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The Griswold House: Inside the Boardinghouse

 

Tour the Inside of the Boardinghouse for Artists

By 1910, the wear of ten painting seasons was showing on the stately old Griswold House. Now a favored and revered artist destination, the “Holy House,” as art students dubbed it, was in need of modernization and maintenance. In anticipation of a busy summer season, Miss Florence took out a second mortgage on her house to finance a list of luxuries, including indoor bathrooms, hot running water, furnace heat, electricity, and telephone service.

“On the ground floor nearly all the panels of the doors were charmingly decorated with paintings of a great variety of motives. Many of them were not only signed with the names of the famous men but were indeed of real distinction and beauty, and all were rendered in manifestations of the artist’s esteem for [Miss Florence].”

~ Artist and Author Arthur Heming in his unpublished
manuscript, The Lions in the Lady’s Den

This same year, working in secret, a group of artists took it upon themselves to freshen up the common areas of the boardinghouse while Miss Florence was away. New paint and fashionable wallpapers were applied to the crumbling walls. Choice old furnishings were refurbished and reupholstered, and new carpets were ordered. This was the artists’ gift to Miss Florence. Despite the updates, the boardinghouse retained its timeworn charms.

The newly refurbished Griswold House opened to the public on July 1, 2006 as the Boardinghouse for the Lyme Art Colony, c. 1910.
Floor plan of the boardinghouse for artists