The Lynch Park Carriage House was built ca. 1900 on Robert Evan’s summer estate on Woodbury Point, Beverly. Evans was a business entrepreneur who earned two fortunes, first in rubber and later in copper mining. The main house, known as “Stetson Cottage,” gained fame when it became the summer home for President Howard Taft in 1909 and 1910. The building was used as a carriage house and horse barn with living quarters on the second floor for estate employees.

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Our firm was engaged in 2016 to prepare a comprehensive assessment of physical conditions at the building and to provide recommendations for exterior restoration, interior renovation, code compliance and the introduction of handicapped access. The resulting conceptual design provides additional space for meetings and functions, new code-compliant rest rooms, a full-size elevator providing access to all three floors, and a new egress stair. Our recommendations for preservation of the building’s historic features were informed by the serendipitous discovery of original drawings for a mirror image carriage house built on a neighboring property in Beverly in 1896 but no longer extant.