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Walter Hunnewell Estate
Wellesley, Massachusetts

Table of Known Stereoviews, 1860s-1910
James A. Luedke, Jr.
Version 1.0, August 2011

 
The file which may be downloaded at the bottom of this page is a table listing the over-260 known 19th and early-20th century stereoviews of the Walter Hunnewell Estate, Wellesley, Massachusetts, one of the most widely stereographed private estates in America.

The table supplements an article by James A. Luedke, Jr., “Wellesley's Hunnewell Estate in 19th-Century Stereo Views,” New England Journal of Photographic History, n. 169 (2010-2011), pp. 42-64.

The estate was founded by Horatio Hollis Hunnewell (1810-1902), a noted Boston, Massachusetts-based railroad investor, banker, philanthropist, and horticulturalist, along with his wife, Isabella Pratt Welles Hunnewell (1812-1888). The estate is still extant today.

In the 19th century, the Walter Hunnewell Estate was called Wellesley.  It was located in part of Needham, Massachusetts called West Needham.  In 1881, West Needham broke from Needham and became a separate town.  The new town called itself Wellesley after the Hunnewells' estate.  Thereafter, the use of Wellesley to denote the estate became ambiguous and obsolete.

The Hunnewell estate's most well-known feature is its Italian garden of topiary conifer trees, cultivated in fanciful shapes.  The garden is nearly 160 years old, one of the nation's oldest, and is prominently visible across Lake Waban from Wellesley College, in Wellesley.

The earliest known stereoview of the Hunnewell estate, taken by 1866 and known only in a copy photograph, is a primitive, amateur view of the estate's house, built in 1852 and still extant.  The latest known published stereoview of the estate was published in 1910.

By far the greatest number of stereoviews of the estate were made by Boston-area photographer and stereographer, Chandler Seaver, Jr. (1824-1902), who made some 85 known views, in the early-to-mid-1870s.  Seaver's Hunnewell views were published by one of the most well-known third-party stereograph printers in New England, Charles Pollock (1828-1900) of Boston, whose stereoprinting operation was located in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Second in quantity in the production of Hunnewell stereos was the well-known Benjamin W. Kilburn of Littleton, New Hampshire, who made some 40 views in the 1880s-1890s.

The largest known public collection of Hunnewell stereoviews resides at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, which owns some 100 views.  The collection includes a rare, important set of several early anonymous, but professionally made, views of the house, Italian garden, and grounds, taken perhaps in 1866.

The second-largest known public collection resides at Historic New England, Boston, which owns some 68 views.

Viewing this file requires Adobe Acrobat Reader. Left-clicking on this link will cause an instance of Reader to load within your browser, and this file will be displayed. However, the hybrid interface of the two merged applications running at once may result in undesired reduced functionality. Alternately, right-click on this link, select "Save Target As" (or the equivalent function in your operating system), and download this file to your computing device. Then, launch the file in stand-alone Reader.

Download (51 pages, 360 KB):

Luedke.Hunnewell stereoviews table.V1.0.pdf

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