Back Hall

Beginning at the back hall, to your right is a portrait of William Rotch, Jr. (1759 – 1850) copied from a Rembrandt Peale painting. There is also a lithograph print based on a drawing that may have been created posthumously, of Rotch. At the far end of the hall on your right enter what was called the Basket Room, used for storage of garden baskets. 

1851 floor plans depict a water closet with drawers. Rotch family oral history says a large copper tub was also in this room, on the east wall. Thus, the two rooms have been interpreted as being an early bathroom and dressing room when Edward Jones purchased the house.

Note the curved closet door: the house was built by shipwrights skilled in building curved walls as you will notice throughout the house. An elevator, installed for the convenience of Amelia Jones and later electrified by the Duffs, is situated just within the entrance. Amelia had the C. Kimball elevator installed around 1928, and it served as a major attraction to her nieces and nephews. Amelia Forbes Thomas recalled that her brothers “rushed for the elevator which was hoisted and lowered by hand with a big rope, which I was sometimes allowed to pull for half a floor until my brothers got impatient.”