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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Comrm_mity: Form No: I1SSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COWU SSION Lexington 555 Office of the Secretary, Boston Property Name: 26 Blossom Street Indicate each item on inventory form which is being continued below. ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE board and batten door with vertical feather-edged panel and strap hinges also in that chamber. These features place the house among the half a dozen first- half-of-the-eighteenth-century houses extant in Lexington. An interesting feature of the house is the relatively steep pitch of the front slope of the roof, almost First Period in configuration (the rear slope of the roof has been raised several times) . Even though this house sits on one of the earliest roads in Lexington, there is no other evidence that the house was built in the First Period. The roof slope must represent a stylistic holdover. The beams, for example, are.rough hewn and were not intended to be exposed as they would have been in the seventeenth century. Other features consistent with an eighteenth century construction date are brick nogging (seen in the first floor rear wall) ; roof framing of princi- pal rafters bridle jointed at the apex with a slim purlin at the ridge and two purlins along the slope; obvious early plaster laid on split lath; and splayed corner posts in the chambers. There have been many changes to the structure. Fenestration and door openings on the south facade have been altered and perhaps moved. Finishes in the rooms on the first floor of the original portion of the house date from the early nineteenth century. The staircase is now in the rear of the house, outside the original structure. There is one chimney at the rear of the right hand room. Its foundation is of a type found elsewhere in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses in Lexington: two brick piers with timbers lain horizontally across them to support the superstructure. (Note: no evidence of the earlier central chimney was found; its presence is just conjectured.) There have been numerous lateral and rear additions to the house. The rear slope of the roof has been raised twice. Evidence in the attic shows that first a one room deep addition was placed along the rear of the house with lean-to roof extending down to the first floor ceiling height on the north wall. Rafters to support this lean-to are still seen in the east and west walls of the attic laid on top of original rafters to form a lean-to roof with shallower slope. The roof of the lean-to was later raised to accommodate a full two stories in the rear of the house. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE the end of Blossom Street and Ebenezer at 389 Concord Avenue, both also shoemakers (see 272 Concord Avenue and 389 Concord Avenue forms) , was first a shoemaker and later a farmer. . After his death the farm was purchased by his son A. Bradford (1829-1910) , who owned it until 1884 when it was finally sold out of the Smith family for the first time in 124 years. In 1889 the house was owned by Solomon Estabrook, a farmer, and in 1906 by Edwin W. Hutchinson, a market gardener. 4 Staple to Inventory form at bottom