East Wall circa 1960 showing the sofa and chair before
reupholstering.

Northwest Corner

The Gibsons were a musical family and often entertained guests in this room. Rosamond played the piano; her husband Charles played the flute; their son Charles Jr. played the violin and piano, and even composed some music.

The larger of the two parlors, the Music Room was thoroughly redecorated by Rosamond in the 1890s and represents a marked change in decorative taste. Rosamond directed the removal of wall-to-wall carpet in favor of wood floors and had the dark woodwork painted white. The French wallpaper, with a pattern of wide floral bands in gold and rose hues, is treated with a thin layer of mica to make it look like silk. Charles Jr. added the scatter rugs, which he purchased while visiting China in the 1920s.

About the same time that Rosamond decorated this room, the Gibson House was converted from gas to electric lighting, utilizing the public current made available to the Back Bay in 1886. Rosamond inherited the chandelier and sconces in this room, all originally gas, from her mother, Annie Crowninshield Warren, in 1910. Such light fixtures were valuable, prized family possessions and were, therefore, often inherited and converted to electricity to keep them usable. The fine paintings in this room are mainly nineteenth-century copies of earlier masterpieces that the Gibsons collected while traveling abroad.

The sofa and armchairs were orignally upholstered in gold brocade fabric. They were re-upholstered in the current red velvet in the early 1960s. The drapes and portieres were also done in gold brocade.