Meet Marblehead Architecture Heritage & Tours

Aug 21, 2025 | Activities, Historic

Photo: Judy Anderson, her husband Tom Allen and her sons Erland and Erik.

Tell us about your business and why you started it. I started Marblehead Architecture Heritage & Tours 15 years ago to share information about Marblehead’s architectural, social, and cultural history, mainly 1600s and 1700s, through illustrated public programs and walking tours about specific or timely aspects of Marblehead’s history, often to benefit other local organizations. I also provide individually scheduled walking tours for hire for visitors and residents. Even locals usually learn something new on my tours. For 16 years after 1993, when the incomparable Bette Hunt retired, I worked at the Marblehead Museum as its first year-round full-time staff member and its first administrative director. For a decade after 2000, I had the privilege of serving as the first and only specifically designated curator of the superlative Colonel Jeremiah Lee Mansion in the Museum’s century-long ownership and preservation of that exceptional house, one of America’s best from that time. After that, I wrote a book about the Lee Mansion’s spectacular and unique original hand-painted 1760s mural papers plus 7 patterns of colorful block-printed wallpapers that apparently were originally in the house. 

What is the best piece of business advice you’ve ever received? After I tried twice to set up Marblehead Architecture Heritage as a non-profit, I was dissuaded by local professionals / potential board members who warned about the complex financial issues and other considerations. So instead, I try to benefit other organizations through tours or talks on specific topics, or present timely public programs for non-profits like the Marblehead Museum or Arts Association, local churches, or others in this or other communities that might be interested, so they can receive much or all of the programs’ financial benefit. Privately scheduled walking tours enable me to give back to the local history community also, sometimes through periodic donations (even if small) to the Marblehead Museum and occasional gifts of Marblehead items or ephemera that appear for sale at auctions or elsewhere.

What is your favorite spot in Marblehead, and why? Kayaking with my husband or sons around Maverick’s Island in Maverick’s Cove. Those were the first English names for Gerry’s Island (Thomas Gerry, the father of Elbridge, mid-1700s) and Little Harbor. They were referred to as “Maverick’s” because Marblehead’s town founder, Moses Maverick, was the island’s first English owner, from 1635 to 1675, according to research by Robert Booth. 

What is something people would be surprised to learn about you? After grad school at USC and a ten-year art museum career in Los Angeles and at the MFA Boston, I moved to Marblehead in 1992 because of its rare pre-Revolutionary architecture and compelling social history. Since then, I’ve given countless illustrated talks at historical organizations regionally and up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and at symposia in several states, including twice at Colonial Williamsburg (in 2000 and 2010). My high point was giving an illustrated talk at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 2001. I am married to a wonderful but quiet man who works in the tech field. I also have two married sons, ages 38 and 40, who live in Colorado and on California’s Central Coast. They grew up in the Sierra mountains near Yosemite with their wonderful dad and spent summers with me for several years in Marblehead or travelled to a variety of places with my husband and me. For two decades through their college graduations, I spent holidays, long weekends and good times with them in California eight times a year. They love hiking, backpacking, skiing, mountain cycling sports, and surfing. (History, not so much).

For More Information:
Marblehead Architecture Heritage & Tours
Judy Anderson
MarbleheadTours.com
MarbleheadTours.com/2025_Anderson_Events