Houses

15 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

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The house at 15 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, sometime in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The house in 2017:


This elegant house, completed in 1866, was part of the initial development of the Back Bay, and it also sits on an unusually wide lot, compared to most of its neighbors. Because of this wider lot, the architectural firm of Snell and Gregerson had much greater latitude in designing it, and they created a front facade that was completely symmetrical, with bow-front windows on either side of the front entrance, extending up all three floors. In this sense it is also different from the other homes, most of which were too narrow to allow for a symmetrical design, and it also had a different architectural style, contrasting with the brownstone, mansard-roofed Second Empire homes nearby.

The house was originally owned by William Dudley Pickman, a Salem native whose father, Dudley Leavitt Pickman, had been a partner in Silsbee & Pickman, one of that city’s leading merchants of the early 19th century. William took over his father’s interest in the company after his death in 1846, but in 1865 he moved to Boston, which had rapidly eclipsed Salem in importance as a commercial port by this point. He and his business partners owned a number of ships, and were primarily involved in trade with Calcutta and other ports in India. Both he and his wife Caroline were living here when the first photo was taken, and they remained here for the rest of their lives, until his death in 1890 and hers in 1898.

After Caroline’s death, the house was purchased by Oliver Ames, a member of the extremely wealthy Ames family. His great-grandfather, also named Oliver, had founded a shovel business in Easton, Massachusetts in the early 19th century. This became a particularly lucrative business in the middle of the century, when widespread railroad construction and the California Gold Rush both caused demand for shovels to skyrocket. Oliver’s grandfather, who was named Oliver Jr., inherited the shovel business, and also became the president of the Union Pacific Railroad during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, and his son Frederick, Oliver’s father, also became a railroad tycoon, serving as vice president of the Old Colony Railroad and a director of the Union Pacific. Frederick also built the Ames Building, Boston’s first skyscraper, and upon his death in 1893 some newspapers considered him to have been the wealthiest man in the state.

Oliver probably used much of his inherited wealth to buy this house for himself and his wife Elsie a few years after his father’s death. Not content to leave the house as it was, he hired the prominent architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge to remodel the house, including adding a fourth story for servants’ quarters. This was, of course, not the Ames’s only residence, as they also had a mansion in his hometown of North Easton and another one on the seashore in Beverly. Like his father, Oliver was involved in a variety of businesses, including serving as treasurer of the family’s shovel company. In addition, he was a director for a wide range of corporations, including General Electric, Western Union, and the Union Pacific Railroad.

Oliver Ames died in 1929, and this house was sold after Elsie’s death in 1945. Their other two homes in North Easton and Beverly were demolished soon after, but their Commonwealth Avenue residence was sold and converted into a school, the Boston Business Institute. It was subsequently owned by the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, and it was most recently sold in 2012 for $12.5 million. This was the most expensive home sold in Massachusetts that year, and the 15,000-square-foot building has been converted back into a single-family home. These renovations included removing the top floor that Ames had added, and restoring the balustrade on the roof. As a result, today the home hardly looks any different from its appearance nearly 150 years ago when the first photo was taken.

For more historical information on this house, see this page on the Back Bay Houses website.

17-19 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

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The houses at 17 and 19 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, sometime in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The houses in 2017:


These houses were built on a lot that had been purchased in 1866 by attorney William H. Gardiner. A member of a prominent Boston family, his father John Sylvester John Gardiner had been the rector of Trinity Church from 1805 to 1830, and William had studied law under Harrison Gray Otis in the early 1800s. He was nearly 70 when he purchased this property in the Back Bay, and he had his house built on the right side, at 17 Commonwealth. The house was completed in 1867, and that same year he sold the remaining two-fifths of the lot to Thomas C. Amory, who built his own house here on the left, at 19 Commonwealth.

Like Gardiner, Amory was an attorney, but he was also a poet, author, and historian who published a number of books in the 1870s and 1880s. His house here was completed in 1868, and it was designed by Henry Van Brunt, a young architect who later went on to become one of Boston’s leading architects of the era. It matches the Second Empire-style design of its neighbors, and although narrower than the surrounding homes, it is one story taller, with a fifth floor under the mansard roof.

Both Gardiner and Amory died in the 1880s, and these two houses went on to have a number of subsequent owners in the next few decades. Probably the most notable of these was William Phillips, who owned 17 Commonwealth from 1930 to 1942. Phillips was a diplomat whose career included serving as Assistant Secretary of State and Under Secretary of State, as well as ambassador to Belgium, Canada, and Italy. Because of the nature of his diplomatic work, though, he and his wife Caroline did not live here very much, and instead rented it out to other tenants.

Both of these houses are still standing today, although they have been modified over the years. In the early 1920s, the front entrance of 19 Commonwealth was lowered to the ground floor, the steps were removed, and the old doorway became a window. About a decade later, similar work was done to 17 Commonwealth, shortly after William Phillips purchased the property. Later in the 20th century, both houses were converted into condominiums, and today each house is divided into three individual units.

For more detailed historical information on these houses, see the Back Bay Houses website for 17 and 19 Commonwealth.

21-23 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

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The houses at 21 and 23 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, sometime in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The houses in 2017:


The easternmost block of Commonwealth Avenue, between Arlington and Berkeley Streets, was among the first to be developed in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Shortly after the land was filled, much of the block on the north side of the street was purchased in 1860 by merchant and Congressman Samuel Hooper, who built his own house at 25-27 Commonwealth, which is partially visible on the far left. Hooper sold the rest of the lots, including these ones, and in 1868 a pair of symmetrical Second Empire-style townhouses were built here. The homes match the architectural style of the rest of the street, and they are nearly identical to two other sets of houses at 41-47 Commonwealth.

The house on the left, number 23, was owned by Daniel Spooner, a former shipping merchant who later entered the textile industry, becoming treasurer of the Great Falls Manufacturing Company in New Hampshire. He only lived in this house for about a year, until his death in 1869, but his wife Elizabeth continued to live here until later in the 1870s. The house on the right, 21 Commonwealth, was owned by John A. Burnham, a manufacturer whose positions included serving as president of the Nashua Iron and Steel Company. He lived here until his death in 1884, and the house remained in his family until 1913.

Since then, both houses have seen a number of subsequent owners, but essentially nothing has changed in this scene. Both houses are still standing, as are the houses on either side of the photos, and Commonwealth Avenue continues to be one of the most desirable streets in Boston. Today, many of the historic townhouses have been converted into apartments or condominiums, including the house on the left at 23 Commonwealth, which is now a four-unit condominium building. The building on the right was converted into classrooms in the 1940s, and was used by several different school over the years before eventually being restored to a single-family home in the early 2000s.

For more detailed historical information on these houses, see the Back Bay Houses website for 21 and 23 Commonwealth.

41-47 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

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The four houses at 41, 43, 45, and 47 Commonwealth Avenue, sometime in the 1870s. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The houses in 2017:


In the mid-19th century, Boston was geographically small and very crowded, with very little undeveloped land. The population was continuing to grow, however, leading the city to embark on an ambitious civil engineering plan to fill in the Back Bay, a badly polluted tidal marsh along the Charles River. The project began in the late 1850s, and within a decade the neighborhood was already well on its way to becoming one of the city’s most exclusive residential areas.

Commonwealth Avenue, with its broad, tree-lined mall, was intended to be a centerpiece of the development, and house lots on the sunny north side were considered particularly desirable. This spot here, partway between Berkeley and Clarendon Streets, was purchased in 1869 by Elijah C. Drew, a merchant and president of the Eleventh Ward National Bank. Here, he built two identical pairs of symmetrical houses, with a Second Empire-style design that matched most of the other homes in the area.

Upon completion around 1869, Drew moved into the house at 41 Commonwealth Avenue, on the far right side, but he sold the other three homes. House number 43, second from the right, was sold to William T. Andrews, who purchased it for his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, John T. Clark. John was a partner in the crockery firm of Clark, Adams, and Clark, and he also served as chairman of the city’s Board of Aldermen. The house to the left, number 45, was sold to Elmer Townsend, a businessman who owned the New England Wax Thread Sewing Machine Company, and last house on the left, number 47, was also sold to a businessman, dry goods merchant Henry Blaney and his wife Mary.

None of the original families in these homes lived here for very long, and by the end of the 1870s all four had been sold. Over the next few decades, the houses has a variety of other residents, and in 1902 the house at 43 Commonwealth was demolished and replaced with a new house, designed by architect Julius A. Schweinfurth for Ashton R. Willard. This broke up the symmetry of the original set of four houses, and it also created an interesting contrast between the dark brownstones of the Victorian era and the much lighter building materials of the Classical Revival era.

When the first photo was taken, the surrounding lots had not been developed yet. These homes would be built later in the 1870s, and very little has changed since then. Aside from the replacement of the house at 43 Commonwealth, the only other significant change in this scene is the fifth floor atop 45-47 Commonwealth. These two houses had been purchased in 1963 and combined into a single apartment building, and a fifth-floor penthouse was added, replacing the original mansard roof. However, the building was renovated again in 2008, restoring the roof and making the fifth floor almost unnoticeable from the street.

For more detailed historical information on these houses, see the Back Bay Houses website for 41, 43, and 45-47 Commonwealth.

Henry B. Service House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 17 Washington Road in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


This house was built in 1896 for Henry B. Service, a bookkeeper who worked at the Springfield Envelope Company. He presumably purchased the house with his upcoming wedding in mind, because early the next year he married Alice M. Mullins, who worked as a dressmaker. The couple lived here in this house for about five years, and at some point Henry began working as a bookkeeper for a local fruit and produce company. However, he left this position during the summer of 1902, and evidently began using less scrupulous means of making money.

In late August, 1902, Henry was discovered to have swindled $6,000 from four Springfield banks by cashing checks with the forged signatures of two prominent Springfield men, Frederick C. Bill and W. C. Taylor. The forgeries were done so well that even these two had initially believed that the signatures were authentic, and the fraud was only discovered after closer examination. According to some newspaper accounts, Alice was also involved in the forgery, and was described as being critically ill as a result of the discovery.

Henry, however, fled the city before he could be arrested. It seems unclear whether Alice joined him, but Henry made his way to Santa Ana, California. Using the alias of M. B. Maynard, he began working for a water company, where he was soon charged with forging receipts. Fleeing again in late 1903, he made it as far as Ogden, Utah, where he was arrested, returned to California, and convicted of forgery. Alice, in the meantime, appears to have avoided prosecution, and by the 1910 census she was living in a different house in Springfield with her mother and several of her siblings.

Following Henry’s hasty departure from Springfield, his house was sold, and by 1910 it was owned by Joseph N. Herrick, who lived here with his wife Eleanor, their daughter Ada, and Joseph’s aunt Caroline. Joseph died sometime before the next census, though, and by 1920 Eleanor and Ada were living elsewhere in Forest Park. In the meantime, this house was purchased by Clarence Bacon, the treasurer and co-founder of the Bacon and Donnovan Engine Company, which manufactured agricultural machinery. In 1920, he was 51 years old, and he was living here with his wife Rose and their three teenaged children, Doris, Rosalind, and Norval.

The revolving door of residents in this house continued by the 1930 census, when it was being rented to insurance agent Oliver Heyman, his wife Susan, and their four children. Originally from West Virginia, Heyman was general agent for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, and he lived here until sometime around the time when the first photo was taken. However, it was then sold again, to Thomas W. McCarthy, a salesman who lived here with his elderly parents, his sister, and his sister’s husband.

In the nearly 80 years since the first photo was taken, there have been a few changes to the house. Like many of the other homes in Forest Park, the decorative balustrade over the front porch is long gone, but the most significant change is the asbestos siding, which replaced the original wood clapboards in the mid-20th century. However, the overall appearance of the house has not changed significantly, and along with the rest of the neighborhood it is now part of the Forest Park Heights Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

Thornton W. Burgess House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 61 Washington Road in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


This house was built in 1896 on the street that was, at the time, named Hawthorne Place. Soon renamed Jackson Street and then Washington Road, it was one of the many new roads in the Forest Park Heights development, which was transforming a sparsely-settled section of the city into an upscale residential neighborhood. The first owner of this house was Faxon E. Nichols, a bookkeeper who purchased the property when he was in his early 20s, around the same time that he married his wife, Nellie. By the 1900 census, they were living here with another couple, William and Rose Baird, while also renting space to two young boarders.

Within a few years, the Nichols family had moved elsewhere in Forest Park, and this house was sold to Thornton W. Burgess, a 31-year-old editor who would go on to become a prominent children’s author. Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Burgess came to Springfield as a young man in the 1890s, where he became an assistant editor at the Phelps Publishing Company. For a time, he and his mother Frances were lodgers at 10 Cornell Street, but in 1905 he married Nina Osborne and purchased this house. They lived here with Frances, and like the previous owners they also rented part of the house to another family. However, Nina died just a year later, at the age of 24, from complications after the birth of their only child, Thornton Jr.

It was here in this house that Burgess began creating bedtime stories for his son. He subsequently began writing down these stories, which formed the basis for many of his children’s books. The first of these, Old Mother West Wind, was published in 1910, and introduced the character of Peter Rabbit. Many more books followed, along with thousands of newspaper columns that he would write over he next 50 years. He lived in this house for nearly his entire literary career, until finally moving out in 1955. During this time, he was also active as a naturalist and conservationist, and these themes were frequently found throughout his stories.

In 1911, a year after his first book was published, he remarried to Fannie P. Johnson. She was also a widow, and she moved into this house with two children of her own. They were still living here more than 25 years later, when the first photo was taken, but by this point Thornton’s literary success had enabled him to purchase a second home in nearby Hampden. Built in the early 1780s, his Hampden house was already nearly 150 years old when he bought the property in 1925, and it served as his secondary home for many years. However, Fannie died in 1950, and later in the decade Thornton left this house in Springfield and moved to Hampden permanently, where he died in 1965 at the age of 91.

Coincidentally, Burgess is not the only world-renowned children’s author who lived in the Forest Park neighborhood. A year after Burgess purchased this house in 1905, two-year-old Theodor Geisel and his parents moved into a house about a half mile away from here, on Fairfied Street. The future Dr. Seuss was much younger than Burgess, and their writing careers would only partially overlap, but they did both live here in the Forest Park neighborhood until 1925, when Geisel left to enter college. Today, both houses are still standing, and are now contributing properties in the Forest Park Heights Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.