Daily Archives: December 3, 2014

From the Archives – Garden Club of the Back Bay Decorates the International Institute

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Back in 1968, the Garden Club of the Back Bay was asked by Mrs. J. Philip Lane of the International Institute, then located at 287 Commonwealth Avenue, to decorate the handsome house for Christmas.  According to information found in the excellent website www.backbayhouses.org, “287 Commonwealth was designed by Rotch and Tilden, architects, and built in 1892-1893 by Connery & Wentworth and Ira Hersey, builders. It was built as the home of Herbert Mason Sears and his wife, Caroline B. (Bartlett) Sears.”  The International Institute acquired the property in 1964 and turned it into offices and meeting rooms. The committee trimming the home included Mrs. Edward Bowman, Mrs. Samuel Newman, Elisabeth Lay, Kathleen Nunn, and Laura Dwight.  The contemporary image below of one of the building’s condominium units is from www.lilibanani.com.

The International Institute has, for nearly a century, assisted immigrants, refugees, and other vulnerable populations living in New England. The organization continues to provide safety to the victims of war and injustice. It fosters self-sufficiency in New American families struggling to make ends meet, and invests in the entrepreneurship of tomorrow’s business leaders. It now has three offices, including 1 Milk Street in Boston, and spaces in Lowell and in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Our holiday decoration project now focuses on wreath making, but our commitment to the not for profit organizations located in our neighborhood continues.

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Spring 2015, Mondays, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Roman Gardens

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Kathleen M. Coleman will present a new course at Harvard College’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences during the Spring, 2015 term entitled Roman Gardens. This seminar will study the botany, landscaping, cultivation, terminology, and social function of gardens in the Roman world, employing literary, epigraphic, papyrological, iconographic, and archaeological sources. Among the literary texts to be studied, including both prose and poetry, special emphasis will be placed on Latin treatises on horticulture from the Republic to Late Antiquity. To learn more about the course, visit http://isites.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-51347.  You may also email kcoleman@fas.harvard.edu.

Professor Coleman is the James Loeb Professor of the Classics and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her research interests include Latin literature, especially Flavian poetry, history and culture of the early Empire, arena spectacles, and Roman punishment.