Otis House
Upper Hall
Entertaining Moves Upstairs
The Otises entertained guests on the second floor as well as the first, so the hallway to the second floor had to be equally as elegant as the first floor. There is fine furniture, expensive paintings on the walls, very high ceilings, and impressively detailed plaster work. The Palladian window at the end of the hall is quite grand. Instead of today’s view of urban and commercial Cambridge Street, the Otises second floor window overlooked a pastoral and undeveloped Beacon Hill. The new State House had just been built in 1795 and its dome would have been visible from the window.
