Chase House, at the corner of Court and Washington Street, is one of the grandest Georgian structures at Strawbery Banke. The Chase family, Portsmouth merchants, lived in the house for over a century.

Chase House was built about 1762 by John Underwood, a mariner from Kittery. Underwood sold the house to his in-laws, the Dearings, also of Kittery, but four years later repurchased it from them at a considerably higher price. This may have been when much of the finish work was done on the house, especially the elaborately carved woodwork, both inside and out. Ebenezer Dearing was a noted local shipcarver.

In 1766, only three weeks after repurchasing the house, Underwood mortgaged it to Barlow Trecothick and John Thomlinson, London merchants and English agents for the province of New Hampshire. This transaction probably was influenced by John Wentworth who was in England at the time. Wentworth was a close associate of Trecothick and had just been appointed the new governor of New Hampshire. He may have had his eye on this house as a possible governor's residence. Barlow Trecothick had been a prime mover in the repeal of the Stamp Act that same year, and was shortly to become Lord Mayor of London.

The house remained part of the Trecothick estate until 1799 when it was purchased by Stephen Chase, a successful Portsmouth merchant who had already been living in the house for a number of years with his family.

Stephen Chase, like his father, was a graduate of Harvard College. His wife Mary was related to the famous Pepperrells of Kittery merchants long involved in the West India trade. Chase's own business was located on the large Portsmouth Pier at the foot of State Street. Stephen Chase was a substantial member of the community and a public minded citizen and there is no reason to doubt a family tradition reported in Sibley's Harvard Graduates that George Washington, on his visit to Portsmouth in 1789, attended a reception in this house and kissed the three small Chase girls on his departure.

When Stephen Chase died in 1805 his widow and two sons, William and Theodore, both merchants, continued to live in the house. The last Chase to live here was William's widow, Sarah Blunt Chase, who died in 1881. At that time Theodore Chase's son, George, a railroad magnate and philanthropist of Boston, bought the house and donated it as a home for orphaned children. When the needs of the Chase Home for Children outgrew the house early in the twentieth century it was purchased as a residence by Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Her husband's boyhood home, just two doors down the street, had been opened as a memorial to him only a few years before.

Architecturally Chase House is one of the richer dwellings in Portsmouth. The building's most unusual features are its gambrel roof, quoined corners and beautiful doorways. The front doorway is capped by a segmental or curved pediment reminiscent of that of the much earlier (1716) Warner House which stands outside the museum just two blocks away on Daniel Street. The door is framed by fluted pilasters topped by delicately carved Corinthian capitals, and supported by paneled pedestals in the early Georgian manner. The side door has a triangular pediment and fluted pilasters with Ionic capitals. Nowhere is the classical influence on Georgian architecture better illustrated.

The interior of Chase House boasts even greater architectural sophistication. Most remarkable is the intricately carved frieze over the fireplace in the parlor, the front room to the east. This panel, carved from white pine, shows the painstaking work of a master craftsman, perhaps Ebenezer Dearing. Many of the architectural features of the parlor, full-length sliding shutters, wainscoting, denticulated mantelpiece and cornice, and the arches on either side of the fireplace, show that every attention was paid to detail.

In 1807 James Nutter, a joiner who was at that time "the head of his craft" in Portsmouth, boarded at Chase House. Nutter appears to have exchanged labor for rent, for it was at this time that the dining room was remodeled in the newer Federal style. The chaste simplicity of the reeded wainscoting, shallow cornice, and mantelpiece contrasts sharply with the bold and elaborate Georgian woodwork in the parlor, and provides an excellent chance to compare taste before and after 1800.

The stairway balustrade, which terminates at a beautifully carved newel post, is composed of balusters of three types, a pattern typical of Portsmouth. The two front upstairs chambers contain excellent woodwork, with especially wide panels over the fireplaces.

Chase House is furnished in close accordance with inventories taken in 1805 at the death of Stephen Chase, and fifteen years later when Mary Chase died. These documents, listing the furniture and objects found in each room, provide a good idea of how the family used each room and reveal the living patterns of the people in the house.

Some of the disclosures are surprising. In general, much less furniture and fewer carpets and curtains were found in the house than is often supposed for the period. Also the furniture arrangement was more formal than previously believed. One of the best examples is the parlor which contained little more than rows of straight-back chairs along the sides of the room. This room was used primarily for entertaining on special occasions. Paintings of other house interiors from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries indicate that this was common practice.

The Chase family is one of the best documented in the neighborhood due to an extensive manuscript collection owned by Strawbery Banke. These documents provide additional glimpses into the lives of various members of the family. Chase House was restored through the generosity of Miss Nellie McCarty.