Prentis House

Prentis House. . , The Prentis House was discovered in Hay Massachusetts in a regional quest for architectural parts, in the search for large floorboards with which to finish off the Stencil House. Hugh Sloan, a sell described "real estate dealer and a dabbler in old materials,” brought this structure to the Museums attention. The chimney masonry and the floorboards of the first-floor rooms combined with the well-preserved quality of the building's materials overall, led to the Museum's decision to purchase the structure in its entirety. Museum staff dismantled the house in September 1954 and re-erected it on the Museum grounds in 1955. , As the house was still being dismantled in Hadley, a model of the building was shipped to Katharine Pet Murphy, a fellow collector and friend of Mrs. Webb who created period rooms for a number of museums and historical societies, for design recommendations. Murphy selected many of the objects on view in the Prentis House today. , Mrs. Web collaborated somewhat in decorating the house, but she may have had concerns that It was “overdone." She appeared conflicted about the elaborately furnished interiors, confiding in personal correspondence that she had “told Mrs. Murphy that one would never find that house In North Hadley or in Vermont furnished as it is and I would not want her to change a thing."