A Passion Fulfilled for All to Enjoy

The boudoir in Mrs. Higgins' suite

Aldus left Worcester for law school at Washington's National University. In 1898, he married a Washington, D.C. woman and graduate of Vassar College, Edgenie Brosius. Back in Worcester, Milton Higgins bought the triple-decker next door, at 218 West Street, for his son, and Aldus and Genie moved in.

At about this time, the propriety of an educational institution carrying on a commercially successful business-the Washburn Shops-became increasingly controversial. The WPI trustees decided to discontinue the business of the shops, retaining but a small teaching role for it. Milton Higgins was asked to resign. With his friend, WPI mechanical engineering professor George Alden, the two left to continue the hydraulic elevator business they had started in the Washburn Shops.

At about that time, Milton Higgins became a partner in the Norton Company, with its new grinding-wheel business. By the time the Higgins House was being planned in the early 1920's, many changes had taken place in Aldus Higgins' life. His beloved wife Edgenie Brosius had died suddenly in 1911 at the age of 39, leaving him with two children, Elizabeth, 11, and Milton, 9. He continued living at 218 West Street, next door to his childhood home, and in 1914 married a Worcester woman, Mary Sprague Green, known as "May."

Soon after their marriage, Aldus bought a dozen acres behind the Higgins' homes on West Street, then a barren field, from the heirs of Harrison Bliss and the Worcester Art Museum, who had been donated the lad by the late Stephen Salisbury. Here Aldus and May planned their dream house.

Aldus had risen through various positions at Norton to become treasurer of the company. In 1914, his invention of the water-cooled furnace won him prestige worldwide. His work frequently took him to Europe, where his interest in art grew. He loved the old English castles with their turrets and moats. One in particular, Compton Wyngates, struck his fancy. To duplicate it in Worcester, in miniature, on the land where he had lived most of his life, became his passion.

Compton Wyngates, located in central England, in Warwickshire, was built in about 1525, after fortified castles were out of date, but it retained many of their features-a moat, secret hiding places, multiple stairways, and towers with crenated battlements. It had 80 rooms and 17 flights of stairs. In the 1790's it was ordered destroyed by the destitute Lord Northampton, but a servant saved it from ruin. All but 30 of its 275 windows were bricked over to avoid paying the window tax.

Some of the external features of Compton Wyngates are replicated in Higgins House : the multiplicity of ornametal brick chimneys, all different from one another; the half-timbered gables; the variety of building materials-brick, stone, wood and stucco.

Both homes combine many styles, perhaps because both used materials from other buildings. Aldus Higgins brought in pieces from around New England and from Europe, blending antique and contemporary, local and foreign, to create a patchwork quilt of a house.

The blueprints of the estate, now located in the WPI archives, are works of art in themselves. They show the time and care put into planning the estate by many architects, who worked closely with Higgins, making revisions according to his specifications. The plans cover the minute details of the house and grounds-window frames, mantels, brackets, lighting fixtures, ironwork, and placement of greenery.

Construction was begun in 1920, halted for a year due to financial recession, and "completed" in 1923. The plans, however, show that Higgins was never really fignished with his dream house, constantly remodeling and adding details.