Massachusetts State Building
Massachusetts completes the group of New England States and this section of the Park. Its building is a reproduction of the residence of John Hancock, which stood on Beacon Hill, in Boston. It is three stories high, surrounded in the centre by a cupola, and the exterior finished in staff in imitation of cut granite. Above the cupola is a flagstaff with a gilded codfish for a weathervane, and a liberty pole eighty-five feet high stands in the front porch. The house is surrounded by a raised terrace filled in front upon one side with old-fashioned flowers and foliage.
The main entrance to the building opens into a spacious hall with a tiled floor, and facing it is a broad colonial stairway leading to the rooms above. The front parlor is furnished by the Essex Institute, an old historical society.
The floor of the general reception room is of marble, and its walls are covered with tiles, the beams and rafters being bare, and the mantel high, as in the old Dutch houses of New York and Pennsylvania as well as of western Massachusetts. Peabody & Stearns, of Boston, were the architects of the building, and the cost was $50,000.
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