kendall-road_0050 Enhanced Building Form

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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 50 KENDALL ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 W LEX.579 Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Based on fieldwork by Walter R. Wheeler and Neil Larson, 2021 It is difficult to assign a construction date to the moved house at 50 Kendall Road based on surviving architectural features and documentary history. The land can be traced back to a 1732 land transaction of Hezekiah Smith (1706-60), but the house may have been built for his son Joseph Smith who inherited the property after his death and nearer to the date of his marriage to Lucy Stone in 1765. Evidence within the house points to an initial construction date in the middle decades of the 18th century, with subsequent alteration campaigns in the 1830s, 1860s and 1988-1998. Recognizing the ambiguities inherent in this case, it is recommended that a construction date be confirmed by dendrochronology. The two-story timber frame single dwelling has a gable roof and what remains of a two-room center-chimney plan. It does not appear that it was built with or expanded by a lean-to in the rear; rather a two-story cross-gable kitchen wing was added at some later date. The five-bay front façade contains a center entrance flanked by closely-spaced pairs of windows widely separated from it. A pedimented architrave is an apparent invention added after the house was moved to its current address in 1988. The windows six-over-nine and six-over-six sash also are replacements. In typical 18th-century fashion, the second-story windows abut the shallow eave interrupting the frieze. Single windows are centered on the end walls at both levels. Due to the hillside topography of its new site, the story-and-a-half kitchen wing is elevated on a tall basement opening at grade on the north end. The entire basement under both the house and wing is constructed of formed concrete with stone facing where exposed. The fenestration of the wing has been altered on the first story, and an entrance on its east elevation. A porch with a trussed pediment appears to be a feature relocated with the house. On the opposite side, a one-story wing was added at the intersection of house and wing. The house was moved from its original site in two pieces, in October 1988. It was originally located at 29 Allen Street, about a mile-and-a-half away. In an odd setting, the present orientation of the building has its front elevation facing close to due south, presenting its rear sections to the street. A description of the building by Anne Grady on the existing MHC Building Form, written before it was moved, recorded the fact that the original central chimney mass of the house had been removed at an unknown date previous to 1984, when the house was surveyed. Its dimensions and original location in the plan remain discernable, however, due to the high survival rate of the structural elements that comprise the first-floor platform. The original windows and front door surround had also been replaced previous to that date. The original floor plan of the house consisted of two large parlors separated by a central bay containing a chimney mass, staircase, and entry lobby. A small chamber behind the chimney mass appears to also have been an original feature of the house; a portion of this space was taken up by a cupboard in the west wall of the east parlor; access to the chamber was from the west parlor. The purpose of this chamber is not known. It was, however, at a later point in time, accessible to the rear wing as well as the west parlor; evidence for a door in the north wall of this small room remains. The northeast corner post of the west parlor, typically aligned with the analogous post in the south wall, is displaced something more than one foot to the west and is located along the north wall of this chamber, rather than in the corner of the parlor, as seen in the other three corners of that room. The reason for this structural anomaly is not presently known. The east parlor was the more formal of the two, and has a paneled wall on its west side. A molded wainscot extends along its north wall. The presence of two doors in the west wall of the east parlor provides information with respect to the location of the stairs in the center bay and indicates that they rose from west to east. The northern of the two doors in the west wall of the east parlor originally gave access to the basement stairs which were located under the upper run of the main staircase. It may be, as in other houses examined in Lexington, that the original entrance to the basement was located under the upper run of the staircase and accessed via a door in the lobby. An analogous alteration was affected at the Captain William Smith house, in nearby Lincoln.