Featured Exhibit
The Horace Sears mansion, completed in the first years of the 20th century, was located on the north side of Boston Post Road in the 300 block. The landscape elements (walls, gates, steps, retaining walls, and fountains) still remain.
Horace Sears is shown here in an early theatrical production (second from the left). Sears was a founder of the Friendly Society, which was established in the mid-1880s to help with fundraising for a new First Parish Church.
Featured Exhibit
History of Haleiwa, the Sears Estate
Unlike many estate owners in Weston, Horace S. Sears grew up in the town,
the son of beloved First Parish minister Rev. Dr. Edmund Hamilton Sears. His formal education
ended with graduation from Weston High School in 1871 at age 16. The first of his many civic
contributions, accomplished the following year, was the organization of the Weston High School
Alumni Association. Sears began his career as a clerk and became a bookkeeper for a Boston ship
chandler selling heavy canvas “duck cloth.” His financial ability led to a steady rise
culminating in partnership in the textile firm of Wellington, Sears & Co. Sears was the
founder and first president of the First Parish Friendly Society, established in 1885 to help
raise money for a new church building. Later he was a major force behind the Village Improvement
Plan that created the Town Green. His financial contributions to the Town Hall of 1917 are
commemorated in the name of the upstairs “Sears Hall.”
In 1898, at age 43, Sears began the long process of developing his estate, Haleiwa. He employed
two of the most prominent landscape design firms of his day, Olmsted Brothers (for the initial
site layout, location of the driveway, and general planting plan) and later Arthur Shurcliff
(for the Italianate landscape elements including fountains, walls, stairs, terraces, and
balustrades still visible on the north side of Boston Post Road in the 300 block.) The first part
of the monumental Italian Renaissance Revival mansion, completed in 1901, was a 200-seat theatre
used for Friendly Society productions and other entertainments often open to the public.
The historical society's exhibit at the Weston Public Library (through August 30 and at Town Hall
from September 1-October 15) includes photographs of the mansion, demolished in the late 1940s,
as well as present day photos of landscape elements that still remain.
Entrance post for the Sears Estate, "Haleiwa" on Boston Post Road. The house was demolished after World War II.