Inn · Temple, New Hampshire · Built early 1800s; hall and barn 1847–48; porch 1892
Birchwood Inn
Listed on the National Register as The Birchwood Inn
A brick-fronted Federal tavern beside Temple common that served as the village's public house through the nineteenth century, added a spring-floored hall in 1847–48, and became the Birchwood boarding house in 1892.
History
No deed or account records when the tavern went up, but its brickwork and joinery place it in the early nineteenth century, and the nomination suggests the wooden rear half followed the brick front closely, perhaps built by the same joiners. Temple sat between the Second and Third New Hampshire Turnpikes rather than on either, and for most of the century this was the village's only steadily kept public house. The north front room was the taproom, with its own street door; notices were posted there, town business was talked over, and the village post office and a store operated under the same roof.
In 1847–48 a long wing and barn went up behind the house, with a "bait room" for travelers' horses below and a meeting hall above. Temple rented that hall for its March town meetings from 1848 to 1876, preferring it to the unheated meetinghouse, and its floor hung on wagon springs so that it flexed under dancers. The town's centennial banquet was held here on August 16, 1858. Elias Colburn kept the house at mid-century and farmed nearly a hundred acres to feed family, help and guests; by the 1860s the old tavern was being called a hotel, and cattle drives bound for the Boston markets brought it trade.
Daniel and Maria Gilson bought the property in 1892, added the piazza, painted the brick white, and reopened it as a summer boarding house called the Birchwood, after the grove of white birches beside it. The Hedman family, owners from 1929 for about thirty-five years, brought in electricity, central heat and plumbing. Wikipedia notes that the inn and village appeared in the 1981 film Summer, adapted from Edith Wharton's novel.
“The taproom, with its separate public entrance, was an active meeting place in which public notices were posted and much town business was conducted on an informal basis.”
Architecture
The main house is two and a half stories under a broad gable roof, its five-bay front of brick laid in running bond and its rear half framed and clapboarded. The front door, with sidelights, sits under a semi-elliptical brick arch with a louvered fan; first-floor windows have flat brick arches. The 1892 porch on chamfered posts with paired sawn brackets wraps the front and sides. Inside, door casings with square corner blocks echo Asher Benjamin's later pattern books, and the south front room carries wall murals attributed to the itinerant painter Rufus Porter. The wing's upstairs hall keeps its sprung dance floor, and a gable-roofed barn with a central drive completes the line of buildings.
What to look for
- Semi-elliptical brick arch and fan over the front door
- Bricked-up side door that once led straight into the taproom
- Line where the brick front meets the clapboarded rear on each side
- Rufus Porter-style murals in the south front room
- Long wing and barn of 1847–48
Setting
The inn stands on a corner lot just north of Temple common, facing west onto Route 45 where it meets the General Miller Highway. Behind it is wooded land and a small pond fed by a stream from Temple Mountain. The driveway beside the barn follows an old road the town bought from the Gilsons in the 1890s and returned to the inn in 1912.
Timeline
- early 1800sBrick tavern built facing Temple common
- 1847–1848Hall wing and barn added
- 1848–1876Town meetings held in the upstairs hall
- 1858Temple's centennial banquet held at the hotel
- 1892Daniel and Maria Gilson remodel it as the Birchwood
- 1929Hedman family buys it and modernizes the building
- 1985Listed on the National Register
Where sources differ
- The construction date is not documented; 1800 is used here only as a placeholder for the early-nineteenth-century date implied by the building's style.
- The murals are attributed to Rufus Porter on stylistic grounds.
