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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 23 COTTAGE STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 0 2212 ❑ 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. 23 Cottage Street occupies a small, flat corner lot. The building is set to one side of its lot, with a modest front setback and narrow setbacks on the left side and rear. The lot is maintained chiefly in lawn, with a paved patio and walkway between the left side of the house and the street, and a large paved parking area on the right side of the lot. The building consists of a simple rectangular block with a modest cross-gabled pavilion on its left side. The rectangular main block rises 2 '/2 stories from a granite rubble foundation to a front gable roof with no gable returns. An interior chimney is set at the ridgeline in the center of the building. Walls are clad with artificial siding and trim. Windows are typically 1/1 double hung replacement sash with no trim. The two bay fagade contains an offset entrance porch and a one-story angled bay window on the first floor,joined by a continuous hip roof. Decorative metal posts support the porch roof, and similar railings line the edges of the wood deck and concrete steps to the side. Two windows are symmetrically set at the second floor, and one window is centered in the attic level. The right side elevation of the house is asymmetrically composed, with one window on the first floor and two widely spaced windows on the second floor. The left side elevation is distinguished by a two-story gabled pavilion towards the back, casement windows on the first floor and a single window centered in the second floor. A small gabled vestibule with a single leave door facing the front of the property projects from the first floor. The back elevation features one window centered in the half-story, two symmetrically placed windows at the second floor, and a one double-hung window and a triplet of casement windows on the first floor. 23 Cottage Street is a relatively substantial house in its modest neighborhood. Although it has lost its original siding, trim, and details, notable surviving features include its vertical massing and cross-gabled side pavilion, prominent corner location, and entrance/bay window combination. 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. Cottage Street is first depicted in the 1875 Beers atlas, a U-shaped road squeezed into the acute angle between Woburn Street and the Middlesex Central (later Boston & Maine) Railroad tracks. The railroad arrived in Lexington in 1845-46. By 1875, five buildings were already lined up along the long portion of Cottage Street that is parallel to Woburn Street. Many of the buildings on this streetscape were moved here from Massachusetts Avenue (when that thoroughfare was developed with more upscale houses in the mid 1916 century) and housed Irish immigrants who worked on the railroad. The undeveloped property now occupied by 23 Cottage Street was owned by Aaron P. Richardson (1791-1874), a successful blacksmith: in 1870 he owned real estate valued at$3,000. Richardson's property(bounded by Woburn and Cottage streets and the railroad tracks)was subdivided into 13 small parcels by 1898, when the present building first appears on the maps. In 1906, W. O'Hern (possibly a misspelling of Ahearn) is named at this property; no information is presently known about this owner. The first known residents at this address were Bartholomew D. Callahan and his wife Elizabeth from at least 1910 through 1922. Bartholomew worked variously as a teamster, engine wiper, gardener, laborer, and machine operator in a pipe fitting plant. Renters, the Callahans occupied the house with their seven children and a boarder in 1910. Subsequent residents included Continuation sheet I