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ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE (Describe important architectural features and <br /> evaluate in terms of other buildings within the community.) <br /> This imposing Italianate house, located near a busy intersection, is in <br /> great contrast to the much smaller, more recent houses in its immediate neigh- <br /> borhood. The house is well maintained and many of its original exterior <br /> finishes are intact: the hexagonal cupola, wide cornices and corner returns <br /> with paired brackets, round-headed window in the facade gable, long windows <br /> with thin muntins, window caps supported by brackets on the first floor front <br /> windows, the doorway with transom and sidelights of etched glass, and the <br /> (see Continuation Sheet) <br /> HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE (Explain the role owners played in local or state <br /> history and how the building relates to the development of the community.) <br /> This house was built in 1857 by David A. Tuttle, a prominent nineteenth <br /> century Lexington builder, for Abraham W. Crowninshield. Crowninshield had <br /> moved to Lexington in 1846 and bought an already existing farm on this site, <br /> then at the corner of Lincoln and School streets. (The section of Marrett <br /> Road through Five Forks was not built until 1868.) Although the Greek Revival <br /> rear ell of this house is supposed to have been moved from the opposite corner <br /> of Lincoln Street and Marrett Road (now the Shell station) , no house is shown <br /> in that location until 1876 and one is shown on this site in 1852, so perhaps <br /> the ell was the original house on the farm and the Italianate house was built <br /> in front of it. Even about the time of its construction, this house was noted <br /> as an important one. In his 1868 history, the town's historian singled out <br /> this house as "a fine building, two stories high, with a cupola, from which <br /> you overlook . . . [the] well cultivated farm" (Hudson 1868:430) . <br /> In 1876 the house and farm, which extended along the west side of Lincoln <br /> Street almost to the intersection with Middle Street, was owned by J.M. Brewer <br /> and in 1889 by F.W. Barry, who continued to own it into the twentieth century. <br /> On the 1898 map the farm is called the "Five Forks Stock Farm" and later it <br /> apparently was named "Barrymeade" farm. For many years into the twentieth <br /> century it was owned by the Sarrano family, who used it as a summer home. In <br /> the late 1940s they subdivided all the farmland for housing developments and <br /> it was at that time that the barn and garage were set off on a different lot <br /> under different ownership from the house. <br /> BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES (name of publication, author, date and publisher) <br /> Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington. Boston: Wiggin and Lunt, <br /> 1868. <br /> ) <br /> - Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington, revised and continued to <br /> 1912 by the Lexington Historical Society, Volume II, p. 137. Boston: <br /> Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. <br /> David A. Tuttle papers, Lexington Historical Society archives. <br /> 1852 map <br /> 1876 map <br /> 1889 map <br /> 1898 map <br /> 1906 map <br /> 10M - 7/82 <br />