By Samantha and Hazel
The Nickels-Sortwell House was built by Captain William Nickels.
This is a very good example of a Federal Style house. A Federal style
house has a front door in the middle of the house, two windows on
each side of the door, and five windows up above the front door. Some
special interests are the Palladian and the Lunette windows and the
great interior woodwork.
Labor was a dollar a day back then when the house was built for
14,000 dollars. It took five years to build. Captain Nickels and his
young wife died soon after it was finished in 1807. Until 1900 it was
an inn. Then the house was bought and saved by a man named Alvin F.
Sortwell of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His daughter, Frances A.
Sortwell, left the house and most of his possessions to The
Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.
We think this is a neat house and we would like to live in it.
Over the front door there is a fan light dome in leadwith a very pretty embellishments that resembles rope. On the second floor there is a Paladin window and on the third floor there is a Lunette window. If you look up to the ceiling on the first floor you can see a beautiful skylight that shines though the curved railings.All the furniture that is in the house belonged to Captain William Nickel's and his wife .The furniture dates back to the sixteen hundreds. Mr. Nickels built an addition to the house for his wife.
Mrs. Week's Story
Alan Weeks and his wife have lived there for 40 years since the house was given to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. When we interviewed Mrs. Weeks she told us many stories. One of the stories was that Frances A. Sortwell watched the Hilton Hotel burn.She took over the place and turned it into the Sunken Garden because she did not want it to be a gas station. She was also one of the people who helped save the old buildings. Last winter in 1996 two deer came from the Sunken Garden and one of the deer put his two front feet in the window and nothing got hurt including the deer .