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vine-street_0016-0018-0020
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Last modified
9/18/2018 2:38:05 PM
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Property Survey
Property - StreetNumber
16
StreetName
Vine Street
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ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE (Describe important architectural features and <br /> evaluate in terms of other buildings within the community.) <br /> This tenement with its bulky rectangular profile seems out of scale in <br /> — comparison with the small workers cottages close by. The building was actually <br /> moved to this site from elsewhere in Lexington where it was the central portion <br /> of Lexington's first town hall and high school, built in 1846. Photographs of <br /> the original building indicate none of its exterior finishes survive: the <br /> entire entablature and pediment with dentil course were removed and replaced <br /> with the truncated gable roof now there; the four Ionic columns of the original <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 building originally stood on Massachusetts Avenue on the site now <br /> occupied by Muzzey Junior High School and was built in 1846 as Lexington's <br /> first town hall. It was designed by Isaac Melvin, a Lexington architect who <br /> also designed the Stone Building (1833) and the First Parish Church (1847) , <br /> and built by David A. Tuttle, a prominent nineteenth-century Lexington builder. <br /> When Lexington established its first high school in 1854, classes were <br /> initially held in this central portion of the town hall building. According <br /> to one of the original students, the first classroom was on the second floor, <br /> a room she called the "attic" -- 30 feet long, 22 feet wide, windows only at <br /> one end, and heated by a stove in the corner (Hudson 1903:118-120) . The second <br /> year the classroom was moved to the larger and better ventilated room down- <br /> stairs and, after Lexington built another town hall in 1871, the high school <br /> took over the entire building. <br /> By the end of the nineteenth century the high school was badly in need of <br /> renovations and repairs; it was condemned in 1896 by the State Inspector as <br /> unfit for further use and finally, in 1902, replaced by a new high school on <br /> the same site -- the building that later became Muzzey Junior High School. The <br /> old high school was purchased by W.E. Denham, cut apart, and moved to Vine <br /> Street where it became tenements; this building was the central portion of the <br /> old one. <br /> BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES (name of publication, author, date and publisher) <br /> David A. Tuttle papers. Lexington Historical Society archives. <br /> Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington, revised and continued to <br /> 1912 by the Lexington Historical Society, Volume I, p. xviii. Boston: <br /> Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. <br /> Hudson, Mary E. "Early Days of the Lexington High School," 1903. Proceedings <br /> of the Lexington Historical Society, Volume III, pp. 117-133. Lexington, <br /> Massachusetts: Lexington Historical Society, 1905. <br /> Kelley, Beverly Allison. Lexington, A Century of Photographs, p. 62. <br /> Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Historical Society, 1980. <br /> "Lexington Has Always Been Proud of Its Schools." Lexington Minute Man, <br /> December 30, 1971. <br /> 10NI - 7/82 <br />
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