This realistic Gibson House Museum Boston Tour Review helps you plan your next visit to this historic mansion.

The Gibson House Museum is a luxurious mansion in Boston, Massachusetts. The house dates back to 1860. It is one of the most well preserved residences of the Gilded Age era.

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Sights & Places of Interest

You can only explore the Gibson House Museum as part of a guided tour. There is one general and a few specialty tours. This Gibson House Museum Boston Tour Review follows a path of the general tour.

This tour is called At Home with the Gibsons. As the name suggests, the tour covers the mansion as well as its long-time owners.

You will learn a few things about the history of this house on the tour. Get ready to meet the Gibson family through the stories and anecdotes. And keep an eye on the exhibits.

Most of these items that remain in the house belonged to the house owners. They could tell a story of this mansion through the eyes of the Gibson Family.

1. Entryway

You will enter the house from Beacon Street via a short but steep external staircase. The front door should be open if you arrive just before the tour time. Ring a bell if the door is closed.

Proceed to a hallway and check in. This spacious room now works as a waiting area. You could explore the hallway while you wait for the guide to start the tour.

The enormous wealth of the Gibson family is on full display as the soon as you enter the mansion. You could expect most art exhibits to be upstairs. This is the case at most house museums in Boston.

But the Gibson House is quite different. There are a few noteworthy items right in the hallway on the ground floor.

They set the Gibson House apart from the nearby Nichols House Museum. The gilded wallpaper is darkened from the gas lightning at the Nichols House. But it is sparkling clean at the Gibson House.

2. Grand Staircase

You will spend the first few minutes of the tour in the hallway. Your guide will tell you what to expect on the tour. They would then proceed to share general information on the house and the owners.

You will take the grand staircase soon after. This massive staircase takes up a lot of real estate. It is a grandiose way to get to the second floor. Take a look at the family portraits next to the staircase.

3. Library

The second floor of the house has two large rooms, a library and a ballroom. These rooms could not have been more different.

The library is directly above the entryway. Like any good library, this room has a lot of books. There are bookshelves nearly in every corner. This is hardly a surprise given the purpose of the room.

But the library at the Gibson House also has a lot of family items. It is one of the coziest rooms in the house. You will learn more about the Gibsons and the source of their wealth.

You should pay attention to the craftsmanship of items and furniture pieces throughout the tour. It is possible to find beauty in the most mundane items in this museum.

Just take a look at this cross-stitched heat shield screen. Heat shields are common in the house museums. But few owners invested their money in making even this common household item unique.

4. Ballroom

The ballroom is the second room on this floor. It was an entertainment space during the parties that the family used to host.

This room needed to achieve two goals:

• Display the wealth of the Gibson family.
• Convey the sophisticated nature of the family to the visitors.

The ballroom still successfully delivers on these goals some 160 years later. It is hard to count paintings and art exhibits in this room.

The ballroom has it all. Portraits and landscape paintings, exquisite vases, sculptures, and table clocks. Most of the exhibits are original items that belonged to the Gibsons.

5. Second Staircase

The grand staircase only connects the ground and the second floors. Its main purpose was to bring the guests from the entryway to the ballroom.

You would need to take another staircase to get to the other floors of the house. This staircase is steeper and somewhat out of sight. It focuses more on utility rather than appearance.

It is not a surprise that the staff and house owners used to be its primary users. This second staircase did not get much use during parties and social gatherings.

6. Master Bedroom

Once you arrive at the third floor, you will see two bedrooms. The master bedroom is right above the ballroom.

Its windows face the backyard in Public Alley 421. This room provided the owners with an escape from the noises of the street.

The master bedroom has light colored wallpaper. There are also a lot of art pieces in this room. Most of the paintings and photographs display the members of the family.

But a furniture set is one thing that really sets this bedroom apart from all other rooms in the house. A wood pattern on the bed, nightstands, and chests of drawers looks like bamboo. But it is not the case.

This furniture set is made of maple. But it has a bamboo appearance on purpose. This trick was quite popular among the wealthy families during the Gilded Age.

It was a time of major Asian influence in art and culture. A few house museums, like Winchester House in San Jose, California, have similar furniture pieces.

Like a proper master bedroom, this room has a direct connection to the bathroom. It is one of the two bathrooms in the entire house.

This bathroom has both cold and hot water plumbing. It was very uncommon for the houses of that time. In a way, this advanced plumbing is another display of the family’s wealth.

7. Second Bedroom

The second bedroom on this floor has bright red wallpaper. This room is much darker than any other room in the house. These two attributes make this room unique.

Charles Hammond Gibson, Sr. was the main resident of this room. You can still find lots of the items in this room that belonged to its owner.

This room has a high-tech flair written all over it. Take a look at the mirror-scope projector. It was a novel technology for the early 20th century.

The staff quarters at the Gibson House used to be on the fourth floor. This setup is similar to other houses of that era.

The quarters are now off limits to the public. But the third floor will not be the end of your tour.

8. Basement

You will take the second staircase all the way to the basement after you finish exploring the third floor. The basement at the Gibson House is all about utility. You will find kitchen, pantry, and laundry rooms there.

The utility rooms have a few interesting items. You could explore the built-in waffle maker. This entire oven set dates back to 1884. It is the original oven of this house.

The laundry room was no different. It also had cutting edge technologies of its time. But doing laundry back in the day was still a difficult job. It required a lot of manual labor.

The laundry room is the final room of the tour. You will take the staircase back to the entryway.

Continue with this Gibson House Museum Boston Tour Review. You will learn more about ways to get to the sights, entrance requirements, and places to stay.

Getting to Gibson House Museum

The Gibson House Museum is at 137 Beacon St in Boston, MA. The house is in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. The Arlington Station on the Green T Line is the closest to the museum.

The Gibson House Museum is a great addition to a Boston itinerary.

• The house is about halfway between the Freedom Trail‘s sights and Boston Central Library.
• It is one block southwest from the Public Garden. The Boston Common is also nearby.

Where to Stay near Gibson House Museum

If you prefer to reach the Gibson House on foot, look for lodging in Back Bay and Downtown. But you do not have to limit your search to these neighborhoods.

You could get use the location of the mansion next to the Green T Line to your advantage. Try to get a better deal on lodging in the places further away from Boston Back Bay.

You could look for more affordable places to stay in Brookline, Cambridge, and Revere. All of them have a great selection of properties. You should be able to find a great place to stay there.

If you take public transport, check that there are no long term service disruptions. And enjoy potential savings on the places to stay.

Entrance Requirements & Passes

You can only visit the Gibson House Museum on regular and specialty tours. There is one general tour, At Home with the Gibsons.

• Duration: 45 minutes.
• Admission: $12 for adults, $10 for students and seniors, $5 for children, free for members.
• Schedule: Thursday through Sunday.
  • 3 daily tours on Fridays and weekends during early afternoons (1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m.).
  • 3 late afternoon tours on Thursdays (3 p.m., 4 p.m., 5 p.m.).

There are also at least 4 specialty tours. These tours cost more: $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, $10 for members, $5 for children. They also have different schedule and durations.

• Upstairs, Downstairs: 60-minute tour that runs nearly every week.
• Charlie Gibson’s Queer Boston: 45-minute tour that is quite infrequent.
• The World of Little Women at the Gibson House: 60-minute tour; runs irregularly.
• Gibson House Architecture Tour: private tour that requires special arrangements.

You could also become a member of the Gibson House Museum. There are 6 membership levels. They cost between $25 and $1,000 per year.

A membership provides free or discounted admission to tours and other programs.

It goes without saying that you should be on time for your tour. The front door is locked during the tour. There will be nobody who could let you in if the tour already went to the second floor.

Book your tickets in advance. A general tour only takes 8 visitors. These tours often sell out on the summer weekends.

Takeaways: Gibson House Museum Boston

The Gibson House Museum is a well preserved historic mansion in Boston. It once belonged to a very wealthy family. The family went out of its way to display all the art and items money could buy.

The museum guides are very knowledgable. They will provide you with a detailed overview of the house during a general tour. The Gibson House is a great destination for architecture, history, and arts lovers.

You should add a visit to this museum to your Boston Itinerary. You can escape the dreary winter weather. The house will also provide you with an escape from the summer heat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Safe realist travels!