Take a self-guided tour of the house and grounds in the order that you choose. The stone mansion includes richly carved woodwork and dramatic stained glass windows. A great hall soars three stories to a decorative trussed ceiling. Restored wall treatments present original colors highlighted by metallic paints that glitter and glow when illuminated by ornate brass chandeliers. Learn about the elaborate architecture and interior design as well as the Eustis family, their domestic staff, and the farmhands who cultivated the surrounding fields and greenhouses. In the visitor center, browse the museum shop. Admission includes access to the museum and the exhibition currently on view in the second-floor galleries.
Wed. – Sun., June – October
Thurs. – Sun., November – December
Fri. – Sun., January – May
Self-guided experience:
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Guided tours:
11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
Closed most major holidays.
$15 adults
$12 seniors
$8 students and children
Free for Historic New England members and Milton residents.
Guided tours: additional $5
The Eustis Family
On November 7, 1876, twenty-five-year-old Edith Hemenway married twenty-six-year-old W.E.C. Eustis. A year later Edith gave birth to twin sons Frederic and Augustus. Shortly thereafter the couple began to build their family home on land given to them by Edith’s mother, Mary Hemenway. W.E.C. and Edith had a daughter, Mary, in 1885. The family lived on the estate for the rest of their lives.
Mrs. Hemenway owned the large estate to the south of this site, and W.E.C. Eustis’s family lived to the north. The Eustis mansion was the first building constructed on the property in 1878, and was designed by preeminent architect William Ralph Emerson. The property originally comprised more than 250 acres of fields, woodland, and gardens, with four original buildings built between 1878 and 1902.
Two subsequent Eustis generations lived at the estate until it was sold to Historic New England in 2012. It now comprises eighty acres of land, with many of the original outbuildings.
Making a Museum
In 2012 the Eustis family sold the property to Historic New England. The family continued to live at the estate for two more years.
In 2014 Historic New England began an extensive restoration project to transform the home into a museum and study center. The Eustis Estate Museum opened to the public in May 2017.
The Eustis Estate, a largely intact late nineteenth-century country home, sits on more than eighty acres nestled at the base of the Blue Hills. The mansion, built in 1878, was designed by preeminent Boston architect William Ralph Emerson. Its dramatic stone and brick facade is framed by a lovely allée of maples. The allée was a central element of an 1879 Ernest Bowditch-designed landscape plan, which was only partially implemented.
To one side of the allée is a small stone powerhouse with an eyebrow roofline and the year 1902 embedded in the façade with white stones. Nearby is a small pond with garden beds of primarily native plants.
Down the hill, a potting shed survives. It was originally part of a large glass greenhouse that was demolished after World War I when it became too difficult to maintain. The potting shed and a nearby barn are now situated in a rough-cut field across from the mansion house. This bucolic scene reminds us of the estate’s agricultural past.
Two gardens provide spring and summer color to the estate grounds. A wide perennial border wraps around the southeast corner of the house and leads to expansive lawns that slope to a thick screen of hemlock and rhododendron. A second garden in front of the 1892 gatehouse marks the entrance to the estate and is visible to passersby.
See Head to Toe at the Eustis Estate.
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