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HomeMy WebLinkAboutmassachusetts-avenue_1377 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 SW. 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 39-65A 39-65B Lexington D LEX.133 LHD 6/11/1956 Town/City: Lexington Place: (neighborhood or village): Lexington Center Address: 1377 Massachusetts Avenue Historic Name: John & Lydia Mulliken House Uses: Present: single family residential Original: single family residential Date of Construction: ca. 1795 Source: archival sources, deeds, visual assessment Style/Form: Federal/2-sty gable block Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood clapboard/wood Roof: asphalt shingle Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Barn Major Alterations (with dates): none Condition: good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage: 0.73 + 0.24 = 0.97 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 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 D LEX.133 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 The John & Lydia Mulliken House, built ca. 1795, is a two-story wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof and a double-pile center-passage plan with chimneys between front and back rooms; a two-story kitchen wing was added in 1865-75. It has a five-bay front façade on its west elevation framed by wide corner pilasters and a shallow cornice. The center entrance is set within a substantial pedimented architrave. Existing twelve-over sash appear to be original. The gable ends also are framed by corner pilasters and cornices with returns along the raking eaves. They contain three windows on each floor with off-center windows located in sections around the chimneys. The center bay on the first story of the south end contains an entrance within another pedimented architrave. The two-story cross-gable kitchen wing is attached to the rear of the house with dormers at the intersection to facilitate access to the attic where chambers had been created. A central chimney of small dimensions, indicating it vented stoves, denotes the interior division between a kitchen abutting the house and rear service areas. Entrances are located on the south and rear end walls. Fenestration has been altered. The plan of the house consists of a central passage which extends to the major cross-partition, with two rooms on each side, that contain fireplaces back-to-back in chimneys centered in their dividing walls. These fireplaces are flanked by closets, cabinets and passageways, and have been modified over time. The front entrance opens in the center passage where a dog-leg staircase is located. It has turned newel posts and rectangular balusters, a feature commonly found in Lexington houses (and elsewhere) that were constructed or modified in the ca. 1790-1820 period. Among these are 5 Harrington Street, 70 East Street, 271 Marrett Road, and 1445 Massachusetts Avenue. The front rooms functioned as parlors and carry the highest level of decoration in the house. The closet that occupies the space south of the chimney stack in the northern room has been altered so that it is now entered via a landing for stairs to the basement. Looking up through a chase that begins in the basement, one can see the remains of shelving along the north wall of this space, presently closed off. The presence of a side-arch in this location in the basement is an indication of the former presence of a bread oven at the south side of the northern chimney, indicating that the original kitchen had been located in the northeast room. The east range of rooms consists of two spaces now used as a dining room (south) and music room (north). Projections in the east wall indicate the location of two posts which align with those in the west wall of the house. Originally, the center passage would have traversed the entire depth of the house. The attic contains plastered rooms at the ends, apparently designed for habitation, which are reached through an unfinished space in the center. The roof structure consists of principal rafters that frame into a ridge beam, and a minimal number of common purlins; supplemental purlins were nailed in place in a 20th century upgrade of the roof. The roof has minimal wind bracing. The basement is constructed of stone and is believed to be what remains of Raymond’s Tavern, which was located on this site before being torn to build this house. Alterations Map evidence suggests that the kitchen ell was built between 1865 and 1875. According to E. A. Mulliken, then owner John J. Rayner took a portion of the main house “away” and built an ell in its place.1 Described as a “very comfortable, old style home, in good repair” when sold in 1884, the house was described as having been “modernized” in a 1901 article recording its sale.2 Alterations undertaken to affect this transformation are difficult to pinpoint; they may have included the introduction of hot water heat to the house and the reconstruction of the two fireplaces in the dining room and the music room. It may have been at this time that indoor plumbing was introduced to the house. Additional minor work has involved the construction of shelving with glazed doors, adjacent to the fireplaces in the two parlors and in the dining room. The closet/passage between the music room and north parlor appears to have taken its present form in the early 20th century. The present divisions between the dining and music rooms, with the wide opening between, probably date 1 E. A. Mulliken, Lexington, to Mr. Neal, 7 July 1895, Lexington Historical Society. 2 Boston Herald, 3 August 1884; “Lexington Estate Sold,” Boston Herald, 9 June 1901, 22. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 D LEX.133 to the mid-20th century. A jog in the west wall of the music room may be an indication that the original configuration of these spaces differed, perhaps with a central room or extension of the passage. Pilasters located in the north and south walls of the second-floor central passage are probably an indication of the former location of a partition that would have created a room at the east end of the hall. The current plan and appearance of the rear rooms probably date to 1930-40 when it was reported that the then owner had “restored the old house on the site of historic Raymond Tavern.”3 The house has not been altered in outward appearance since at least 1975, when it was documented in an MHC Building form. Barn A two-story wood frame barn with a gable roof is mounted on a banked brick masonry foundation, to which it was moved in 1865-1875.4 It has a small hipped-roof cupola, now glazed, centered in the roof. It has been converted into a garage and dwelling, which has altered fenestration. The principal (west) façade contains a central architrave intended for wagon doors but now infilled with an overhead vehicle and pedestrian doors. It is surmounted by a mow door with surviving hoist beam. An upper-story deck with a metal spiral stair is located on the east elevation. By one account, the building originated as a cabinetmaking shop located on the street frontage that was moved and converted to a barn in 1865-1875. This also is the “recently built stable” referred to in an 1883 advertisement. The property was subdivided in 2011 and the barn is now on a separate parcel. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Researched and written by Kathryn Grover The house numbered 1377 Massachusetts Avenue is believed to have been built ca. 1795 for John Mulliken (1754-1840), son of Lexington clockmaker Nathaniel Mulliken (1722-67) and his wife Lydia Stone Mulliken (1729-85). The property was the site of the early eighteenth-century Raymond Tavern, acquired by Jonathan and Hephzibah Raymond in early 1733/34 and which had fallen on hard times by the time of the Revolution.5 John Raymond and his remarried mother Hephzibah Meacham appear to have sold the tavern property to Lexington physician Joseph Fiske, who sold it in 1774 to Lydia Mulliken, John Mulliken’s mother.6 Lydia Mulliken let John Raymond’s wife and five children remain in the house. Released from prison sometime after the sale, John Raymond was taken in by the Munroe family and, according to an 1895 letter, served as bartender at the Munroe Tavern across the highway from the Raymond Tavern when British soldiers, who had stopped there to drink on their way back to Boston, shot and killed him as he tried to escape on 19 April 1775. The British also burned the home of Lydia Mulliken, a widow since 1767, and she lived afterward on Waltham Street and possibly at the Raymond Tavern is not clear. In 1790, five years after she died, her children and heirs sold the property to their brother John.7 The 1790 census lists John Mulliken with nine people in his household. In 1795, according to local histories, John Mulliken tore down the Raymond Tavern and built the 1377 Massachusetts Avenue dwelling on its foundation; according to his grandson 3 Boston Herald, 19 April 1941, 32. 4 E. A. Mulliken, Lexington, to Mr. Neal, 7 July 1895, Lexington Historical Society. 5 Joseph Eastabrook, Lexington, to Hephzibah Raymond, Lexington, 7 March 1733/34 (recorded 11 August 1760), MSD 58:88, which was 25 acres of a larger farm and included a “Mansion house” and barn. Hephzibah Leach Raymond’s husband Jonathan Raymond died in 1760, and she remarried twice afterward, lastly to Robert Meacham of Beverly. When she died in 1773, her Lexington estate was insolvent, and her son John (1731-75), who had helped his parents run Raymond Tavern since at the least the mid-1760s, was held responsible for her debts and sent to debtor’s prison in Cambridge. In at least three letters written from jail in 1773, Raymond begged probate judge Samuel Danforth first to allow more time for the family to sell the tavern property “because I had had friends that hath offered to buy the place if they had longer time to raise the money in,” and second to allow his wife and children to remain in the dwelling through the winter “as they have no where to go to at all.” See Hephzibah Meacham’s probate records. 6 Neither of the deeds to Lydia Mulliken at this time—from Joseph Fiske on 24 January 1774 (MSD 76:51) or from John Remington on 17 March 1777 (MSD 77:366) are currently accessible on the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds website. Jonathan Raymond sold 15 acres to Lexington physician Joseph Fiske on 11 February 1772 (MSD 72:3319), and Hephzibah Meacham, then living in Beverly, sold him three acres on 23 November 1772 (MSD 73:483). Neither deed specifically mentions a mansion house or tavern. John Raymond also sold nine acres, his share of his mother’s dower of his father Jonathan’s estate, to Benjamin Merriam Jr. in 1771 (MSD 72:105). 7 Elijah and Mary Sanderson, Salem; Joseph Burrill, Haverhill; Levi and Rebecca Harrington, Lexington, and Joseph Mulliken, Concord, to John Mulliken, Lexington, 1 December 1790, MSD 108:361. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 D LEX.133 Emery Abbot Mulliken (1823-99), “some of the old timbers” of the tavern were used to build the new house, which also had a massive stone front step that Mulliken brought from Holliston by twelve yoke of oxen. E. A. Mulliken stated that his grandfather John was a cabinetmaker and also built a two-story shop “near the street” and west of the house.8 The 1798 federal direct tax schedules for Lexington show John Mulliken with a house and 51 acres of land. He married Lydia Whiting (1757-1825) at Barre and had seven children between 1781 and 1793—Nathaniel (Emery Abbot Mulliken’s father), John Jr., Lucy, Lydia, Isaac, Samuel, and Faustina. The 1830 census shows him and his wife alone in the household, son John Jr. in the next household of five persons (he married Susanna Reed in 1813), and sons Nathaniel and Isaac in their own households nearby. At John Mulliken Sr.’s death in 1840, the 1377 Massachusetts Avenue passed to his son John (1785-1855), who between 1814 and 1826 had six children—Susan, Charles, Lydia, George, Elizabeth, and John. In 1850 John Mulliken was listed with $7500 in real estate in a household with his unmarried daughter Lydia, his son George, George’s wife Charlotte, their daughter Charlotte, and a farm laborer; Susanna Reed Mulliken had died in 1847. The agricultural census schedules credited him with 40 improved and 18 unimproved acres and valued his farm at $2600. The 1855 census described him as a gentleman and recorded him in the household of his son George, a milkman, George’s family, and daughter Lydia, then 36 years old. John Mulliken died that same year, but the 1856 Lexington map still attached his name to 1377 Massachusetts Avenue; his brother Nathaniel lived directly across street. In November 1859 John Mulliken Jr. and his wife, George Mulliken, and married sister Susan Simonds and her husband Joseph deeded their interests in their father’s former homestead, then 4.75 acres with a “mansion house,” to their sister Lydia, who apparently used it for rental income.9 She lived with her brother Charles in Somerville in 1860 and later that year married Lowell merchant Levi Bacon. He died two years later, and in 1865 she sold her father John Mulliken’s Lexington homestead for $3500 to John James Rayner (1817-83) of Boston.10 Born in Reading, John J. Rayner was partners in the Boston hide and leather commission firm of Bucknam, Rayner and Company from 1854 until he died. His father John was a well-known harness manufacturer and carriage builder in Boston. By 1859 the firm also dealt in boots and shoes, and by 1866 it had added tanning and currying to its trade in hides and skins. In 1854 his first wife, Sarah Augusta Rayner of Reading, died in Boston, and in 1856 Rayner married Elizabeth H. Cloutman of Salem. The 1870 Lexington census shows Rayner as a merchant with $10,000 in real estate in a household with his second wife, daughter Sarah Augusta (born in 1854), a farm worker, two domestic servants, and his 51-year-old sister Ellen. In 1880 he and his wife lived at 1377 Massachusetts Avenue with a domestic servant and a farm worker. According to E. A. Mulliken, during his nearly two decades of ownership Rayner took a portion of the main house “away” and built an ell in its place; he also moved the cabinetmaking shop behind the house and renovated it into a barn. Maps suggest this work had taken place by 1875. John J. Rayner died in October 1883 at 1377 Massachusetts Avenue, and about 15 months later his heirs sold the property to William Emerson Baker of Boston for $5500. Baker advertised the property in the Boston Herald in early August as a “very comfortable, old style home, in good repair” with 4.75 acres of land with fruit, “2 wells of good water” and a recently built stable. He sold it later that month to Jared Elisha Lewis of Orange, New Jersey, for $8500, and Lewis in turn sold it in March 1885 to George E. Robinson of Chelsea for $7500.11 8 On Raymond Tavern and its acquisition by the Mulliken family, see E. A. Mulliken, Lexington, to Mr. Neal, 7 July 1895, Lexington Historical Society (Neal then owned 1377 Massachusetts Avenue); M J. Canavan, “Lexington at the Time of the Battle” (typescript, n.d.), 309; Dick Kollen, “The Unfortunate John Raymond,” typescript, 14 May 2007, http://www.lexingtonhistory.org/uploads/6/5/2/1/6521332/letter3.pdf; Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement to 1868 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 2: 551. Canavan states that at the time of the Lexington Green battle Benjamin Estabrook and his enslaved man Prince Estabrook occupied Raymond Tavern; Prince Estabrook was one of the nine people wounded in the 19 April 1775 battle but later served throughout the Revolution and was afterward free. 9 John and Julia A. Mulliken, Boston, to Lydia Mulliken, 18 November 1859, MSD, 825:598; George Mulliken and Joseph F. and Susan Simonds to Lydia Mulliken, 28 November 1859, MSD 829:24. 10 Lydia Bacon, Waltham, to John J. Rayner, Boston, 5 April 1865, MSD 946:143. Lydia Mulliken Bacon died in Waltham in March 1908. 11 Frances Ellen Rayner, Salem; B. Ward and Harriet E. Dix, Brooklyn NY; George D. and Eileen C. Putnam, Salem; Thomas F. Edmonds, Boston; Elizabeth R. Edmonds, Salem; John Rayner Edmonds, Cambridge, and Elizabeth H. Rayner, Lexington, to William Emerson Baker, 24 January 1884, MSD 1678:596; Boston Herald, 3 August 1884, 7; William Emerson Baker, Boston, to Jared Elisha Lewis, Orange NJ, 21 August 1884, MSD 1679:221; Jared Elisha Lewis, Orange NJ, to George E. Robinson, Chelsea, 27 March 1885, MSD 1698:307. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 D LEX.133 George E. Robinson was a provisions dealer at North Faneuil Hall Market in Boston and owned the house only until 1891, when he sold it to Alvin Neal (1826-1901) of Boston for $6,000.12 Born in Gardiner, Maine, Neal had begun his career as a stevedore and by 1887 was “stevedore of the Allen Line of steamers” at Portland, Maine. By 1880 his sons Alvin Jr. and Fred were also riggers, and son Charles was a mariner. In 1900 the census listed him on Massachusetts Avenue with his wife Emily E. Woodside Neal (1830-1901), son Fred, daughter Carrie, a coachman, and two female domestic servants. Neal died in April 1901 and his wife died in Portland a month later. In June their children sold 1377 Massachusetts Avenue to Lexington native Alfred Pierce (1858-1940). The Boston Herald noted that the property was sold “to settle the estate” and included “an old colonial house, built 104 years ago, but modernized, and other buildings.” Pierce had acquired the property, assessed at $8800, “for a house.” 13 The son of Lexington farmer Loring Smith Pierce and his wife Frances Augusta Harrington, Alfred Pierce had grown up at what was then 201 Massachusetts Avenue and entered the Boston clothing industry in 1876. By the late 1890s had founded the firm Pierce, Billings and Company to make “high grade” men’s suits and overcoats. By 1895 E. A. Milliken was part of that wholesale firm. Pierce married Etta Amelia Smith of Lexington in 1882, and after her death he married Florence Marion Abrahamson of Everett in 1899. The 1900 census describes him as a clothing manufacturer living on Massachusetts Avenue with his second wife, son Clifford Wellington Pierce (born in 1884), and a domestic servant. The 1906 Lexington atlas plate attaches Pierce’s name to the 1377 Massachusetts Avenue house. By then son Clifford was a salesman for Pierce, Billings, and by 1910 he was a partner in the firm and was still living in his parents’ Lexington household. By then Pierce and his second wife had a son, Alfred Jr., born in 1902. Florence Pierce died of cancer in 1910, and in 1912 Pierce married a third time, to Northboro native Cora Atherton Ball. Alfred Pierce was an active member of the honorary group Lexington Minute Men, formed in 1876 and revived in the early 1920s and spearheaded a drive to create a monument to the 77 Lexington men who had served in John Parker’s company in 1775.14 By 1920 Alfred Pierce, his wife Cora, and their son Alfred were boarding at the Russell House hotel at 347 Massachusetts Avenue and must have rented their Lexington house for the next decade; in June 1930 Pierce sold the property to George Henry Bartlett Green Jr. (1884-1942) and his wife Hazel Newcomb Green of Belmont. A notice of the sale in the Herald described the property as including a 14-room house, a large barn, and three acres with 100 fruit trees and as the site of the Raymond Tavern. 15 Green, born in Belchertown, graduated Amherst College in 1905 and Harvard Law School in 1912 and began his career as an attorney in the state’s tax division in 1916. In 1923 he joined the Boston firm Hale and Dorr as a tax attorney and became a partner there in 1927. In 1916 he married Hazel Roberta Newcomb of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and the couple had sons George H. B. III and Newcomb. A 1941 Herald article credited Hazel R. Green with having “restored the old house on the site of historic Raymond Tavern” and reported that she gave radio talks on entertaining.16 In December 1943, seventeen months after her husband died, Hazel R. Newcomb Green sold 1377 Massachusetts Avenue to Elmer Newton Funkhouser Jr. and his wife Gladys McFeeley Funkhouser, who married in 1940.17 A native of Hagerstown, Maryland, Elmer Funkhouser graduated Otterbein College and Harvard Business School, where he earned a master’s degree in chemistry and business administration. He was a vice president at Dewey Almy Chemical Company, W. R. Grace and Company, and American Can Company before he became a special assistant to the dean of Harvard Business School in 1976. When the Funkhousers sold 1377 Massachusetts Avenue in 1952, the house was described as having ten rooms, four bathrooms, a maid’s suite, and seven fireplaces, and the three-acre parcel included a two-car garage, a stable, and landscaped grounds and gardens.18 The property then changed hands three times more before Joseph and Carole H. P. Stavenhagen acquired it in 1968; Carole Stavenhagen owned 1377 Massachusetts Avenue until 2011. The owners of record in 2021, Traver Clinton Smith Jr. and Elizabeth Dana Smith, acquired it in 2012.19 12 George E. Robinson to Alvin Neal, Boston, 24 June 1891, MSD 2051:394. 13 Charles A. Neal, Frederick A. Neal, and Ida G. Allen all Portland ME; and Carrie G. Neal, Lexington, to Alfred Pierce, 24 June 1901, MSD 2910:490; “Lexington Estate Sold,” Boston Herald, 9 June 1901, 22. 14 See “Big Five out of Lexington Plan,” Boston Herald, 17 May 1923, 1, 7. 15 Alfred Pierce to George H. B. Green Jr. & Hazel Newcomb Green, Belmont, 10 June 1930, MSD 5469:363; “Lexington,” Boston Herald, 15 June 1930, 24. 16 “Minute Man Vigilance of ’75 Finds Lexington Ready in ’41,” Boston Herald, 19 April 1941, 32. 17 Hazel Newcomb Green, Boston, to Elmer N. Funkhouser Jr. and Gladys M. Funkhouser, 1 December 1943, MSD 6728:454 18 Elmer N. Funkhouser Jr. and Gladys M. Funkhouser to Bradlee F. and Jeannette E. Clarke, Belmont, 16 June 1952, MSD 7925:573; “Belmont Area,” Boston Herald, 9 November 1952, 78. 19 James A. and Marjorie E. Haycox to Joseph and Carole H. P. Stavenhagen, 14 August 1968, MSD 11557:350; Joseph and Carole H. P. Stavenhagen to Carole H. P. Stavenhagen, 18 March 2010, MSD 54446:82; Carole H. P. Stavenhagen to Sheldon Corp., 1 October 2011, INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 5 D LEX.133 BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Ancestry.com Boston, MA. Massachusetts Historical Commission. MACRIS online 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. 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). E. A. Mulliken, Lexington, to Mr. Neal, 7 July 1895, Lexington Historical Society. 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. 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. MSD 57578:103; Sheldon Corp., Lexington, to Traver Clinton Smith Jr. and Elizabeth Dana Smith, 1377 Massachusetts Avenue, 25 June 2012, MSD 59408:584. The house is depicted on Lot A of “1377 Massachusetts Avenue Definitive Subdivision,” 5 April 2011, Plan 667 of 2011, and Parcel A of “Plan of Land in Lexington, Massachusetts (Middlesex County) Prepared for Sheldon Corp.,” 5 April 2001, Plan 627 of 2011. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 6 D LEX.133 FIGURES First floor plan. Walter R. Wheeler, 2021. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 7 D LEX.133 PHOTOGRAPHS (Credit Walter R. Wheeler, 2021) View from south. View from north. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 8 D LEX.133 View from SE. View from NE. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 9 D LEX.133 Front entrance looking west. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 10 D LEX.133 Center passage and stairs looking east. NW parlor looking north. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 11 D LEX.133 NW parlor, detail of corner post and frieze. NW parlor looking east. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 12 D LEX.133 NW parlor detail of mantel and chairrail. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 13 D LEX.133 SW Parlor looking east. SE dining room looking south. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 14 D LEX.133 NE sitting room looking north. Second story stair hall looking west. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 15 D LEX.133 Attic looking north. Attic, roof framing in 1865-75 kitchen wing. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 16 D LEX.133 Basement, detail of arched chimney base with shelving. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 17 D LEX.133 Basement, detail of hearth support. Basement, hearth support for bake oven now removed from fireplace in NE sitting room. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 18 D LEX.133 National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in a historic district Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by________Neil Larson_________________________________ The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. The John & Lydia Mulliken House, built ca. 1795, is a distinctive example of late-18th-century domestic architecture in the town of Lexington. It retains integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association and appears to meet National Register criteria A and C for historical and architectural significance. The two-story, double-pile house has a center-passage plan with two interior chimneys containing fireplaces in front and back rooms. It evinces an elite level of house design, with a luxury of rooms and stylish decoration, and represents the ultimate stage of development of the 18th-century traditional New England house from its center-chimney origins. The front parlors retain their historic trim and decoration including chairrrails, cornices and mantels. Ornament in the south parlor is reserved, while features on the north side of the hall carry stylized Classical friezes and reeding. The staircase is intact with small-bore turned newels with rounded knobs in a manner common throughout the town. Front bed chambers are also distinguished by mantels, doors and trim. The rear rooms on the first floor were updated, first in the mid-19th-century when the kitchen wing was added and the old kitchen in the northeast corner converted into a chamber, and then in the early 20th century when the southeast room and center passage were combined into a formal dining room. Kitchen wing were common additions in the 1800s to isolate kitchen and service spaces and functions from the core house. The Mulliken House is historically significant as a landmark to the development of the town. It was built for John Mulliken, the son of Lexington clockmaker Nathaniel Mulliken and his wife Lydia Stone Mulliken. It reputedly was built on the site of Raymond Tavern, owned by Jonathan and Hephzibah Raymond in early 1733/34 and which had fallen on hard times by the time of the Revolution. Lexington was known as a tavern town due to its location on the highway into Boston favored by drovers. Legend is that John Raymond, son of the owners, was working at the Munroe Tavern across the road when British soldiers stopped there to drink on their way back to Boston after the Battle of Concord on 19 April 1775. He was shot and killed as as he tried to escape them. In 1795, according to local histories, John Mulliken tore down the Raymond Tavern and built his house on its foundation. Mulliken was a cabinetmaker and also built a two-story shop near the street in front of the house. He married Lydia Whiting of Barre and had seven children between 1781 and 1793. At John Mulliken Sr.’s death in 1840, the property passed to his son John and, after him, to granddaughter Lydia. Boston hide and leather commission merchant John James Rayner bought the property from Lydia in 1865. Rayner is said to have added the current kitchen wing to the house and moved shop to the rear of the property converting it into the existing carriage house. John J. Rayner died in October 1883 and after him the house was owned by a series of Boston INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1377 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 19 D LEX.133 businessmen as a summer retreat. One was Alfred Pierce, an active member of the honorary group Lexington Minute Men, formed in 1876 and revived in the early 1920s, that spearheaded a drive to create a monument to the 77 Lexington men who had served in John Parker’s company in 1775. In 1930 the house was bought by George Henry Bartlett Green Jr. and his wife Hazel Newcomb Green of Belmont. Green, born in Belchertown, graduated Amherst College in 1905 and Harvard Law School in 1912 and began his career as an attorney in the state’s tax division in 1916. In 1923 he joined the Boston firm Hale and Dorr as a tax attorney and became a partner there in 1927. A 1941 newspaper article credited Hazel R. Green restoring the old house and reported that she gave radio talks on entertaining. In December 1943, seventeen months after her husband died, Hazel R. Newcomb Green sold 1377 Massachusetts Avenue to Elmer Newton Funkhouser Jr. and his wife Gladys McFeeley Funkhouser. He was a vice president at Dewey Almy Chemical Company, W. R. Grace and Company, and American Can Company before he became a special assistant to the dean of Harvard Business School in 1976.