adams-street_0043 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Town Property Address Lexington 43 Adams St. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 706 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 HISTORICAL NARRATIVE (continued) William Locke only owned the farm until 1846 before selling it to Charles Pook, a Charlestown cooper. Pook remained in Charlestown and apparently rented this house to Sidney Butterfield, for Butterfield's granddaughter,who grew up in the house at 149 Adams St. (MHC#721) said her father(b. 1855)was born in this house at 43 Adams St. In 1858 Pook moved to Lexington, built the house at 17 Adams St. (MHC#700), and sold this house and farm to Butterfield. Butterfield lost the farm in 1864 in a mortgage foreclosure, however, and it then was acquired by a George H. Chapman. In 1884 George F. Chapman, presumably a son of George H., built the house now at 39 Adams St. (MHC#703)on land that was then part of this farm. That house then became the main farmhouse and this one was rented out. In 1893 Chapman's widow sold the farm to William Prior, a fish dealer at Quincy Market in Boston, and at that time 5%2 acres with the house at 39 Adams St. were set off and sold to Prior's wife as a separate parcel, reducing the size of the farm associated with this house at 43 Adams St. to 25'/2 acres. In 1896 Prior's widow sold both the farm at 43 Adams St. and the house at 39 Adams St. to an Irving Johnson from Arlington. Johnson and his son Frederick W. were market gardeners;the father lived ! . in the house at 39 Adams St. and the son in this house at 43 Adams St. After Johnson's death in 1917 the farm, by then more accurately surveyed as containing 27.95 acres,was sold in 1922 to the Porter family;the house at 39 Adams was also sold to the Porters in 1924. William Porter and his brother-in-law Matthew Wilson operated the farm, the Porters living at 39 Adams St. and the Wilsons in this house. The farm raised market vegetables. Greenhouses were later acquired in Belmont and reassembled here, covering much of the land along East St. where the Fiske School playing field and Fiske Common are now located and permitting winter cultivation of tomatoes and cucumbers and, later, roses. In the 1930s the Porters began to sell off small parcels of the farm—first, a few acres for a bird sanctuary, now owned by the town, then the land for the house now at 45 Adams St., built by the Porter's daughter May and her husband John Baskin. After World War II the farm was completely subdivided and sold off—the three-acre parcel with this house in 1946, a much larger piece where Fiske School is now located to the town in 1947, and the house at 39 Adams St. in 1948. In 1997-98 both the 43 Adams St. and the 39 Adams St. properties—a total of about five acres—were acquired by a developer with plans to build five single-family houses on the combined parcel.