How many times have you driven, biked or walked up Concord’s Pleasant Street and thought, “What’s the history of that old, large, and handsome brick building set back from the south side of the road?”
You may already know that it’s the Pleasant View Home, now an assisted living facility operated by Genesis Health, the largest nursing home operator in the United States, and you may know from the news that the financially-strapped company is selling off some of the homes it operates around the country, including Pleasant View and others in Concord.
So when and why was Pleasant View built? The answer begins with the birth of Mary Baker Eddy in nearby Bow in 1821 (maybe you’ve seen the highway marker along N.H. Route 3-A). According to Crosscurrents of Change: Concord, N.H. in the 20th Century, Mary Baker Eddy was plagued with chronic illness. In her 40s, she read accounts in the Bible of Jesus performing miracles, and she experienced a “profound healing.” She went on to found the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston and wrote what amounts to its textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.”
A crowd gathers to listen to Mary Baker Eddy speak from the balcony at her Pleasant View home around the turn of the century. Photograph courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society (photo of original Pleasant View circa 1908)
Crosscurrents of Change picks up the story from there: “When Eddy returned to Concord as a wealthy church executive, she bought a home on the corner of School and State Streets which she turned into Christian Science Hall; there she preached and held meetings.” After giving the property to the church trustees, and donating the princely sum of $100,000, the home was demolished and in its place rose the present-day First Church of Christ, Scientist, Concord. “Along with the Church, Eddy acquired a farm with a large Victorian home on Pleasant Street which would later be remodeled into a Christian Science ‘retreat home’ and later (in 1926, 16 years after Eddy’s death) replaced by a large brick structure.”
That’s the “Pleasant View” you see today as you traverse Pleasant Street. It operated as a Christian Science retreat and retirement home into the 1970s when it was sold by the Christian Science Church to the State of New Hampshire which remodeled it to be part of the New Hampshire Hospital. With changes to mental health care and the downsizing of New Hampshire Hospital, the State sold Pleasant View to the McKerley family, which already owned and operated the Harris Hill nursing home in Concord and was expanding. The McKerley family renovated again, turning Pleasant View into an outstanding example of what a nursing home and assisted living home could be. A number of years down the road and the McKerley family sold its nursing homes and assisted living homes to the then-burgeoning Genesis Heath.
Now the page on this Concord landmark is poised to turn again. Whatever it becomes, it will always be known as Pleasant View, and will be admired for its pleasant view, to travelers along Concord’s Pleasant Street.
A brief story about Pleasant View and Mary Baker Eddy can be found on pages 164-165 of Crosscurrents of Change: Concord, N.H. in the 20th Century published in 2011 by the Concord Historical Society and available for sale at Gibson’s Book Store in downtown Concord.
