HomeMy WebLinkAboutkendall-road_0050 Enhanced Building Form Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. 4/11
FORM B − BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from north. Locus Map
Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Walter R. Wheeler, Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Neil Larson & Associates
Organization: Lexington Historical Commission
Date: July / 2021
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
32-69B Lexington W LEX.579 Town/City: Lexington
Place: (neighborhood or village):
Lexington Center
Address: 50 Kendall Road
Historic Name: Joseph & Lucy Smith House
Uses: Present: single family residential
Original: single family residential
Date of Construction: ca. 1765
Source: archival sources, deeds, visual assessment
Style/Form: Second Period/ two-story, gable block
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingle/wood
Roof: asphalt shingle
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Barn-style garage, 1988-1998
Major Alterations (with dates): Center chimney removed, mid-20th c. House moved, 1988 Extensive restoration, 1988-1998
Condition: good
Moved: no yes Date: 1988
Acreage: 0.36
Setting: The property is located on a major thoroughfare built out with closely-spaced houses from a broad period of development.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 50 KENDALL ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
W LEX.579
Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
Based on fieldwork by Walter R. Wheeler and Neil Larson, 2021 It is difficult to assign a construction date to the moved house at 50 Kendall Road based on surviving architectural features and documentary history. The land can be traced back to a 1732 land transaction of Hezekiah Smith (1706-60), but the house may have been built for his son Joseph Smith who inherited the property after his death and nearer to the date of his marriage to Lucy Stone in 1765. Evidence within the house points to an initial construction date in the middle decades of the 18th century, with subsequent alteration campaigns in the 1830s, 1860s and 1988-1998. Recognizing the ambiguities inherent in this case, it is recommended that a construction date be confirmed by dendrochronology. The two-story timber frame single dwelling has a gable roof and what remains of a two-room center-chimney plan. It does not appear that it was built with or expanded by a lean-to in the rear; rather a two-story cross-gable kitchen wing was added at some later date. The five-bay front façade contains a center entrance flanked by closely-spaced pairs of windows widely separated from it. A pedimented architrave is an apparent invention added after the house was moved to its current address in 1988. The windows six-over-nine and six-over-six sash also are replacements. In typical 18th-century fashion, the second-story windows abut the shallow eave interrupting the frieze. Single windows are centered on the end walls at both levels. Due to the hillside topography of its new site, the story-and-a-half kitchen wing is elevated on a tall basement opening at grade on the north end. The entire basement under both the house and wing is constructed of formed concrete with stone facing where exposed. The fenestration of the wing has been altered on the first story, and an entrance on its east elevation. A porch with a trussed pediment appears to be a feature relocated with the house. On the opposite side, a one-story wing was added at the intersection of house and wing. The house was moved from its original site in two pieces, in October 1988. It was originally located at 29 Allen Street, about a mile-and-a-half away. In an odd setting, the present orientation of the building has its front elevation facing close to due south, presenting its rear sections to the street.
A description of the building by Anne Grady on the existing MHC Building Form, written before it was moved, recorded the fact
that the original central chimney mass of the house had been removed at an unknown date previous to 1984, when the house was surveyed. Its dimensions and original location in the plan remain discernable, however, due to the high survival rate of the
structural elements that comprise the first-floor platform. The original windows and front door surround had also been replaced previous to that date.
The original floor plan of the house consisted of two large parlors separated by a central bay containing a chimney mass,
staircase, and entry lobby. A small chamber behind the chimney mass appears to also have been an original feature of the house; a portion of this space was taken up by a cupboard in the west wall of the east parlor; access to the chamber was from
the west parlor. The purpose of this chamber is not known. It was, however, at a later point in time, accessible to the rear wing as well as the west parlor; evidence for a door in the north wall of this small room remains. The northeast corner post of the west
parlor, typically aligned with the analogous post in the south wall, is displaced something more than one foot to the west and is located along the north wall of this chamber, rather than in the corner of the parlor, as seen in the other three corners of that
room. The reason for this structural anomaly is not presently known.
The east parlor was the more formal of the two, and has a paneled wall on its west side. A molded wainscot extends along its north wall. The presence of two doors in the west wall of the east parlor provides information with respect to the location of the
stairs in the center bay and indicates that they rose from west to east. The northern of the two doors in the west wall of the east parlor originally gave access to the basement stairs which were located under the upper run of the main staircase. It may be, as
in other houses examined in Lexington, that the original entrance to the basement was located under the upper run of the staircase and accessed via a door in the lobby. An analogous alteration was affected at the Captain William Smith house, in
nearby Lincoln.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 50 KENDALL ROAD
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The east parlor has a beaded summer beam, girts and corner posts, and has a higher level of finish than the west parlor, whose
summer beam has chamfered lower edges. Insufficient physical evidence remains to definitively say whether the framing of the ceiling of the west parlor was initially left exposed as it is today, or if it was cased or partially covered with a plaster ceiling.
However, the presence of substantial wany edges on the joists suggests that these secondary elements were probably covered. Interior partitions in the main block are plank and measure between 2” and 2 ½” in thickness.
Evidence for early-19th century alterations to the house is found in the neoclassical mantle located in the west parlor, which may
date to ca. 1820. This feature may, however, be a reproduction, dating to the late-20th century.
An architrave associated with the door to the attic stairs has a flattened Greek Revival profile, suggesting a date of ca. 1835-50 for its installation here. The stair to the attic, its associated wall finishes, risers, treads, and baseboards all appear to be
contemporary with this architrave. Floorboards in the hall over the entry lobby appear to date to the mid-19th century and are probably associated with the removal of the original staircase. It may be that the original stair was replaced contemporaneously
with the removal of the central chimney and the construction of the stair to the attic. If this is the case, it would appear that the second main stair was located in the same location as the present run of stairs, as the stair to the attic is directly above it.
Architraves in the west parlor appear to date to the early 19th century. Many of the interior doors, particularly at the second-floor
level, appear to date to the middle decades of the 19th century. Whether some of these doors are original to the house, and thus document alterations undertaken at that time, or if they are among the doors brought in when the house was restored after its
move in 1988 is not presently known.
Architraves and woodwork at the second-floor level combine mid-18th, 19th and 20th century elements. Small areas of paneled wall, located in the best chamber, over the east parlor, date to the 18th century, as do the corner posts which widen as they rise
to the top plate (aka “gunstock posts”) and other structural elements. Some of these are cased with beaded corners. The summer beam in the east chamber is finished with beaded edges.
The roof consists of principal rafters and common purlins supporting vertical roof boards and has a substantial ridge beam.
Indications of replacement of roof boards and purlins are found throughout the structure. Wing The north wall (in the present orientation of the house) of the two-story wing is oblique to the side walls of the house. The
reason for this is not clear, however, it may have been a response to an adjacent structure that occupied its former site, or may reflect the interface with a property line. This two-story wing is framed similarly to the main block, with corner posts in a braced
frame configuration. It contains two principal rooms on each floor.
It may be that the wing was constructed in two or more phases; it is, however, presently impossible to confirm this, due to the current inaccessibility of much of this part of the frame. One detail which is suggestive of an earlier configuration of the wing is
the fact that the posts in the present dining room, located adjacent to the main block of the house, widen at their tops, possibly indicating that the wing was originally one story in height.
The stairs to the basement, located in the northeast corner of the wing, are constructed of stringers, treads, risers, balusters,
handrailing and a newel post which date to ca. 1800 and have been reconfigured for their present location. The level of finish of the various components suggests them to have been originally located in a first-floor domestic context; whether or not they
originated in this house is not presently known.
A cast iron cooking range, manufactured by Chilson of Boston, is located in the north wall of the dining room, the southern of two principal rooms in the wing that is attached to the north side of the main block of the house. Its components bear embossed
patent dates of 1858 and 4 January 1859. A similar example, located in 271 Marrett Road, on an adjacent parcel (although this was not originally the case), contains a second example of an early range, that one having been manufactured by John G. Copp,
also of Boston, and incorporating C. Carpenter’s hot air range No. 3. It bears an embossed “patent applied for” date of 1855. These ranges are rare surviving artifacts. Move and Restoration of the house, 1988--
Much of the alterations undertaken during the 19th and early 20th centuries was removed during restoration of the house subsequent to its moving to its present site in 1988. Chief among these were the principal stair that replaced the original main
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 50 KENDALL ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
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staircase, and whatever chimney mass had been constructed in the main portion of the house when the original central chimney
was removed. By 1984, subsequent modernization of the heating system meant that a chimney was not needed in the main block of the house, and this feature was either entirely removed or capped below the roofline by that date. A vent pipe located
above the entrance in the 1984 photograph suggests a bathroom had been installed in the second-story space in front of the chimney. The replacement stair and chimney were not incorporated in the post-move restoration of the house; a new stair, of
typical “U” shape but placed further to the north to provide a larger entrance lobby, was built subsequent to the move. A central chimney was not reconstructed although mantels were preserved or recreated in historically appropriate locations.
When the house was moved, a small addition located at the inside corner of the main block and two-story wing was removed. It
was reconstructed in an approximation of its earlier form, using all new materials, and contains a bathroom and back stairs. Of the two small gable-roofed porches that sheltered the principal and side entrances to the house, only the side porch was kept
after the house was moved. A new pedimented frontispiece was constructed for the front door, and windows were altered to reflect their presumed original configurations and sash divisions. Unfortunately, the small central window on the second story of
the façade, a feature repeated on early houses elsewhere in Lexington (such as the Fiske house at 70 East Street) evidently to accommodate entrance pediments or porches, was replaced with a full-size window. The chimney venting the 19th century range
was removed above the first-floor level. The present owners have lived in the house for three years. They informed us that they had been told that the interior doors were brought in by the person who restored the house.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Researched and written by Kathryn Grover The house now numbered 50 Kendall Road was moved from its original site at 29 Allen Street in 1988. In an article “Kite End” read before the Lexington Historical Society in 1891, A. Bradford Smith stated that the house was first owned by Joseph Smith (1743-1805), the son of Hezekiah Smith (1706-60), and has variously been dated to 1720 and 1750.1 The house at 56 Allen Street has been called the Hezekiah Smith house, on unstated authority, and has been dated to 1811. Hezekiah Smith was not living in Lexington in 1720 and was in any event too young to have built a house at that time. The next Hezekiah Smith (1768-1833), one of his grandsons, had moved to Providence, Rhode Island, by 1800 and is unlikely to have built 56 Allen Street. In 1732 Hezekiah Smith was living in Lexington when he acquired three acres of Lexington land from Joseph and Abigail Park of Newton. This first deed to Smith stated that the parcel was bounded on the southeast by the Dunback River, now known as part of Dunback Meadow and just east of Allen Street.2 It was very likely Hezekiah Smith who had the 29 Allen Street house built, perhaps soon after he acquired the parcel. Hezekiah Smith died in 1760 and left the use and improvement of his estate to his widow Elizabeth until their youngest son, Amos (born 1748) turned twenty-one, and he also bequeathed to her a third of his dwelling “from top to bottom cellar & all.” Sons Joseph and Amos were left the other two-thirds of all buildings. When Amos came of age, he and his older brother Joseph were to receive all their father’s land, and when Elizabeth Smith died her share of the estate would pass to those two sons. In 1769 Amos sold his brother Joseph both the willed share of his father’s estate and the half of the one-third widow’s dower he would have received at his mother’s death for 132 pounds.3 And in 1793 Joseph Smith and his son Jonas (1772-1811) acquired more than 52 acres bordering Joseph’s land in this section from Joseph’s fourth cousin Benjamin Smith (born 1741).4 By 1805, the year Joseph Smith died, the Allen Street farm was 120 acres. Joseph Smith had served on the town’s Committee of Correspondence and served in the Lexington company of minutemen at Cambridge in June 1775 and at Providence in 1778. He was a Lexington selectman in 1785, 1789, 1791, and 1793 and town
1 Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society, vol. II (1900), 115-116. https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoflex02lexi/page/114/. 2 Joseph and Abigail Park, Newton, to Hezekiah Smith, Lexington, 11 December 1732, MSD 41:399. Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement to 1868 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 2:634-38, states that Hezekiah and his wife Elizabeth Welling Smith were dismissed from the church in Waltham to the church in Lexington on 30 July 1736 and admitted to the Lexington church in September of that year, but the 1732 deed states that Smith was already living in Lexington by that time. 3 Amos Smith to Joseph Smith, 5 June 1769, MSD 92:174 (not recorded until 20 January 1780 or 1786). 4 Benjamin Smith, Lexington, to Joseph Smith, gentleman, and Jonas Smith, laborer, 24 December 1793, MSD 116:155. Joseph Smith alaos acquired land from Thomas Bridge, who had moved to Hampshire County, in 1789 (MSD 92:175) and from a “J. Wellington” in 1773 (MSD 74:341, not accessible on Middlesex South Registry of Deeds website).
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 50 KENDALL ROAD
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assessor in 1796-98 and 1804. In 1765 he married Lucy Stone (1742/43-1772) of Rutland, and after her death he married in
1777 Abigail Ingoldsby (1750-1814). Joseph Smith had twelve children. Sons Hezekiah (born 1768) and John (born 1779) moved to Providence, and sons Amos (born 1748) and Ralph (born 1792) moved to Boston. His eldest son, Joseph (1767-1813)
married Susanna Dakin of Maine and lived in Lexington and Weston.
At his death in 1805 Joseph Smith owned an estimated one hundred acres with a house and a barn valued at $4100, a personal estate worth $549.20, and was owed $370 from the town of Lexington “for building two school houses.” He left no will, so the
probate court appointed a committee to determine the value of the estate and the widow’s one-third share of that estate. The inventory set the value of real and personal estate at $4120 and described the homestead as “lying the west side of the road”
containing an estimated 78 acres with another 20 acres on the east side of Allen Street. The “Mansion house” was estimated to be worth $400 and the barn and “mill house” at $75. The widowed Abigail Smith was given the use of the west front room and
the bedroom and attic above it, use of the fireplace, part of the cellar, the east end of the barn, 18 acres on the east side of the road, 2 acres on the west side, and an acre at the north end of the “upper pasture,” all valued at $1373.33. The court’s
appointees determined that “the remainder can not be divided without prejudice to or spoiling the whole we therefor assigned the same to Joseph Smith eldest son of said deceased.”5
In October 1805 six of Joseph Smith’s children sold their shares of their father’s estate to their brother Joseph, then living in
Weston, for $1200. This Joseph Smith died eight years later in Lexington, and his widow was left with three minor children. The administrator of her late husband’s estate then valued his real property, described as a good farm and buildings thereon in the
south part of Lexington where the said Smith last lived” and containing 70 acres and buildings at $2695. Smith’s debts and other charges against the estate made it necessary to sell at least $1032.32 of the real property, and in January 1816 Susanna Dakin
Smith sold the Allen Street farm, here again described as 120 acres (though parcels the estate administrator sold to others at the same time were excepted from the total) to Marshall Wellington at auction for $2450.6 In 1822 Amos Smith’s widow
Catherine Langdon Smith of Boston released the mortgage claim to the property she had acquired when her husband died.7
Marshall Wellington (1789-1866) was born in Waltham and was the son of William and Marty Whitney Wellington. In 1815 in Waltham he married in 1815 Elizabeth Kimball, and the 1820 and 1830 Lexington censuses clearly show him and his family in
this part of Lexington. In 1837 Wellington sold his farm, described as 75 acres, to Galen Allen for $2000.8 Born in Acworth, New Hampshire, Galen Allen (1802-64) married Lavinia Munroe in Lexington two years after buying the Allen Street farm, and the
1840 census lists him in this neighborhood with three persons in his household. The 1850 census credits Allen with $7,000 in real estate, and he lived at 29 Allen with his wife, four children (Harriet Augusta, Annette Ardell, John G. and Lavina M.), three
farm workers, and an Irish immigrant domestic servant. The agricultural census schedules for 1850 list Allen with 50 improved and 80 unimproved acres, 19 cows, six other cattle, three pigs, and two horses. By 1855 the Allens had another child, Jonas,
and boarded three farm workers. By 1860 Galen and Lavinia Allen lived with four of their children and four farm workers; the farm was valued at $9000 in the population census and $10,000 in the agricultural schedules.9 The farm was then 140 improved
acres and 10 unimproved acres; Allen had 15 dairy cows and sold $1000 of milk the year before.
When Galen Allen died in 1864 he had three minor children, and his widow Lavinia was “wasting away in consumption,” according to a letter submitted to the probate court; she had “not been able to sit up all day for three months, may live from three
months to three years young—Her situation requires, I think, as liberal allowance as your limit will permit.” Allen owned his homestead farm—140 acres with the house, a wood shed, a carriage house, and a barn—estimated to be worth $7800 as well
5 The widow’s share of the dwelling was described as the “west front room & chamber & garrett over the same to the center of the chimney except the front entry with liberty to pass & repass through the front entry out at the front door and up the front stairs into the chamber & garret and through the east room into the kitchin and use the fireplace and oven to wash, bake & brue(?) as she may have occasion for and to pass out at the kitching door and also pass out of said kitching into the cellar with the following priviledge in the cellar viz. from the north west corner from the south east corner of the arch under the back chimney to a post standing in the cellar being eleven feet from said corner thence west a strait line to the cellar wall being ten feet with liberty to pass and repass to and from the well and use the same also to pass and repass to & from the barn also the following part of the door yard viz from the west side of the door to a stake & stones forty feet front of the front door thence west to a peach tree marked thence north by a stone wall to a stake and stones then to the north west corner of the house thence south and east to the bound first mentioned with liberty to pass round the back part of said west end of the house to repair it.” The value of this share was estimated to be $158.66. 6 Susanna Smith to Marshall Wellington, 9 January 1816, MSD 216:35 and 216:37. 7 Catherine S. Smith, executor will Amos Smith, Boston, to Marshall Wellington, 27 November 1822, MSD 243:502.
8 Marshall Wellington to Galen Allen, 17 April 1837, January 1838, MSD 364:97. 9 In 1860 148 farms were listed in Lexington, 22 of them worth between $10,000 and the highest value of $17,000.
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as the adjacent “Hardy farm,” valued at $1500. The estate included seventeen cows and other livestock, and Allen had very little
debt. His personal estate was sold for more than its estimated value, and the estate administrator sold $1154.40 of mil and $316 in other farm products.
Lavinia Munroe Allen died in late April 1865 at the age of forty-three, and the court-appointed guardians for her three minor
children sold the Allen Farm to Mortimer G. Ferris of Brookline in October of the same year.10 The next month Ferris leased the farm operation for ten years to Leavitt and Hunnewell, a real estate firm composed of Bostonian Thomas H. Leavitt and Francis
Hunnewell of Roxbury; he also split off several parcels and sold them about the same time. In 1867 both Ferris, acting as trustee under the will of Mary E. Bullock of Cambridge, sold the 29 Allen Street farm to Albert Bullock of Lexington, and Leavitt and
Hunnewell released their rights under the lease to Bullock at the same time. Bullock, a tobacconist and cigar manufacturer who lived in Cambridge, was married to Mary E. Pendlebury of Lubec, Maine, who died in 1863. Her will directed her husband to
keep her property in trust for the use of their five children and permitted him to sell real estate to enhance the income from the trust. He and his son Albert E. Bullock both owned dwellings on the west side of Waltham Street, not far from this farm, in 1875.
In 1869 Bullock sold three parcels of the Galen Allen farm, including the dwelling, to Frederick Hutchins of Watertown for $4600;
a few months later Hutchins sold them to James H. Webber of Lynn for $3425. Less than a year later Webber sold the three to Mary E. Darling of Boston for $5000. Darling, a native of Nova Scotia, was married to Vermont-born teamster and grocer
Thomas Darling. Three years later, in 1873, Mary Darling sold two of the three parcels—the 10-acre homestead lot on the west side of Allen Street and a three-acre lot opposite it—to George Bullock of Boston for $3000.11 The 1875 map of Lexington marks
the dwelling “G. Bullock,” but the identity of this George Bullock is not clear. A wood turner and sawyer by that name lived in Boston, but one of Albert and Mary E. Bullock’s children was named George W. Bullock, also a cigar maker, who lived in
Waltham. It seems more likely to have been the latter, though he lived in Waltham in the 1870s and early 1880s.
In April 1882 Bullock sold both parcels to Helen M. Richards for $2000. Richards was the wife of David W. Richards, also a native Vermonter; 1890s Lexington directories list him as a farmer on Allen Street. In 1899 David W. Richards sold the Allen
Farm to Willard Clark Schouler, a wood engraver and landscape painter who lived in Arlington.12 Schouler was a grandson of Scots immigrant James Schouler, said to have established the first calico printing works in this county after emigrating in 1816,
and a nephew of William Schouler, the adjutant general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts during the Civil War. He owned the 29 Allen Street property only briefly: he deeded it to his sister Mary in 1904, she sold it less than two years later to
Caroline Spaulding of Bedford, and Spaulding and her husband Charles sold it in November 1906 to Axel M. Swenson of Boston. The Allen farm again had stable ownership—though not occupancy—for the first time since Galen Allen, for the
Swenson family owned it until 1988.13
Axel Martin Swenson (1874-1950) was born in Sweden and came to Boston in 1895. He described himself as a “dairyman” when he applied for citizenship in 1905, the year his brother Henning Wilhelm Swenson (1886-1975) joined him in Lexington.
The brothers lived at 29 Allen Street with their sister Emma, who had emigrated in 1899 and kept house for them. In 1910 Martin (or A. Martin) and Henning (sometimes Henry) lived in the house with Emma and a Swedish immigrant farm laborer. By 1920
the brothers had established themselves as Swenson Brothers, dairy farmers and milk dealers.14 In that year they still lived with
10 Isaac N. Damon, guardian of John G. Allen and Lavinia M. Allen, minor children of Galen Allen, to Mortimer G. Ferris, Brookline, 27 October 1865, MSD 975:343; Lauriston Grout, Acworth NH, guardian of Jonas M. Allen, Minor child of Galan Allen, to Mortimer G. Ferris, Brookline, 27 October 1865, MSD 975:346; Indenture, 15 November 1865, between Mortimer C. Ferris, Brookline, and Thomas H. Leavitt, Boston and Francis Hunnewell, Roxbury, partners in Leavitt & Hunnewell, MSD 959:220. 11 Albert Bullock, trustee will Mary E. Bullock, Cambridge, to Frederick Hutchins, Watertown, 22 June 1869, MSD 1086:97; Frederick Hutchins, Lexington, to James H. Webber, Lynn, 5 October 1869, MSD 1098:168; James H. Webber, Lexington, to Mary E. Darling, Boston, 16 September 1870, MSD 1129:464; Mary E. and Thomas Darling to George Bullock, Boston, 30 June 1873, MSD 1270:385. 12 George Bullock, Boston, to Helen M. Richards, 15 April 1882, MSD 1596:65; David W. Richards to Willard C. Schouler, Arlington, 6 Nov. 1901, MSD 2929:460. David W. Richards was at the Lexington almshouse by 1910 and died at the state infirmary at Tewksbury in 1912. 13 Willard C. Schouler, Arlington, to Mary W. Schouler, 29 October 1904, MSD 3128:493, Mary W. Schouler, Arlington, to Caroline Spaulding, Bedford, 24 September 1906, MSD 3257:97; Charles F. and Caroline Spaulding to Axel M. Swenson, Boston, 20 November 1906, MSD 3270:18. Very little is known about Schouler’s work. He exhibited at the Williams and Everett Gallery in Boston in 1904 and at the annual Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibitions in 1913 and 1919. See also “Willard C. Schouler,” Boston Herald, 1 May 1934, 15. 14 In 1919 and 1920 first Henning Swenson and then Swenson Brothers were among the Massachusetts milk dealers fined for either possessing or selling milk “below the standard quality.” Henning Swenson had applied to be a citizen in 1925 but was denied for “immoral character.” See Boston Globe, 10 December 1919, 3, and 10 June 1920, 13, and Henning Swenson’s 1931 naturalization papers.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 50 KENDALL ROAD
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their sister at 29 Allen Street, but by 1922 they had moved to Middle Street (now Marrett Road) and rented the Allen Street
house. Axel Swenson married Denmark immigrant Ingebord Norling in 1930 and moved to 145 Spring Street, where he lived with the family of John and Almida Lind, who did farm work and housekeeping for the Swensons; Henning remained at 170 and
later 210 Marrett Road. By the early 1950s they ran Greenfield Farms Dairy in Lexington.
In 1945 Axel Swenson deeded 29 Allen Road to his brother, and in 1971 Henning transferred ownership of the house and land to his wife Brita E. Swenson. Brita Swenson sold the property in 1988 to John P. Carroll, whose grandfather James Carroll had
acquired the Abram B. Smith farm at 31 Allen Street by the 1880s; John P. Carroll lived at 31 Allen Street when he acquired the property.15
Soon after the transaction, John P. Carroll applied for a permit to demolish the old house intending to build a new one on its lot;
he owned a sprawling automobile salvage yard behind it. The Lexington Historical Commission invoked a recently enacted demolition delay order so preservationists could find an alternative. Later that year Carroll sold the house to Pat and Bill
DeBonte, owners of the historic Matthew Bridge house at 271 Marrett Road (LEX.586), for one dollar and an agreement to relocate the house to a lot adjoining their Marrett Road house. On Halloween, the neighborhood was treated to the spectacle of
moving the two sections of the house a mile-and-a-half to its new location. The Lexington Minute Man covered the event and published photographs. The house was supported on cribbing while concrete basement walls were poured; when ready, the two
sections were lowered on the foundation and rejoined. The center chimney had already been demolished when the move occurred, but the brick piers of the base was left behind. The DeBontes spent the next ten years restoring the house. Pat
DeBonte left the following account for the next owner.
We carefully matched the paint to the historic originals, sanding down the many layers of paint to discover the original colors. Sarah Chase, the historic paint expert from SPNEA (now called Historic New England), came to
examine the paint and the wallpaper samples that we har. She said that it was not a “vernacular farmhouse,” because the pigments of the verdigris could only be obtained by people of wealth. We found gold leaf and other
unusual inks in the paint as well. A graduate student from Boston University School of Historic Preservation took over 100 samples of paint and did her master’s thesis on this house. So this was indeed an unusual house.
It took more than 10 years of work to finish the house, mostly being worked on by family and friends, and very
carefully chosen artisan contractors, like Joe Augustine. My husband, Bill, was the major contractor for the vast majority of the work. We had artisans from North Bennett Street School in Boston who came to look at the place
or to give us references on available craftsmen. A man who had taught there for 18 years came to work on the house. We hired Bill Kenerson to do the graining of the walls near the green cupboard in the kitchen, as well as
to do all of the interior painting. He was a fine arts major, and also did fine historic reproduction painting. After my husband died, I hired Carter Scott to be the major contractor to finish the house.
I moved into the house in August 2001, enabling the sale of the Matthew Bridge house up the hill.
A barn-like garage was erected on the lot before the property was sold to the current owners in 2018.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Ancestry.com Boston, MA. Massachusetts Historical Commission. MACRIS on-line historic resource inventory. Cambridge, MA. Middlesex Registry of Deeds. Lexington, MA. Cary Library. Archives & Collections. Lexington, MA. Lexington Historical Society. Archives & Collections Lexington, MA. Town of Lexington. Assessors' Office. Valuation Lists.
15 Axel M. Swenson to Henning W. Swenson, 29 September 1945, MSD 6923:441; Henning W. Swenson to Brita E. Swenson, 28 May 1971, MSD 12006:282; Brita E. Swenson to John P. Carroll, 31 Allen Street, 1988 (rest of date obscured), MSD 18803:15. Several plans probably depict the house, but none are accessible online: see “A Part of the Plan of the Allen Estate,” surveyed by Samuel Sage in 1865 and recorded with MSD 959:419; “Plan in Lexington, Mass. Belonging to W. C. Schouler,” September 1901, Plan Book 137:25; and Lot 14 on “Plan of Land in Lexington, Massachusetts,” 27 September 1973, 12549:280.
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Lexington, MA. Town of Lexington. Town Reports. 1849-present.
Bliss, Edward P. “The Old Taverns of Lexington,” Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society. 1 (1889).
Hurd, D. Hamilton, ed. History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Prominent
Men. Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1890.
Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement to 1868. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913.
Kelley, Beverly A. Lexington, A Century of Photographs. Lexington Historical Society, 1980.
Lexington Directory. various years.
Lexington Minute-man. 1871-present. Lexington Historical Society, M. J. Canavan Papers.
Smith, A. Bradford, “Kite End,” Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society, vol. II (1900), 115-116. https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoflex02lexi/page/114/. Maps and Atlases Hales, John G. Plan of the Town of Lexington in the County of Middlesex. Boston: Pendleton's Lithography, 1830. Walling, Henry F. Map of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Boston: Smith & Bumstead, 1856. Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Middlesex Massachusetts. New York: J.B. Beers & Co., 1875. Walker, George H. & Co. Atlas of Middlesex County. Boston: George H. Walker & Co., 1889. Stadley, George W. & Co. Atlas of the Towns of Watertown, Belmont, Arlington and Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Boston: George W. Stadley & Co., 1898. Walker, George H. & Co. Atlas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Boston: George H. Walker & Co., 1906. FIGURES
Map showing the original and current locations of the house. MassGIS Oliver Parcel Viewer
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First floor plan with field notes, Walter R. Wheeler, 2021.
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PHOTOGRAPHS (Credit Walter R. Wheeler, 2021)
View from SE.
View from NE.
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View from NW.
View of barn from SE.
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First floor, SE parlor looking west.
First floor, center lobby and stairs.
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First floor, SW parlor looking NE.
Paint layers on door jamb.
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First floor, kitchen wing, dining room looking east.
Detail of cook stove.
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Second floor, SW bed chamber, looking SW.
Second story, kitchen wing, bedchamber looking NW.
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Attic, roof framing.
18th-century trim on inside of door to attic stairs.
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Basement, first floor framing.
Basement, patched flooring where chimney was removed.
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Basement, relocated 18th-century stair post.