Boody-Johnson House, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ca. 1880
Contributed by Pejepscot History Center
Description
A view of the Boody-Johnson House from College Street, looking west toward 256 Maine Street.
The house was built by Gervase Wheeler in 1849 for Henry Hill Boody, a graduate of Bowdoin College and Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Bowdoin from 1845 to 1854.
The house was expected to cost $2,500 but actually cost $5,000 plus $1,000 for the land.
Boody abandoned the struggle to live on a professor's salary and went to New York to pursue a successful career as a banker and railroad president. The home was sold in 1870.
The next two owners only owned it for a short time before it was sold to Henry Johnson, a member of Bowdoin's Class of 1874, and Professor of Modern Languages at Bowdoin from 1877 to 1918.
At Johnson's death, the house passed to his older daughter, Helen Johnson Chase, wife of Stanley P. Chase, Professor of English at Bowdoin from 1925 to 1951.
The college now owns the house, a wooden Gothic "cottage villa," which is a Historic Landmark.
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