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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET TOWN ADDRESS LEXINGTON 32 WOODLAND RD. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 H� 2170 ❑ 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. The Ada Govan House was built in 1930 as a center-entrance Colonial Revival dwelling, one of many such houses built in Lexington in the early to mid 20th century. The front portion, five bays wide and 2 1/2 stories high under a gable roof, began as a saltbox structure. The house is sheathed with shingles above a cement foundation. The roof is covered with asphalt shingles. A single chimney is placed at the southeast end of the roof at the ridge. Symmetrical fenestration on the facade is of 6/6 double hung windows with simple frames. There is an enclosed entrance porch with a doorway that is surmounted by a closed pediment. The paneled door includes a semicircular window at the top. Half-height sidelights flank the door. A single story porch, originally open but now enclosed, is found on the southeast side of the building. On the northwest side is a two-sided bay window on the first level. The side walls have a single semicircular louvered opening at the attic level. A rear ell with hip roof spanning the northwestern two thirds of the building that was built in 2005. The ell includes an underground garage and an attached deck. Solar panels now cover the lower two thirds of the front of the roof. A brick walk leads to the front door, A driveway extends along the southeast side of the lot. The house is surrounded by shrubbery and backed by the trees of the Ada Govan Bird Sanctuary 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. In 1929 Ada Clapham Govan and her husband David, a wool broker, purchased the property identified as Lot 5 in the Plan of the Oakmount Park subdivision of 1903 on what was originally called St. Margaret Avenue. In the early years in the house Mrs. Govan was despondent over the deaths three young daughters and was bedridden from injuries. As described in her best selling book, Wings at My Window(Macmillan Co., 1940), her life changed when a bird landed on her windowsill during a snowstorm. From that experience grew her avid interest in birds and bird banding. Her bird feeding attracted as many as 600 birds to her yard at once. She was able to band and keep track of the many bird species that visited her yard over the years. She wrote about birds for the Boston Globe under the nom de plume, "Of Thee I Sing" and for the nationally distributed Nature Magazine. She also became one of the leading bird banders in the country. In the mid 1930s a next door neighbor, who owned 7.2 acre woodland behind the Govan's backyard, began to cut the trees for a subdivision. Mrs. Govan, alarmed that the birds that visited her yard would loose their wooded habitat, convinced the neighbor to stop cutting temporarily. She was able to lease the property for a year, using the money that she and her husband had saved to pay their taxes. Mrs. Govan then began a campaign to raise funds to purchase the property from her readers at Nature Magazine. In the end she raised $8,000 to secure the land for a bird sanctuary. In 1937, the property became the Woodland Bird Sanctuary, administered by a private trust with family members and neighbors as trustees. The Trust continued to oversee the sanctuary after Mrs. Govan death in 1964. In1989, however, the Town of Lexington assumed ownership as conservation land with the understanding that access to the sanctuary would continue to be limited, with educational and scientific investigations being only allowable use. The woodland was renamed the Ada Govan Bird Sanctuary. Today the Sanctuary serves as a natural buffer to surrounding development and the Fiske School. For birds of prey that hunt in the Ciesa Farm fields, it provides a secure habitat, according to David Williams of the Lexington Conservation Commission, The house remained in the Govan family until 1960. Robert and Sally Scott owned the property from the property froml965 to 1997. Mrs. Scott was active in the Lexington Historical Society. Continuation sheet I