Historic New England's Castle Tucker and Nickels-Sortwell House in Wiscasset will be open for free tours on Saturday, June 1 and Sunday, June 2 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.  Tours begin on the half hour. The last tour begins at 4 p.m. All tours are guided. Whether you are local or just visiting, this is a great opportunity to see these wonderful historic homes. For more information and a full calendar of summer programs, visit www.historicnewengland.org/.

Castle Tucker is an architecturally unusual mansion, dramatically seated on a hill overlooking the beautiful Sheepscot River. Built in 1807 and lived in by one family for almost 150 years, Castle Tucker takes the visitor back in time to the life of an upper middle class nineteenth century shipping family. After purchasing the house in 1858, wealthy Wiscasset shipping broker Captain Richard Tucker Jr. and his young wife, Mollie, redecorated it in Victorian fashion and added a three-story piazza and filled new barns with carriages and wagons.

Visitors see original interior decoration and furnishings as they were preserved by three generations of Tucker family women. Mollie and Richard raised five children here, but as the American economy fell more often than it rose in the late 19th century, so did the Tuckers’ fortunes. Tours include stories of relationships and issues drawn right from family letters.

The Tuckers survived both economic and emotional hard times, all while maintaining their public image of gentility and social prominence. Castle Tucker is located at 2 Lee Street in Wiscasset.

Just a few blocks away, visitors can hear and see a very different story. Nickels-Sortwell House is one of the most outstanding examples of high Federal style architecture north of Boston, a grand mansion built by a wealthy sea captain at the peak of Wiscasset’s prosperity in 1807.

After his early death, successful Cambridge industrialist and mayor, Alvin Sortwell, and his wife, Gertrude, ran the house as a hotel before its rescue in 1899.  Sortwell’s mother’s family had deep roots in Wiscasset, and the mansion became a much-loved family vacation house for the Sortwells and their six children for over fifty years. Both Gertrude and daughter, Frances, were dedicated to historic preservation and philanthropy.

Visitors hear stories and see photographs of a happy and carefree lifestyle when Wiscasset was a summer playground for privileged Gilded Age families.  In 1947, the house became Gertrude's and Frances’ principal residence where they lived until their deaths in 1956 and 1957.

The house is furnished with Sortwell antiques in the Colonial Revival style. Nickels-Sortwell House is located at 121 Main Street in Wiscasset.   

To learn more, visit www.historicnewengland.org.