Built ca. 1808 Designated NHL November 7, 1973 Opened 1802 Architectural style Federal architecture | NRHP Reference # 73000327 Designated CP August 2, 1984 Phone +1 978-462-2681 Added to NRHP 7 November 1973 | |
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Location 98 High Street, Newburyport, Massachusetts Part of Newburyport Historic District (#84002411) Address 98 High St, Newburyport, MA 01950, USA Similar Museum of Old Newbury, Superior Courthouse and Bartl, Spencer‑Peirce‑Little Farm, John Greenleaf Whittier H, Coffin House | ||
The Cushing House Museum and Garden (circa 1808), also known as the Caleb Cushing House, is a Federal style mansion with fine garden located at 98 High Street, Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States. It was a home of diplomat Caleb Cushing and is a National Historic Landmark.
The house is a center entrance four-story brick mansion in the Federal style, with center entrance at both the front and sides, and two chimneys at each side. In shape it is a flattened cube, with five windows arranged symmetrically across both front and sides. Its main entry is crowned with a modest fanlight, echoed by a fan-shaped wooden motif atop the window above it. On the grounds, visitors will find a nineteenth-century garden, fruit trees, a privy, cobbled yard and carriage house.
Within the house are fine collections of silver, furniture, portraits, clocks, needlework, antique fans, hatboxes, nineteenth century toys, and more from New England and the Orient. The Oriental Room displays early China Trade decorative arts including four Chinese coastal Hong paintings. An extensive clock collection includes examples made by local master clockmakers David Wood and Daniel Balch. In the canopy bedroom stands a carved seventeenth-century Dutch cradle and a three-sided crib. Many oil portrait paintings hang in the house, including a Cecilia Beaux portrait of Margaret Cushing and 1801 paintings by John Brewster, Jr., of Newburyport's Prince family. The museum also maintains a collection of area maps, photographs, and genealogical references.
It is now the home of the Historical Society of Old Newbury and guided tours are offered between May 12 and October 31.
The house was declared a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and included in the Newburyport Historic District in 1984. The house is deemed nationally significant for its association with Cushing, a 19th-century diplomat whose defining achievement was the Treaty of Wanghia, negotiated in 1849 with the Qing dynasty of China. This treaty was the first in which the United States secured equivalent rights to those of traditional colonial powers (in this case, the United Kingdom).