berwick-road_0011 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 11 BERWICK ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 �H 2108 ❑ 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. 11 Berwick Road is set nearly in the center of a prominent corner lot that slopes up to the right side of the property. A low, parged stone retaining wall with a brick cap lines the street edges; it features brick piers with concrete ball finials at the gravel walkway to the front entrance. Maintained chiefly in lawn, the lot also contains foundation plantings and a paved driveway along the right side of the house. The building consists of a 2 '/2 story, roughly L-shaped main block and a detached garage. The large main block rises from a poured concrete foundation to an array of hip roofs with exposed rafter ends and one exterior chimney on the left elevation. Walls are clad with wood shingles and trimmed with a plain wood fascia. Windows typically have 8/1 double-hung sash on the first floor and 6/1 sash above, with band molding and hinged louvered shutters. The fagade (Berwick Street)elevation contains a roughly center entrance with low shingled walls surmounted by Tuscan columns and a shed roof, accessed by broad wood steps. The entry door is offset within this porch, with a single-leaf paneled wood and glass door. A single window on the second floor and small hip-roofed dormer are centered above the porch. Flanking this entrance on the left is a two-story stack of porches with a hip roof, low shingled walls (which flare at the base on the second story), and Tuscan corner columns, accessed by a single-leaf door centered on each floor. To the right of the entrance bay is a large hip- roofed pavilion with an angled bay window on the first floor. The overhanging second story is supported on simple horizontal, sawn brackets and contains two symmetrical windows on the second floor. The three-bay right elevation contains two windows and a hip-roofed side porch (with low shingled walls and square posts)on the first floor and three windows across the second story. On the left elevation, the second story overhangs the first, with horizontal sawn brackets at the outer corners, an angled bay window towards the front of the first floor, a brick chimney that is exterior on the first floor and then weaves its way inside the second story before rising from the roof, and a small hip-roofed dormer centered in the main roof. The back elevation has a two-story angled bay window with a polygonal roof near the center, a contemporary glass greenhouse addition at the first floor, a small hip-roofed dormer on the right end and a shed-roofed dormer on its left end. A long narrow utility shed extends from the basement level of the left side elevation to Meriam Street. A large garage stands at the back right corner of the property. Its long rectangular volume has a side gable roof, a louvered cupola with a hip roof near the center, one two-car bay and one individual bay, wood (shingle?) siding and trim, and irregular, multi-light windows on its rear elevations. Well preserved and well maintained, 11 Berwick Road is a handsome example of early 20th century, upper-middle class suburban housing in Lexington. The well-detailed building is notable for its large scale, complex and picturesque massing, exposed rafter ends, porches, clever interior/exterior chimney, prominent corner location, and large early garage. 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. 11 Berwick Road represents the later development of the north slope of Merriam Hill, which continued to attract upper middle- class professionals. Although the assessors' records for this house show a construction date of 1920, the directories indicate a house at the address as early as 1918. In 1903, much of the north slope of the hill was surveyed and subdivided for house lots according to a plan prepared by civil engineers H. T. Whitman and Channing Howard. By 1906, however, buildings appeared only along the perimeter roads (Adams and Grant streets). Continuation sheet 2