Santarella Gardens – Tyringham, MA (Private Estate)
Santarella is a private estate, affectionately known as the Tyringham Gingerbread House. Santarella hosts private events for a fee.
The history of Santarella dates back to 1739, when the town of Tyringham, Massachusetts was settled. Shortly after, the colonial home was built on the site. Its most famous resident was Sir Henry Hudson Kitson, the English sculptor who is known for the Lexington Minuteman and Plymouth Rock Maiden statues in Massachusetts, as well as a number of Civil War bas-reliefs and sculptures in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Around 1920, Kitson began his work transforming the barn on the property into a sculpting studio where he could work. It was this project which eventually became Kitson’s primary focus for the last 25 years of his life, and which consumed the remains of his earnings until he died a penniless man in 1947. He was knighted for his work in Rumania, and remains an important figure in American Scultping.
The most striking feature of Kitson’s studio is its 80-ton, asphault shingled roof. Originally, Kitson had envisioned created a rolling, thatched roof similar to the traditional thatched-roofs in his native Britain. He enlisted the help of several local farmers to grow a crop of Rye for the thatching, but the crop went bad, and he turned to asphault shingles to create the effect he desired. Each tile was hand-cut to a wave-like shape, and then was laid in thick layers of different-colored shingles. The whole project took three workers twelve years to complete.
Contact email: Santarellagardens@gmail.com
Latitude
Longitude
