Marion Nichols Summer Home


The Marion Nichols Summer House is a historic house at 56 Love Lane in Hollis, New Hampshire, on the grounds of the Beaver Brook Reservation. Built in 1935 for a wealthy widow, it is a locally rare example of a house built expressly as a summer residence. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. It is now maintained by the Beaver Brook Association as an event facility.

Description and history

The Marion Nichols Summer House is located in a rural setting behind the Hollis school complex on the west side of New Hampshire Route 122 south of the village center. The main house is an L-shaped two-story wood frame structure. It is stylistically eclectic, with Tudor Revival features, Craftsman elements, and Colonial Revival elements. The interior is finished in a somewhat rustic style, with vertical pine siding in the living room, and possibly recycled timbers in the ceiling. The property also includes a c. 1940 single-story structure which originally housed a workshop and a billiard room, and a small brick wellhouse built about the same time as the house.
The house was built in 1935 for Marion Poole Nichols, a wealthy widow whose family had been summering in Hollis for some years, typically staying at the family homestead on Main Street. With growing families, that space had become cramped, and the family purchased the Buttonwood farm, where they built this house as a retreat for the aging matriarch. Marion Nichols did not use the house very much, and formally conveyed it to her children in 1949. The family established the Beaver Brook Association in 1964 to preserve the rural landscape of the area, with this house property as one of its seeds. The association now manages more than of land, and uses the facilities here for corporate and social events.