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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1-3 BELFRY TERRACE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 2189 ❑ 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. 1-3 Belfry Terrace occupies a small corner lot, on which the land slopes up to the house from both street frontages. There are modest setbacks on all sides of the house. Maintained chiefly in lawn, the property also contains a concrete walkway and steps walkway from Belfry Terrace to the main entrance and a paved parking area at the Forest Street side. A low, parged retaining wall with scored joints extends along most of the Forest Street frontage. The roughly L-shaped building consists of a broad front facade and a slightly narrower rear wing. The building rises 2 '/2 stories from a decorative concrete block foundation (in which the blocks are formed to look like cut stone) to a series of gabled roofs with exposed rafter ends. The raised basement is fully exposed under the gabled end wall facing Forest Street, and accommodates a pair of single bay garage doors there. Walls are clad in wood shingles, and the base of the second story flares out slightly above the first floor. Windows typically have 6/1 double hung replacement sash with narrow band molding. Two chimneys rise from the interior of the house, one on the front slope of the Belfry Terrace fagade and one on the Forest Street slope of the rear wing. On the main, Belfry Terrace fagade, a large pedimented gable surmounts a shallow rectangular bay window on one side and an offset entrance. The bay window has a triplet of windows on each floor. The enclosed entrance vestibule has a gabled roof with exposed rafter ends and horizontal beams with shaped ends and a shingled tympanum. Its side-by-side doors (original or early with wood and glass panels) are accessed by broad wood steps having wood railings with square balusters. To the right of the fagade gable, each floor has a bay of paired windows. The skirted base of the pedimented gable frames a pair of windows in the tympanum. The left side elevation of the house is asymmetrically composed, with two pairs of windows on each floor flanking a small center window towards the back of this elevation. A single leaf entrance is located towards the front, along with an offset gabled dormer with a small horizontal casement window in the center. On the right(Forest Street) side of the building, a cross-gabled extension of the front fagade contains two individual garage bays at the basement level, a triplet of windows on each of the two floors above, and a skirted base on the pedimented gable end. The rear wing of the house has irregular fenestration consisting of paired and single windows along Forest Street. Two stacked, one by two bay porches on the back of the wing are composed of a shallow pitched roof with exposed joists, square wood posts, and modern wood railings with square balusters. Single leaf doors access both porches. Paired windows are set above the porches at the attic level. Well preserved and well maintained, 1-3 Belfry is a good example of middle-class, two-family housing in Lexington center and represents an uncommon use of two-family construction in its neighborhood. Notable features include the building's prominent location, imposing facade, pedimented gables, and nicely detailed main entrance. 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. Belfry Terrace represents the early expansion of modest, affordable suburban housing in Lexington's town center. Assessors' records for this house show a construction date of 1897, although historic records suggest it was built between 1922 and 1930. The undeveloped land now occupied by the residential enclave of Belfry Terrace is labeled "Belfry Hill" in the 1898 atlas and was Continuation sheet 2