{"nrhp_refnum":"76000246","name":"Beauport","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Eastern Point Blvd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Gloucester","county":"Essex County","state":"MA","lat":42.591254340000035,"lon":-70.66010867899996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1976-04-26","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Art","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Beauport is a nearly fifty-room summer house and museum on Eastern Point Boulevard in Gloucester, Massachusetts, overlooking the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. Architect and interior decorator Henry Davis Sleeper began it in 1907 as a three-room cottage and enlarged it over about 25 years.","why_significant":"The nomination presents Beauport as an important early collection of American and European antiques in a unique architectural setting. It was one of the earliest American efforts to rescue architectural fragments and reinstall them in new surroundings. It also influenced the founding of Winterthur and the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing, and Sleeper is recognized as a genius of American interior design.","narrative":"Beauport is a sprawling, multi-gabled seaside house of nearly fifty rooms, built on a granite ledge above Gloucester Harbor. Henry Davis Sleeper, an architect and interior decorator, started it in 1907 as a three-room summer cottage and kept adding to it for about twenty-five years. Its exterior mixes fieldstone, brick, half-timbering and brown shingles, with towers, turrets, and spiral brick chimneys. Inside, many small rooms hold paneling, doorways and beams salvaged from early New England houses, along with Sleeper's collections of ceramics, furniture, textiles, pewter and other antiques. The house was arranged like a series of stage sets, with color and lighting setting each room's mood. It matters as an early example of reusing architectural fragments and as a showcase of American interior design that influenced Winterthur and the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing. After Sleeper died in 1934, the house and contents stayed together under later owners, and in 1942 they passed to a preservation society.","period_of_significance":"1907 - c.1929","architect_builder":"Henry Davis Sleeper","architectural_style":"Eclectic: Shingle style massing with Tudor and French Norman elements","criteria":[],"status_note":"Occupied and open as a museum, owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities since 1942; appearance largely unchanged since Sleeper's death in 1934.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:11:55.023456-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/16/7949/63794916/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/76000246.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63794916","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":null},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/essex-county/beauport-76000246/"}