Stevens-Coolidge Place

The Stevens-Coolidge House is available as a photography site. It’s the perfect place for photoshoots for family, friends, a bridal party, an anniversary, and more. The Trustees are the owners and managers of the land. This member-supported nonprofit conservation group works to safeguard rare places across Massachusetts and protects properties of extraordinary aesthetic, historic, and ecological importance for public use and pleasure. The Stevens-Coolidge Place is accessible for professional outdoor photography/portraits on a commission or in-kind basis. Enter the world of a former farm that became an early-20th-century estate, where an elegant and polished mansion is complemented by a newly expanded array of abundant gardens and flora. From 1914 to 1962, Helen Stevens Coolidge and her husband, John Gardner Coolidge—a diplomat descended from Thomas Jefferson and a nephew of Isabella Stewart Gardner—had their vacation home at Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens. The Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens are situated on land that was once used for hunting and fishing by the Pennacook, Pawtucket, Massa-adchu-es-et, and Pentucket peoples. John and Elizabeth Stevens, who emigrated from England in the 1640s, were among North Andover's early European residents. Their grandchildren bought the land in 1729 and began farming it, naming it Ashdale Farm after the huge number of white ask trees that originally thrived on the property. For six generations, the Stevens family has cultivated this land. When Helen Stevens Coolidge inherited Ashdale Farm in 1914, it had become more of a family getaway than a money-making enterprise. Helen and her husband, John Gardner Coolidge, a US diplomat, made the property their holiday home. The home and gardens were renovated by noted preservation architect Joseph Everett Chandler, and the Coolidges converted the property into an extraordinary example of a neo-Georgian Colonial Revival mansion over the period of over five decades.