vine-street_0010-0012-0014 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE (Describe important architectural features and evaluate in terms of other buildings within the community.) This bulky tenement, together with a similar building next to it, looms over the small nineteenth-century cottages in its immediate vicinity. Actually, this building was moved to this site in the early twentieth century and is comprised of the two wings of Lexington's first town hall and high school, built in 1846. Not many of the original exterior finishes survive, however, other than the brackets under the wide cornice. Photographs of the original building indicate the extent to which it was modified: the coursed ashlar wood finish (see Continuation Sheet) HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE (Explain the role owners played in local or state history and how the building relates to the development of the community.) This building originally stood on Massachusetts Avenue on the site now occupied by Muzzey Junior High School and was built in 1846 as Lexington's first town hall. It was designed by Isaac Melvin, a Lexington architect who also designed the Stone Building (1833) and the First Parish Church (1847) , and was built by David A. Tuttle, a prominent nineteenth-century Lexington builder. According to an antiquarian account, its two-story center section flanked by one-story wings was the result of a compromise on the building committee between advocates of a two- and of a one-story building. In 1854 Lexington established its first public high school and decided to hold classes in the central portion of the town hall; the wings were at first reserved for town business but, especially after a new town hall was built in 1871, the entire buildinq became the high school. By the end of the _ lq N 'century the high school was in need of repairs and renovations; it was condemned in 1896 by the State Inspector as unfit for further use and finally, in 1902, the town built a new high school on the site -- the building that later became Muzzey Junior High School. The old high school was purchased by W.E. Denham and moved to Vine Street where it became tenements; this building was formed by joining the two side wings of the old school. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES (name of publication, author, date and publisher) David A. Tuttle papers. Lexington Historical Society archives. Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington, revised and continued to 1912 by the Lexington Historical Society, Volume I, p. xviii. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. Kelley, Beverly Allison. Lexington, A Century of Photographs, p. 62. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Historical Society, 1980. "Lexington Has Always Been Proud of Its Schools." Lexington Minute Man, December 30, 1971. Smith, A. Bradford. "Kite End," 1891. Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society, Volume II, p. 122. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Historical Society, 1900. 10NI - 7/82