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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 22 BOWKER STREET <br /> MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. <br /> 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 <br /> 2197 <br /> ❑ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. <br /> If checked,you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. <br /> Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. <br /> ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: <br /> Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. <br /> 22 Bowker Street occupies a small lot that slopes down steeply from right to left. The house is set at the right front corner of the <br /> lot, with a small front setback and minimal setback on the right side. The yard is maintained chiefly in lawn, with foundation <br /> plantings and scattered shrubs. A brick walkway leads to the main entrance, with a short brick stairway. A paved driveway <br /> extends along the left side of the house. The building consists of a two-story main block with a rear. <br /> The rectangular main block rises from a fieldstone foundation to a front gambrel roof with gambrel returns and a center chimney. <br /> Walls are clad with wood clapboards and trimmed with plain flat sill boards, corner boards, and fascia. Windows typically have <br /> 1/1 double hung sash and flat casings. Spanning the first floor of the fagade, a one-story porch consists of Tuscan columns, a <br /> hip roof, and turned balusters. Behind, an offset, single-leaf door is flanked by one large window on the right and a smaller <br /> window on the left. Two windows are centered above in the second floor. <br /> The south (right side) elevation of the main block contains two symmetrical 1/1 windows on the first floor and a half story dormer <br /> with a hip roof and a single 1/1 window. The north (left side) elevation of the main block contains one 1/1 window towards the <br /> front, paired short windows towards the back, and a small nearly square window at a mid-story height. A large, one-story <br /> addition projects from the back left corner of the house. Rising from a concrete foundation to a long shed roof, it contains a wide <br /> bay window and off-set, single-leaf door on its front elevation and widely spaced single windows on its left side elevation. <br /> Well preserved and well maintained, 22 Bowker Street is representative of modest, early 20th century infill housing in Lexington. <br /> The house is notable for its intact massing, gambrel roof and gambrel returns, hip roofed dormer, and front porch. <br /> HISTORICAL NARRATIVE <br /> Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local(or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the <br /> owners/occupants played within the community. <br /> The small grid of streets bordered by Massachusetts Avenue, Hibbert Street, Taft Avenue, and Bowker Street represents an <br /> early area of suburban infill in East Lexington, near the Arlington town line. Immediately south of Taft Avenue is Liberty Heights <br /> (LEX.Q), a hilltop subdivision laid out by Brookline developer Jacob W. Wilbur in 1909 and developed in the teens and twenties. <br /> The growth of both these neighborhoods followed the arrival of the electric street railway on Massachusetts Avenue in 1899 and <br /> was directed at working class residents. <br /> In the area adjacent to Massachusetts Avenue known as Dexter Hillside, Hibbert and Sylvia streets, which straddle the <br /> Lexington/Arlington line, were laid out, platted, and partially developed by 1898. The only other evidence of development here at <br /> that time is the L-shaped beginning of Charles and Cherry streets, where ten house lots were laid out but vacant. By 1927, both <br /> Charles and Bowker streets extended from Massachusetts Avenue to Taft Avenue, and the western ends of Cherry Street, <br /> Stevens (then Cary) Road, and Camden (then Smythe) Street pushed a few lots eastward from Charles. Development was <br /> gradual through the 1920s and 30s, and was virtually complete, with the present network of streets, by 1950. <br /> The 1922 directory identifies four households on Bowker Street, none with street numbers. They include a carpenter, "state <br /> agent," post office clerk, mason, and chauffeur. The house at 22 Bowker Street appears on the 1927 map, facing the <br /> intersection of the newly extended Hillside Avenue. The first known residents at this address, in 1933, are Lawrence Emil <br /> Lassen, a real estate salesman who worked in downtown Boston, and his wife Effie. (They were married the previous year and <br /> Continuation sheet 2 <br />