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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET commz.aiity: Form No: MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL CCWISSION LEXINGTON �29 Office of the Secretary, Boston Property Name: John Mason House Indicate each item on inventory form which is being continued below. SIGNIFICANCE The John Mason House has integrity of location, design, materials, and workmanship in its later First Period frame which embodies distinctive characteristics of form and construction eligible under Criterion C. The Mason House is one of four early 18th century houses in Lexington with quirk-beaded frames . In this house and in the Buckman Tavern ( c . 1709 ) , the bead is exceptionally wide at one inch. The Mason house may be part of a transitional pattern noted in other houses surveyed, where horizontal beams are quirk-beaded, but vertical posts are meagrely chamfered, or plain, perhaps because the posts were intended to be boxed from the beginning. The Mason house has an all principal rafter roof , a late First Period framing variant found primarily in Middlesex County. At least one other house surveyed with principal rafter roof also has the relatively rare longitudinal summer beams on the second floor . Further study of framing techniques in these Middlesex County houses with principal rafter roofs is likely to yield important information about the origins and rationale behind these rare framing alternatives . EXTERIOR DESCRIPTION The John Mason house is a two and one half story structure with two story lean-to in the rear and a long ell , added in several building campaigns to the right-hand end. The original house, (the front left-hand portion of the current house, ) is a structure of modest scale, three bays wide and one bay deep, asymmetrical in plan. The clapboarded structure has Greek Revival vernacular exterior trim, a 20th century open porch at the center entrance, and two chimneys on the rear slope . The chimneys replaced an earlier central chimney in the early 19th century. MAJOR FIRST PERIOD FEATURES Evidence of First Period construction is found in the southeast room and in the southeast and southwest chambers . In the southeast room, only the east end girt is exposed. It has an inch-wide quirked bead. In the southeast and southwest chambers , the front and rear plates , the end and chimney girts and the longitudinal summer beams are all decorated with an inch wide quirked bead. Posts exposed in the rooms are boxed, but in a closet , one flared post displays a flat chamfer. -1- St- le to Inventory form at 1 :tom