Emma L. Lane
Lane, Emma Louise Gildersleeve, 1872-1954
http://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w63z12n4 I.S.12/21/2017
On March 27, 1905, 53 Marlborough was purchased from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard College by Emma Louise (Gildersleeve) Lane, the wife of Gardiner Martin Lane. They previously had lived at 341 Beacon.
After acquiring the house, the Lanes significantly remodeled it, including adding the library extension at the western side of the house (where there previously had been a garden). The remodeling probably was designed by Emma Lane’s brother, New York architect Raleigh Colson Gildersleeve. At about the same time, he designed the Lanes’ home in Manchester, The Chimneys.
Gardiner Lane was a partner in the investment banking firm of Lee, Higginson & Co. In 1907, he resigned from the firm to become President of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Their daughter, Katharine Ward Lane, lived with them. She was a noted sculptress.
Gardiner Lane died in October of 1914. Emma and Katharine Lane continued to live at 53 Marlborough. On March 6, 1924, Emma Lane transferred the property into Katharine Lane’s name.
During the mid-1920s, Emma and Katharine Lane were living elsewhere and 53 Marlborough was the home of attorney Pierpont Langley Stackpole and his wife, Laura (McGinley) Knowles Stackpole. Her children by her marriage to Lucius James Knowles — Lucius, Jr., and Sarah Montgomery Knowles — lived with them. In 1924, they had lived at 314 Dartmouth.
The Stackpoles continued to live at 53 Marlborough during the 1926-1927 winter season, but by the next season had moved to 257 Commonwealth and 53 Marlborough was once again the home of Emma and Katharine Lane.
A June 25, 1941, Boston Globe “New England Sketchbook” article on the house indicated that, when the house was used for social occasions, “it is not the impressive front entrance that is used. No, a door to the left of it serves the many guests. Furthermore, it is a subterranean passageway, reminding one of old slave days when there was an underground railroad made up of just such tunnels. Less romantic in origin is this one, for it is perhaps because of the house having no back yard that this entrance exists.”
Katharine Lane married in November of 1947 to Fontaine Carrington Weems, a banker, and moved to New York City.
Emma Lane continued to live at 53 Marlborough until her death in September of 1954.
https://backbayhouses.org/53-marlborough/ I.S. 12/21/2017
