FIVE FIREPLACES

In the Gem at Little Rest—also known as the Baker Greene Home—there are features that speak quietly, yet unmistakably, to the craftsmanship and intentions of eighteenth-century New England builders. Chief among them is the extraordinary center chimney, a massive architectural spine around which the entire house was formed in 1788. Containing five fireplaces, it rises through the core of the home like a monument to warmth, sustenance, and the steady rhythm of early American life.

Throughout the rooms, each fireplace reveals a different facet of the home’s history.

In the dining room, the great hearth is built of quarried stone, its surface worn smooth by generations who gathered around its heat. Iron trammels and hooks still hang where they once supported pots, and the brick hearth bears the marks of countless fires that warmed not only meals but moments of daily living. Here, the house feels firmly rooted—earth, stone, and memory intertwined.

In the living room, the raised-panel fireplace offers a more refined interpretation of colonial design. Its hand-planed boards, painted in a deep historic black, showcase the joinery and symmetry prized in eighteenth-century construction. The room glows with the light of a fire framed in mustard-colored masonry, a nod to the bold colors that once brightened early American interiors.

Upstairs, the bedroom fireplace stands humbler, but no less meaningful. Its simple surround and darkened stones speak to a time when warmth was not a luxury but a necessity. The hearth’s quiet presence turns the room into a retreat, reminding us that in 1788, even rest was touched by the reassuring glow of firelight.

And then there is the Library Inglenook fireplace—a rugged, intimate hearth carved directly into the original stone mass of the chimney. Beside it, the surviving brick beehive oven recalls the room’s earliest purpose: a place of work, a place of nourishment, a place where the day often began. Its presence grounds the Inglenook in authenticity, a small but powerful reminder that this house was built not simply to stand, but to serve.

Winding between these fireplaces, the vast center chimney is adorned today with soft twinkle lights—a gentle, almost reverent gesture that highlights the sheer scale of the structure. Standing beside it, one feels the weight of centuries, the quiet endurance of craftsmanship, and the comfort that fire once brought to every corner of the home.

And yet, perhaps the most remarkable hearth of all is the one not yet seen.
Beneath the floorboards, in the beamed basement, lies a six-foot-wide fireplace—an enormous hearth flanked by an original beehive oven. It was here that Barker Greene baked his famous gingerbread, the scent of molasses and spice once filling the home. This subterranean fireplace, a marvel of colonial engineering, remains a treasure waiting to be discovered in person—a testament to the home’s layered history and the people who shaped it.

In the Baker Greene Home, the five fireplaces do more than warm the rooms. They illuminate a way of life, a lineage of hands and hearts that built, tended, and cherished this home for more than two hundred years.