The house at 57 Lexington Road in Concord, around 1895-1905. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.
The house in 2023:
The house in these two photos was built around 1817, making it relatively young compared to its colonial-era neighbors that line the north side of Lexington Road. It is an excellent example of Federal style architecture, and it was built for Captain John Adams, a shopkeeper who lived here with his family until 1831. According to the building’s MACRIS inventory form, the house was then divided into two separate units, with each one having a series of owners throughout the rest of the 19th century.
The top photo was taken around the turn of the 20th century, when it was owned by William and Marcella Brown. It was during their ownership that the house reverted to a single-family home, but they evidently never lived in it. Instead, they used it as a rental property, with tenants who included the prominent musician and music educator Thomas Whitney Surette. Thomas and his wife Ada lived here for the rest of their lives, and eventually purchased the house in the 1920s. She died in 1937, and Thomas died in 1941.
Today, more than a century after the top photo was taken, there is now a fence and a row of hedges in front of the house, and the house appears to have been expanded in the back. Otherwise, though, the exterior of the original part of the house looks essentially unchanged since the top photo was taken, and it stands as one of the many historic homes here in the center of Concord.