The Main Street area of North Easton Village, a section of the incorporated town of Easton, MA, is beautifully appointed and decorated for the holiday season.
Of course, a stately and magnificent architectural and design sentry along this stretch of Main Street is Oakes Ames Memorial Hall, located alongside a curve in the road that connects the downtown and points further north in the Village, including the Ames Free Library and Ames Shovel Works Apartments and Unity Close, the gorgeous Italianate Victorian style house that is the former home of William Amory Parker, a pioneer in the mutual fund industry, and his wife Elise (Ames) Parker, a busy philanthropist who gave considerably to Easton.
Oakes Ames Memorial Hall is named for Congressman Oakes Ames (1804-1873), an industrialist and political leader who was the single most influential figure in the building and completion of the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad.
Henry Hobson Richardson is the architect of the Hall.
H.H. Richardson, along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, form the Trinity of American Architects.
Frederick Law Olmsted – sometimes called F.L. Olmsted or F.L.O. – designed the terraced staircase that leads from the street to the veranda of the building, and also the scape of land on which the hall sits.
F.L. Olmsted is widely recognized as the Father of American Landscape Architecture.
Indeed, during the holiday season among the most festively iconic and visually appealing places – all of which support happiness and joy – in the region is a building designed by H.H. Richardson, and land designed by F.L.O.
A variety of holiday events are held at these places.
Trinity Church in Boston was designed by H.H. Richardson. Construction of the Church began in 1872 and was completed in 1877.
Trinity Church is among the 10 structures featured in the PBS series 10 Buildings that Changed America which premiered in 2013.
Trinity Church is the home of an Episcopalian congregation, and is also the locus of variety of civic, community, interfaith, and human rights activities.
During this season, Trinity Church, which sits at the eastern end of Copley Square, serves as a physical anchor to an urban holiday portrait.
Trinity Church is busy with religious services and other events throughout the year. The Church also hosts tours of the building.
For those who are taking a holiday and vacation break from work the week of Christmas and New Year’s Day, a visit to Boston and a tour of Trinity Church would be an uplifting and interesting excursion.
Please click here to be taken to page at Trinity Church where the upcoming tour schedule is listed.
Now, of course, there is no city that does Christmas and the holidays like New York City – especially the city borough of Manhattan. There is nothing like it.
And the jewel of Manhattan is Central Park – the design and creation of Frederick Law Olmsted and his business and creative partner Calvert Vaux
Central Park, which opened in 1858, is one of the 10 parks featured in the PBS series 10 Parks that Changed America which premiered this past spring.
If one is looking for a potent dose of holiday feel-good, you’ll receive it traveling through the Olmsted planned and designed park. Just extraordinary – one holiday card image after another.
Until January 5th, Central Park offers special holiday tours of the park. If you click here you will be taken to a page at the Central Park site where you find information on the tours.
Also a good holiday-season take is ice skating in the park at Wollman Rink or Lasker Rink.
Henry Hobson Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted created troves of extraordinary beauty and ingenious design across America.
Much of this beauty and this design … during the holidays … stages and accompanies and commends the festivity and the wonder of the season in the most sublime and excellent and pleasing fashion