Houses Archives - Page 111 of 129

Mount Vernon Place, Boston

March 21, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Mount Vernon Place, seen from Joy Street in Boston around 1860. Image taken by Josiah Johnson Hawes, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Mount Vernon Place in 2105:

Mount Vernon Place is a short street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, located just west of the Massachusetts State House. It was once a full block long, and was developed in the 1830s on land that had once been owned by John Hancock and his family. As the 1860 photo shows, the street had a small park on the left side and eight townhouses on the right, and at the end of the street was the State House. The five houses closest to the State House were demolished in the 1910s when the building was expanded, and today only the three in the foreground survive. These three were built around 1833-1834, and have been largely unaltered on the exterior since then. They are among the many historic early 19th century townhouses that have become a defining feature of Beacon Hill, and they form a part of the Beacon Hill Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

First Harrison Gray Otis House, Boston

February 9, 2018March 19, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The First Harrison Gray Otis House, on Cambridge Street in Boston, on October 23, 1911. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

The house in 2015:

At the end of the 1700s, Cambridge Street was lined with the homes of wealthy Bostonians, including lawyer and politician Harrison Gray Otis. His house was designed by Charles Bulfinch and completed in 1796 while Otis was serving as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Later that year, he was elected to Congress, where he served two terms in the House of Representatives.

The house is an excellent example of Federal architecture, designed by one of the most prominent American architects of the era, but Otis only lived here for less than five years. In 1800, Bulfinch designed a second home for him, on Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill, but again he only lived there for a few years before moving into his third and final Bulfinch-designed home in 1806, on Beacon Street across from Boston Common. Likewise, Otis changed jobs almost as frequently as he changed houses. After two terms in the House of Representatives, he served in the Massachusetts state legislature from 1802 to 1817, including as the state Senate President for several of those years. From 1817 to 1822, he served in the U.S. Senate, and then from 1829 to 1832 he finished his political career as the mayor of Boston.

All three of his houses are still standing today, but the first one here on Cambridge Street has seen a number of changes, as the two photographs show. During the 19th century it became a boarding house, and a one-story addition was built for storefronts. Other more minor alterations included the removal of the original Palladian window and the lunette window above it, and the addition of dormers on the roof, a storm porch at the front door, and a bay window on the second floor.

A few years after the first photo was taken, the house was purchased by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, which is now called Historic New England. They restored it and undid many of the 19th century alterations, and in 1924 the house was moved back 40 feet to its current location to allow for Cambridge Street to be widened. Since then, it has been restored further, and aside from serving as Historic New England’s headquarters, it is also open to the public as one of their many historic house museums. It is next to another historic landmark, the Old West Church, which was built just a few years after the house and can be seen on the right side of both photos.

Parkman House, Boston

February 9, 2018March 17, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Parkman House at Bowdoin Square in Boston, in 1880. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Bowdoin Square in 2015:

The Bowdoin Square area was once a prominent residential neighborhood, and these two attached granite houses were built around 1816 by Samuel Parkman, a wealthy merchant who hired Charles Bulfinch to design them. Samuel Parkman’s daughter Sarah lived in the house to the left, along with her husband, Edward Blake, Jr., who died in 1817, shortly after they moved in. Sarah lived here until her death in 1847. Parkman himself lived in the house to the right until he died in 1824, and another daughter, Elizabeth, lived here with her husband, Robert Gould Shaw, until around 1840.

Both the Parkman and Shaw families were prominent in Boston’s 19th century upper class. Samuel Parkman’s grandson was Francis Parkman, a noted author and historian, and Robert Gould Shaw was one of the wealthiest men in the city. When he and his wife left this house in 1840, they moved to the other side of Beacon Hill, to a house overlooking Boston Common at the corner of Beacon and Joy Streets. By 1846, he had an estimated net worth of a million dollars, much of which he had inherited from his father-in-law. Shaw’s grandson and namesake, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, would go on to achieve fame as the commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first all-black units to fight in the Civil War.

The two houses stood here at Bowdoin Square until the early 1900s, when they were demolished and replaced with a commercial building. This building is no longer standing either, nor is anything else from the 1880 photo. The entire West End section of the city, aside from a few buildings, was demolished in the late 1950s as part of an urban renewal project, similar to what was done at nearby Scollay Square around the same time, Even the road networks were changed, and today Bowdoin Square bears essentially no resemblance to its earlier appearance.

Beacon Street from Arlington Street, Boston

March 5, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking west on Beacon Street from the corner of Arlington Street, in 1870. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Beacon Street in 2015:

The houses on the right side of this scene are the oldest buildings in the Back Bay, dating back even before the large-scale landfill project had begun. The origins of Beacon Street date back to 1818, when construction began on a dam across the Back Bay, which at the time was a tidal marsh connected to the Charles River. The dam used the power of the tides to operate factories nearby, but it also had an added benefit of serving as a second route in and out of Boston, by extending Beacon Street across it.

The dam, which was completed in 1821, turned out to be a failure, and by the 1850s there were plans in the works to fill the Back Bay and expand Boston’s land area. The houses here on the right side of the street were built around 1856 on land that had already been filled; they can be seen in the distance in the first photo in this post, which was taken from the top of the State House in 1857. By the time the 1870 photo above was taken just 13 years later, the landfill project was well underway, and both sides of Beacon Street had been developed as far as Dartmouth Street, three blocks in the distance.

Nearly 150 years after the first photo was taken, many of the buildings from the first photo are still standing, including most of the 1850s houses to the right. The only major change in the foreground is the pair of houses on the far right, numbered 100-102 Beacon Street. Half of the building was demolished in 1924 to build the apartment building that stands there today. The other half at 102 Beacon is still standing, although it was altered beyond recognition in 1938, when it was converted into an 18-unit apartment building with a new facade. However, the next seven houses in a row, numbered 104-116 Beacon Street, also date back to around 1856. They are all virtually identical, and 160 years later all seven are still standing, essentially unchanged on the exterior. The use of the buildings has changed, though; today, all seven, along with the neighboring properties at 102 and 118 Beacon Street, are owned by Fisher College and are used for classrooms and dormitories.

For more information on the history of these houses, see the Back Bay Houses website.

50 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

March 1, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The house at the southwest corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Berkeley Street in Boston, sometime in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The scene in 2015:

The house in the first photo was built around 1868, and for many years it was the home of dry goods merchant John Hogg. He and his wife Emma lived her from when it was built until around 1892, and the subsequent owners, Frank and Mary Going, operated it as a hotel called The Holland. Like many other hotels of the era, it functioned more as a boarding house than as a place for transient visitors, and it continued in this capacity until 1925, when it and the neighboring 52 Commonwealth were demolished. They were replaced with the current building,which has 40 apartments that were converted into condominiums in 1985.

Although the house from the first photo is no longer standing, the other two buildings beyond it have survived. The church is the Central Congregational Church, which was built in 1867 and is now the Church of the Covenant. Beyond the church is the distinctive facade of the former Museum of Natural History building at the corner of Berkeley and Newbury Streets. Built in 1863, it is among the oldest public buildings in the Back Bay, and after many years as the home of Bonwit Teller, it is now a Restoration Hardware gallery.

For more information on the history of the house at 50 Commonwealth Ave, please see this post on the Back Bay Houses website.

29-33 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

February 29, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The houses at 29-33 Commonwealth Avenue, just west of Berkeley Street, sometime in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The view in 2015:

These three townhouses at the northwestern corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Berkeley Street were built around 1863, on land that had been recently filled in the Back Bay. The neighborhood was designed from the start as a wealthy, exclusive area; Boston had feared that its upper class would flee the crowded city for the suburbs, so the Back Bay project was intended to encourage rich Bostonians to remain in the city.

When the first photo was taken, all three of these homes were owned by wealthy families. To the left, 33 Commonwealth Avenue was the home of Charles H. Dalton, a merchant and businessman who served as the president of several different businesses. He also served as the treasurer of MIT, which was just a couple blocks away at the time, and as president of Massachusetts General Hospital. The house in the middle was owned by another businessman, Joseph Sawyer, who owned textile factories. Both men died shortly after the turn of the 20th century, and eventually the two buildings were converted into apartments. It is hard to see both in the 2015 photo, but they are still standing today, and have since been combined to create a 7-unit condominium building.

Unlike its neighbors to the left, the house at 29 Commonwealth Avenue did not even survive to the end of the 19th century. It was originally the home of textile mill owner Joshua Stetson, and after his death the house was sold to Elizabeth Bowditch in 1870. She was the widow of Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, a lawyer who was the son of noted mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch, and she lived here until her death in 1892. The house was then sold and demolished, and replaced with a 9 story, 26 unit apartment building in 1894. It was completed before there were any height restrictions in the Back Bay, so it is substantially taller than most other 19th century buildings in the area. In the 1920s, its apartments were converted into offices, and it has remained an office building ever since.

The church to the right just behind 29 Commonwealth Avenue is the First Church of Boston. It was built in 1867 at the corner of Marlborough Street, and it was mostly destroyed in a fire in 1968. The steeple and parts of the facade were saved, though, and they were incorporated into the design of the current building.

For more information, visit the Back Bay Houses website, which has more details and photographs of 29 and 31-33 Commonwealth Avenue and the First Church in Boston.