East Wall

Hall showing semi-circular window into servants' stair

Although the general size and layout of the Gibson House is quite typical of other row houses in the Back Bay, the Entry Hall is unusual. Most nearby row houses welcome visitors through a door aligned with the grand staircase of the home, entering into a small, enclosed waiting room. However, a visitor to the Gibson House enters through doors located in the center of the building into the Entry Hall. Unlike most other Back Bay entry halls, this spacious room is one of the grandest and most lavishly decorated in the Gibson House.

In the Gibsons’ time, a visitor would be greeted at the door by a female servant and invited to wait in the Entry Hall while the servant presented her calling card to the desired family member. While waiting beneath the arches of the black walnut arcade, she would have ample time to observe her impressive surroundings, including the “Japanese Leather” wall covering, an embossed paper intended to resemble gilded leather, which reflects the Brahmin interest in the Japanese aesthetic introduced to Boston during this period. The carved Renaissance Revival hall furnishings display fine bronzes and porcelains.

The portrait gracing the stairs is of Abraham Gibson, Catherine’s father-in-law, who established the Gibson family fortune as a sea merchant. The portrait serves to honor this relative as well as to allude to the family’s prominent presence in Boston during the eighteenth century. Abraham Gibson commissioned the tall clock in the eastern niche, which still keeps accurate time, in 1795; it is the work of Aaron Willard, a noted Boston clock maker of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.