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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 12 CRESCENT HILL AVE. <br /> MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. <br /> 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 <br /> 0 2215 <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 /> 12 Crescent Hill Avenue is located on a small lot near the top of a low hill. Generally flat, the property is raised above the <br /> sloping level of the street with a fieldstone retaining wall, which is partially parged. The yard is maintained chiefly in lawn, with <br /> foundation plantings and an asphalt-paved walk between the street and the front entrance. A narrow paved driveway is located <br /> to the right of the house. <br /> The roughly L-shaped main block of the house rises 2 '/2 stories from a fieldstone foundation to a front gable roof. A one-bay <br /> deep appendage with a shed roof extends across the back (east)of the building. One interior chimney rises from the left slope <br /> of the main roof, near the center. Walls are clad with artificial siding and trim. Windows are typically 6/6 double hung <br /> replacement sash, without trim. The asymmetrical fagade (west) elevation contains an offset entrance and paired windows on <br /> the first floor and two individual windows asymmetrically set on the second floor, and one window centered in the pedimented <br /> half-story. The front entrance is composed of a rectangular porch with a hip roof, turned posts, a low wood railing with thick <br /> square balusters, concrete steps, and a single-leaf, period door with wood panels and one large, square glass pane. <br /> The left (north) side elevation contains one window bay on the main block. A two-story hip roof ell at the back has one 6/6 <br /> window facing the street at the second story, and modern awning windows with transoms at the corner of the first floor. The <br /> irregular right(south) elevation has three windows on the first floor, one at an intermediate level, and one towards the back of <br /> the second floor. A small shed-roofed dormer on this elevation has a one window. The shed-roofed addition has one window at <br /> each of its ends. <br /> Well-maintained, 12 Crescent Hill Avenue has lost important original trim but remains a good example of turn of the 20th century <br /> suburban middle class housing. It is notable for its pedimented front-gable fagade, ornamental entrance porch, distinctive <br /> vertical massing, and relatively large scale in a subdivision of mostly smaller and more compact houses. <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 /> Crescent Hill Avenue is part of a turn of the 20th century subdivision off Lowell Street, adjacent to the Arlington town line. Lowell <br /> Street appears to have originated as a Native American trail that was developed as an important transportation corridor in the <br /> Colonial period. A new regional turnpike system radiating from Boston was established in the early 19th century; Lowell Street <br /> formed part of the Middlesex Turnpike (ca. 1806), which extended from Cambridge to Tyngsborough and the New Hampshire <br /> border. This peripheral area of East Lexington remained mostly agricultural and sparsely developed through the early 20th <br /> century, however. The Great Meadow marshlands occupy an extensive area bordered by Lowell Street to the east, the Arlington <br /> town line to the south, the railroad to the west, and Maple Street to the north. <br /> Crescent Hill Avenue is part of a subdivision also known as Crescent Hill, which was laid out between 1875 and 1898, under the <br /> ownership of Thomas Elder"et al" in the latter year. Its grid of streets sprawls across the town line into Arlington; its many small <br /> lots were apparently intended for modest suburban housing, although there was no street railway service along Lowell Street. <br /> Hugh Thomas Elder(1844-1902)worked as a printer and later foreman for the Boston Herald. He was active in union <br /> organizing, political activities, and the development of cooperative banks, "eventually becoming a prosperous... real estate <br /> agent' in Arlington Heights. (Stevens: 5) <br /> Continuation sheet I <br />