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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 9 PLAINVIEW STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 2258 ❑ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked,you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. 9 Plainfield Street occupies a small lot in a residential streetscape close to Massachusetts Avenue. Maintained chiefly in lawn, the land slopes up gradually from the street to the house and rises in a steep hill behind the house. Front and side setbacks are modest. A paved driveway leads to a garage on the left side of the house, and a modern flagstone walkway extends between the sidewalk and front door. The back yard is terraced with a high fieldstone retaining wall. The compact house rises 1 3/4 stories from a fieldstone foundation to a gambrel roof. An exterior chimney is located on the right side elevation, and an interior chimney rises from the back slope of the main block. Walls are sheathed with wood clapboards and trimmed with sill boards, narrow flat corner boards, and a narrow bed molding at the eave. Windows typically have 6/1 double-hung replacement sash and flat casings with very narrow band molding. The front fagade is three bays wide, with a center entrance portico and full-length shed dormer. The entryway has sturdy Tuscan columns supporting a pedimented gable, single-leaf door, half-height sidelights, and a concrete stoop and stairway with brick treads. Tripartite window units flank the entrance on the first floor. On the shed dormer, paired windows flank a single window over the portico. The right side elevation contains an enclosed sun porch on the first floor, framed by pilasters and a wide fascia, with a modern balustraded deck above. The exterior chimney on this end wall is flanked by a doorway and paired windows. A large two-story addition with a pitched roof wraps around the back corner of the gambrel end and the back elevation of the main block. On its second floor, facing the street, another single-leaf doorway accesses the deck over the sun porch. The left side elevation has irregular fenestration, including one window and a modern glass greenhouse window on the first floor, two variously sized windows on both the second and half stories. The large garage is set close to the house, with a similar front setback. Concrete block walls rise to a front gable roof with clapboards in the peak. It contains one wide garage door. Well preserved and well maintained, 9 Plainfield Street is a handsome example of early 20th century suburban infill housing in downtown Lexington. The house is notable for its solid massing, gambrel roof, well-detailed entry portico and sun porch, and early garage. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local(or state)history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. Plainfield Street was laid out between 1898 and 1906, extending only as far as the present Tower Road in the latter year. Only one house, today's 3 Plainfield, was built or even platted at that time, however. Encouraged by the arrival of the streetcar railway on Massachusetts Avenue in 1900, the street developed gradually over the next three decades, and was completely built up by 1935. An example of middle class housing that filled in along Mass. Avenue, 9 Plainfield was built between 1918 and 1927. The first known occupants, in 1930, were Herbert W. Drury, a manager at H.W. Drury& Co. and at Rochester Germicide Co., his wife Dorothy R., their two children, and a boarder. Herbert and Dorothy Drury stayed in this house at least through 1955. In the latter year, they were accompanied by housekeeper Blanche M. Boykins. Continuation sheet I