Laserfiche WebLink
Breadcrumb Navigation:
ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE (Describe important architectural features and <br /> evaluate in terms of other buildings within the community.) <br /> This house, built in 1794, remodeled c. 1896 and moved to this site in <br /> 1941, retains Federal finishes in the front rooms, the original portion of the <br /> house. The left hand room exhibits a simple mantelpiece with panelled <br /> pilasters and a broad frieze. The stair hall has a single run staircase with <br /> cut-out scrolled step-end decoration and turned balusters. The balusters are <br /> more substantial than typical Federal balusters and the newel post is of the <br /> "pot bellied" type. <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 /> The house was built on the site of Decelles on Massachusetts Avenue in <br /> 1794 by Joshua Russell, a boot and shoemaker, at the time of his marriage to <br /> Susanna Smith on land owned by her father, Jonathan, a leather tanner. In <br /> 1855 the property was purchased from Russell's heirs by Freeborn Fairfield <br /> Raymond, a former resident of Boston. Raymond, a businessman, had been a <br /> councilman, assessor, school committeeman and commissioner for 17 years in <br /> Boston. <br /> Dr. Henry L. Valentine, physician and surgeon, married Mary Sherburne in <br /> 1896, and they occupied the house thereafter. The house was owned by Mary's <br /> father, Warren Sherburne. Sherburne moved the house back on the lot and <br /> remodeled it in the Colonial Revival style in 1896. Valentine was a member of <br /> Lexington's Board of Health from 1894 to 1900 and was town physician from 1894 <br /> until after 1913. <br /> In 1941 Eugene Viano moved the house to its new site on Vine Brook Road <br /> to make way for the construction of the building currently occupied by Decelles. <br /> BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES (name of publication, author, date and publisher) <br /> Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington, revised and continued to <br /> 1912 by the Lexington Historical Society, Volume II, pp. 553, 717. Boston: <br /> Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. <br /> Letter from Edwin B. Worthen to Eugene Viano, February 7, 1941. <br /> Lexington Minute Man, April 10, 1896. <br /> Snapshots of house moving. Worthen Collection, Cary Memorial Library. <br /> 10M - 7/82 <br />