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BUILDING FORM <br /> ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION ❑see continuation sheet <br /> Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. <br /> 15 Maple St. is one of several simple front-facing L-shaped Italianate cottages in Lexington(a comparable example is at 16 <br /> Adams St. [MHC #698]). The house is cross-gabled with a rear ell,two stories, and has a side chimney in the ell. It is set on a <br /> fieldstone foundation,clad with wood shingles, and roofed with asphalt shingles. The long front-gabled rear ell has a flat-roofed <br /> addition on its west elevation and a screen porch at the rear. The main entry of the house is in the reentrant angle and windows are <br /> 2/2 double hung sash. The house has very few period finishes other than eave returns and a small drop at the corner of the entry <br /> porch roof. The front-gabled 1'/2-story barn is clad with wood clapboards and has been converted to a residence; on its west <br /> elevation is an attached shed-roofed one-car garage clad with wood drop board siding. <br /> HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ❑see continuation sheet <br /> Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local(or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the <br /> role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. <br /> It is interesting that this house and the one next to it at 19 Maple St. (MHC#648)which were both built at the same time—this <br /> one in 1838 and the one next door between 1837 and 1846—,are both unusual styles for the period—this one an Italianate and 19 <br /> Maple a Federal—and both built by single women. Lexington assessors' records indicate that this house was built in 1838 by <br /> Nancy Brown (1780-1862),who had been the wife of John Brom(1779-1846) of Lexington but by 1834 had apparently left her <br /> husband and was living in Bedford. That year she bought a house for herself on what is now Massachusetts Ave. in East <br /> Lexington and the following year bought the one-third acre on which this house stands. In 1838 she built this house on the lot, for <br /> in 1839 she was assessed for two houses, and until 1843 her son Horatio(b. 1809) lived here. <br /> In 1876 this house was purchased by the wife of Gustave Kauffmann(b. 1843), a cigar manufacturer who had emigrated from <br /> Germany in 1857, fought in the Civil War, and moved to Lexington in 1868, living first on Concord Ave. before moving to Maple <br /> St. Kauffmann originally worked in Boston but later had his cigar manufacturing shop on this property. He was reportedly very <br /> patriotic, in 1893 organizing the first Color Guard in the United States, and was a Lexington assessor from 1901-1910. <br /> BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES ❑ see continuation sheet <br /> Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington. Revised and continued to 1912 by the Lexington Historical Society. <br /> Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913. 2: 68-69, 331-32. <br /> Lexington Valuation Lists. 1834-1846. <br /> Middlesex Registry of Deeds. Deeds. Cambridge, MA. 336: 71; 358: 382; 893: 478; 1412: 1. <br /> Worthen, Edwin B. Tracing the Past in Lexington, Massachusetts. New York: Vantage Press, 1998. 37-38. <br /> A Calendar History of Lexington,Massachusetts, 1620-1946. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Savings Bank, 1946. 92. <br /> ❑ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked,you must attach a completed National <br /> Register Criteria Statement form. <br />