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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 116 BEDFORD STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 2188 ❑ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked,you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. 116 Bedford Street occupies a small rectangular lot on the main thoroughfare of Bedford Street. The building has modest front and side setbacks, with a straight paved driveway on the left side of the house. Maintained chiefly in lawn, the flat lot has a concrete walk between the front entrance and the sidewalk and three mature street trees across the front. The building consists of a 2 '/2 story L-shaped house and a detached garage. The house rises from a fieldstone foundation with deeply recessed joints and granite block quoins at the front corners to a front gabled roof; both the front and side gables have gable returns. Walls are sheathed with wood shingles and trimmed with a modest bed molding. Windows typically have 1/1 replacement sash with band molding. The facade of the front gable has a cantilevered pediment supported by a solid curved bracket on the right corner and a two-story rectangular bay window, flush with the plane of the pediment with a single window on each face. To the right of the bay window, the recessed wall plane has a single window on each floor, including a roughly square window with stained and leaded glass on the first floor. Occupying the corner between the front and side wings on the right side of the house is a hip roofed entrance vestibule, one story high with paired modern windows facing the street. Facing the side of the lot, the single leaf door has a bracketed gabled hood and poured concrete steps. On the second story is a large horizontal window with stained and leaded glass. The left side elevation is asymmetrically composed, with a one-story rectangular bay towards the back, surmounted by a steep hip roof and a modern sliding window unit, and a bay of double-hung windows towards the front. Located in the back left corner of the lot, a two bay garage has a front gable roof, wood shingle cladding, and plywood sheathing in the gable peak. Well maintained, 116 Bedford Street is a good example of turn-of-the-20th century suburban housing in Lexington. The house is notable for its L-shaped massing, pedimented front gable, two story bay window, and stained glass windows. Its original front porch has been removed. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local(or state)history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s)the owners/occupants played within the community. Bedford Street is an early roadway in Lexington, on the axis of a Native American trail system that was upgraded in the Federal period along with other radial highways through the town. The house at 62 Bedford Street represents the early period of suburbanization in Lexington, in which development along Bedford Street was sparked by the re-building of the roadway and the arrival of street railway service here at the turn of the 20th century. Assessors' records for this house show a construction date of 1898; historical records confirm its existence by 1910. Several buildings are located in the general vicinity of this house on the 1898 map, but#116 is not clearly identifiable. The existence of this particular house is more certain on the 1906 map, where it is labeled "C.K. Willey." Willey was proprietor of"The Leslie" in the town center, opposite Depot Square, where he also lived in 1899 and 1902. The first known resident of this address was Richard A. Clarke in 1910. A salesman in a grocery store, Clarke lived here in 1910 with his wife Hattie, son Kenneth, and lodgers Theodore and Howard Custance, both carpenters. (The Custance family were major builders in Lexington and other western suburbs for many years.) The house was subsequently occupied by Fred K. Moore (occupation unknown) and his wife Leona A. (1922) and was vacant in 1935. By 1945, the house was occupied by the D'Angelo family, who continued here through at least 1965. Family members Continuation sheet 2