Beauport Description

Beauport, the masterwork of interior decorator Henry Davis Sleeper (1878-1934), is often described as a “magical” place. Built in 1908 as a modest seaside retreat, Sleeper’s Gloucester, Massachusetts, home mushroomed by the 1920s into a forty-six-room maze whose scale, color, historical themes, and humor lend it a fairy tale quality. The secret to the magic was love. Sleeper surrounded himself on Eastern Point with a community of colorful, artistic, and devoted friends, at the center of which stood economist A. Piatt Andrew (1873-1936). It was this circle Sleeper sought to charm with his decorating fantasies, and Andrew above all. Smitten by this charismatic neighbor, Sleeper once wrote him: “I should never have taken the pains I did — nor would Beauport have existed — but for you.” Sleeper’s private quarters, tucked behind Beauport’s southern facade, faced Andrew’s home, Red Roof.