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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Commtmity. Form No: <br /> MASSACHUSETTS HI STORI CAL CU MI SS I ON y, <br /> Office of the Secretary, Boston <br /> Property Nam:1948 Massachusetts Ave <br /> Indicate each item on inventory form which is being continued below. <br /> HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE <br /> This house is not on the 1853 map. Originally built as a Mansard, in the <br /> last quarter of the nineteenth century and in the early 1900s was lived in by <br /> Richard D. Blinn and his family. On the 1889 map it is listed in the name of <br /> Mrs. R.D. Blinn. <br /> Mr. Blinn was a railroad executive and at one time was the president of <br /> the Lexington and West Cambridge Railroad. He seems to have departed Lexington <br /> in the late 1800s and he died in 1906 in Chicago. However, his family stayed <br /> on in the house and his wife and two unmarried daughters ran this house as a <br /> boardinghouse for many years. Mr. Blinn had acquired considerable property in <br /> the area behind his home on what is now Belfry Terrace and Forest Street, and <br /> other isolated parcels of land. He organized the Belfry Hill Stock Farm with <br /> the intention of developing his land with house lots and houses. He was not <br /> successful. <br /> Architect William Roger Greeley bought the house in 1925 and altered the <br /> mansard roof into its present configuration. <br /> S. Lawrence Whipple, 1984 <br /> Staple to Inventory form at bottom <br />