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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Town Property Address LEXINGTON 3 8-40 WOBURN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD 303 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: The double house at 38-40 Woburn Street is a variation on the workers cottage which is found throughout the Woburn Street area. Like the cottages, each section is three bays long and one room deep with a center entrance on the side and a narrow center chimney, but this house is one-and-a-half stories high in contrast to the one-and-a third story cottage. Also this house is on a granite and fieldstone foundation, suggesting a construction date in the first half of the 19th century. It is not, however, indicated on the 1852 map. A house with a similar,very narrow profile, although two stories high, is located at 65 Woburn Street. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: A road from Lexington Center to Woburn has existed since the 17th century. In the early 19th century Woburn Street began to develop as a locus of small cottages however the major development of the area seems to have occurred after 1855. By 1875 Woburn Street and the south side of Cottage Street were lined by small houses. Beginning about 1855 but certainly by 1875,the vast majority of the residents in the Woburn Street area were Irish. Irish immigrants had begun moving to Lexington in the 1850s to work as laborers on farms and in other occupations. Those who could afford to rent or own.their own houses soon became concentrated in the Woburn Street area, a section known as "Skunk Hollow". More research is needed to determine why the Irish settled along Woburn Street; perhaps it was because this was already a working-class neighborhood and was also near the railway line. For more detail see: Seasholes,Nancy S. Area form(F)for Woburn Street, 1984.