973, the Coe Mansion sat vacant and deteriorating until the late 1990s, when it was restored as an upscale restaurant, and reassumed its role as the social and civic focal point of village life.

The Coe Mansion occupies a commanding raised site in the physical center of the village that formerly overlooked Lake Winnipesaukee before the intrusion of more modern structures. The c. 1850 Italianate modifications to the original twelve-room wooden residence are highlighted by a hexagonal cupola with a bracketed and corniced flat roof that is set between two brick corbelled chimneys at the midpoint of the steep-pitched main roof. Framed by Doric corner pilasters, the five-bay front facade is symmetrical. The central doorway with full sidelights is screened by a flat-roofed, three-bay-wide porch supported by elaborate square chamfered wooden posts with molded bases and capitals and ornamental sawn brackets. On each side of the entry are two full-length six-over-nine windows with molded trim, shutters, and entablatures. The second story displays a central glass door with wooden frame opening onto the porch roof, and flanked on each side by two six-over-six sash windows with molded trim and shutters. The end walls feature similar window treatment and wide box cornices with thick moldings, brackets, and returns. The house retains its original offset ell, but the former one-story southwest wing and appended rear barn with attached sheds were declared unfit for renovation and demolished when the complex was converted to its current use. The south wing was replaced by a smaller kitchen wing that is aesthetically compatible with the historic main block. Restored on the interior is the first-floor Victorian parlor containing highly unusual wallpaper (c. 1850) by Joseph Dufour of Paris depicting gardens of the world and an ornamental fence running around the entire room. As was the case for many years, a wooden fence with square posts and turned balusters surmounted by caps separates the front lawn of the Coe Mansion from Main Street.