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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 36 SHIRLEY STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 2264 ❑ 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. 36 Shirley Street occupies a small flat lot with narrow front and side setbacks. Maintained chiefly in lawn, the property also contains a paved driveway at the left side of the house and a concrete sidewalk between the street and the front entrance. The building consists of a 1 '/2 story main block with a rear ell and a detached garage. The three by two bay main block rises from a fieldstone foundation to a front gable roof with emphatic gable returns and a chimney centered on the left slope of the roof. Walls are clad with what appear to be asphalt shingles; wood trim survives at the roof eaves and raking fascia. Windows typically have long 2/2 double-hung sash on the first floor and shorter 2/2 sash on the upper floor, with narrow band molding. On the fagade, an extremely offset entrance comprises a single-leaf door, a low hip roof supported on square posts, and wood steps and railings with square balusters. The right side elevation has irregular fenestration of varied sizes and types and a continuous wall plane spanning the main block and gabled rear ell. A bulkhead door to the basement is contained within poured concrete walls. The asymmetrical left side elevation has two widely spaced windows on the first floor of the main block and one a small gabled wall dormer. The rear ell has a porch similar to the front entrance near the center of its left side wall, and one small 6/6 window to each side on each floor. A second floor porch is recessed on the back elevation of the ell, displaying a shingled half-wall and a slender square corner post. The garage at the back left corner of the lot is 1 story high with a side gabled roof and two individual vehicle bays at the street facade. It is constructed of concrete block. 3 Shirley Street is an unusual survivor of modest late 19th century housing in Lexington. Although it has little in the way of identifiable style, the building is notable for its intact, modest form; unusually tall first floor windows; and prominent front and side entrance porches. 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. Shirley Street appears on the maps between 1898 and 1906; a handful of buildings, mostly along the south side, were standing along it in the latter year. All but one lot was developed by 1927, when the streetscape contained ten buildings (four of them side-by-side duplexes) and six garages. The house at 36 Shirley 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. George F. Tewksbury, a farmer who owned the land in this area in 1898 and 1906, is credited with developing the Hill Street/Tewksbury Street/Shirley Street neighborhood. 36 Shirley Street may appear on the maps as early as 1906; it is clearly here by 1927, with the garage. (The 1927 shows a full- length porch across the front of the building.) The first known occupants of the house are Harry T. Flanders, a salesman, and his wife Mabelle P. (1922). By 1930, Harry and his family were living in Arlington, and he was proprietor of a stationery store. In 1935, Joseph J. Ferry, a bus driver, and his wife Gertrude are identified here, followed by Frank Morelli, a truck driver, and his wife Ruth A. in 1936. The house apparently became two-family around this period. The Morellis remained here in 1945, Continuation sheet I