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HomeMy WebLinkAboutmassachusetts-avenue_1445 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 48-278 Lexington D LEX.142 LHD 6/11/1956 Town/City: Lexington Place: (neighborhood or village): Lexington Center Address: 1445 Massachusetts Avenue Historic Name: William E. & Katherine F. Harmon House Levi Mead House & Abiel Chandler Store Uses: Present: single family residential Original: commercial & residential Date of Construction: ca. 1790, ca. 1816, ca. 1895 Source: archival sources, deeds, visual assessment Style/Form: Colonial Revival / 2-sty hipped block & wing Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood clapboard Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Carriage barn/garage, attached Major Alterations (with dates): Kitchen & carriage barn renovated, c. 2008 Condition: GOOD Moved: no yes Date: ca. 1816, ca. 1895 Acreage: 1.08 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 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 D LEX.142 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 & Neil Larson Oral history has identified this dwelling as being comprised of a house and a store that were conjoined after the latter was moved from its original site closer to Massachusetts Avenue.1 Closer analysis reveals that it is more likely that the house, built ca. 1790, was moved from another site, probably at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Woburn Street and joined to the store when it was built on the street frontage of this Massachusetts Avenue parcel in ca. 1816. It appears that the unusual orientation of the house, attached to the rear of the store with its front façade turned to face north, was established at this time. Between 1895 and 1900 the joined buildings were moved to a new basement farther back on the lot and renovated for a single-family dwelling. The ca. 1790 house was constructed with a two-story timber frame and a traditional center-chimney plan; A lean-to on the rear that contained the kitchen was removed either when the house was moved in ca. 1816 or after it was moved a second time in ca. 1895. This store originated as a two-story wood frame commercial or mixed-use building with a single-pile plan and hipped roof constructed in ca. 1816. Since its relocation the interior was renovated for residential use in a distinctive Colonial Revival style. Internal evidence remaining in the store section suggests adjustments to its original plan were made in order to accommodate the ca. 1790 house and to join the framing systems of the two buildings. Contemporary examples of the combination of dwellings and commercial spaces under one roof or in attached structures are common, more so than specialized buildings, in fact. Both sections have wood clapboard exteriors, apparently dating from the time the buildings were relocated and renovated in ca. 1895. The north elevation of the ca.1790 house represents its five-bay front façade with a center entrance in a Neoclassical frame distinguished by an arched transom. The center chimney once aligned with this doorway was removed in the latest relocation of the house. (The framing of the roof preserves a patch in the area where the chimney would have passed through.) The paired windows in the first story of the easternmost bay were added when the room east of the center chimney was repurposed for a kitchen. Second-story windows are tight against the shallow eave of the façade in an 18th-century manner. The south elevation of the ca. 1790 section has been altered by the replacement of a lean-to with an arcaded piazza and a one-story bump-out wing. The front part of the plan is essentially intact with a lobby and stair before the chimney space, now containing a pantry on the first floor and a bathroom on the second. The stair has rectangular balusters, a feature that is commonly found in Lexington houses (and elsewhere) that were constructed or modified in the 1790-1820 period. Among these are 5 Harrington Street, 70 East Street, 271 Marrett Road, and 1377 Massachusetts Avenue. Other interior details, including decorated stringers, partially turned newels and elliptical-arched entry transom, are common to the 1790 period. The store section has a domestic form with a two-story five-bay front façade facing the street (west). A center entrance with sidelights is set within a Greek Revival architrave. Second-story windows are tight against the eaves. Two chimneys are located on the rear elevation, one of them shared by the front and rear sections of the house. The north end of the front house was altered by the addition of a wide oriel mounted on brackets in the center of the first story. It is divided into three window bays with panels at the base and a hipped roof. Two short windows occupy the second story. The south end contains a large window in the front and a smaller window above it in the second story; both appear to have been added in the ca. 1895 renovation. The 1898 map is the first to depict the current configuration, with a carriage barn attached to the east end of the house. Although its first appearance here may be attributable to a greater level of detail or accuracy of this particular map, it may be that this secondary structure was constructed or added to the earlier buildings immediately after their relocation. If this chronology is correct, the second-floor paneled room in the store portion of the house can be dated to 1895-1900, as the interior finish of the carriage barn and this room once matched. More recently, in 2008-2009, the present owners undertook extensive remodeling of 1 Former owner Keith Butters reported this to S. Lawrence Whipple in 1984 as cited in existing 1975 MHC Building Form. Whipple went on to reference “information in the archives of the Lexington Historical Society, Acc. #6642. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 D LEX.142 the east end of the ca. 1790 house and the hyphen and carriage barn that are attached to it. The kitchen, located in the former east parlor, was renovated, and the carriage barn was repurposed at its second-floor level as a family room. The visibility of the posts and girts throughout the store portion of the house, together with the manner in which the windows are proud of the exterior face of the building, suggest this house is plank construction. It appears to lack diagonal bracing, which would be expected in the interior faces of the exterior walls. A beaded beam near entrance to the bathroom at the second-floor level engages a projecting post and aligns with posts located within the south parlor adjacent to the west wall of the stair passage at the first-floor level. It does not, however, align with the post in the south wall at the second-floor level, which is within the paneled room over the hall. The reason for this inconsistency in the framing is not presently known. The beam is not visible in the west bedchamber, where it can be extrapolated to have extended into. The presence of a beaded beam suggests that at least a portion of the store may have been used for domestic space when initially constructed. None of the original interior finishes (except, perhaps the beaded beam, noted above) survive in this part of the house. Most of the interior finishes date to a comprehensive remodeling undertaken 1895-1900. Some of the partitioning of the second floor either predates the 1895-1900 alterations that were subsequently made to the building or may represent a new arrangement that was created as part of that work but that was soon-afterward altered to incorporate refinements. Evidence that points to this earlier room configuration includes the trayed ceiling of the south chamber (which now inexplicably extends into a closet at the east in the plan, adjacent to the chimney in the current room configuration), and the paneling found in the closet of the north bedchamber and in the walk-in closet above the center hall, connected to the master bedroom, at the east. These surfaces document the previous existence of a small chamber, approximately 5’-9” square, which was subsequently divided in order to provide closet space. The paneling of this room is said by the present owners to match paneling they removed from the carriage barn and hyphen portion of the house during recent renovations. The portion of the room that forms the closet for the south bedchamber retains an angled partition at its west end that predates the subdivision of the paneled room. A door that formerly connected this small center room with the south bedchamber (and now serves as the closet door) is pushed to the very corner of the room, suggesting that the angle was necessary to permit communication between the two spaces. This in turn suggests the presence of a partition—now removed—that extended north-south, dividing the present south bedchamber into two smaller spaces. There is no indication that this part of the house ever had a center chimney, and furthermore, no indication of chimney stack locations that predate the current arrangement. There is no evidence of alterations to the framing that would have been required to accommodate the chimney stacks if inserted after the initial build. The entry arrangement, consisting of a divided door with sidelights united under a Greek Revival entablature supported on pilasters, is difficult to date. It appears to predate the late-19th century remodeling but postdates the likely construction period of this part of the dwelling. Joining of the two buildings It is clear that the present structure is comprised of two frames, both domestic in size and form, which date to ca. 1790 and ca. 1816. It has been presumed that the structures were joined at some point after both had been constructed independently. An alternative scenario is suggested, however, upon examination of evidence found in the building and in 19th century mapping, which has been touched upon, above. Notably, the framing of the ca. 1790 portion of the house lacks corner posts at its west end at both corners and at both the first and second floor levels. If the two parts of the house were exactly contemporary, this could be explained by the fact that posts are located near these locations within the frame of the hipped-roof portion of the house. However, if these two structures were joined at a later date, the only explanation would appear to be that the west wall of the ca. 1790 house was removed—including its supporting framing—when the two structures were joined. The unusual location of the south chimney stack in the store portion of the dwelling may be explained by one of two scenarios. One, is that a room located at the south end of the plan was of narrow width, resulting in the unusual choice for chimney location. Second—and more probable—is that the store was initially constructed as a structure that was, as initially built, attached to the ca. 1790 house, and thus needed to maintain a connection to the kitchen, then located in the lean-to of the ca. 1790 part of the dwelling. The store probably contained domestic spaces in it, in addition to whatever commercial function it may have served. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 D LEX.142 The earliest mapping that has been located which shows the two buildings in their present configuration dates to 1875. This map, however, depicts the joined buildings on a site close to the road, and so the joining of the two structures occurred before they were moved to their present site. Relocation and Colonial Revival Remodeling, ca. 1895-1900 The combined buildings were moved back from the road between 1889 and 1898. It was probably at that time that the house received its comprehensive Colonial Revival remodeling. Given that the property changed hands in 1894, it is likely that the date of this move can be further refined to the years between 1894 and 1898, with the remodeling occurring not long afterward. The work accomplished on the store portion of the dwelling included reconstruction of the two back wall chimney stacks in the “store” portion of the house (their stacks incorporate cast iron ash cleanout doors marked “Joseph Huse & Son.” That firm was active in Boston from at least 1878 to 1916); creation of alcoves and mantles for the first and second floor fireplaces, construction of a new straight-run staircase, removal of the partition between the central passage and the south parlor (presuming there was one in that location), and refinements to the partitioning of the second floor, all in the “store” portion of the dwelling. The side elevation windows on the “store” portion of the dwelling sit flush with the exterior surface of the facades, differing thus from the windows of the principal elevation. These windows are of a later date and were probably installed during the ca. 1895 renovation. The removal of the center chimney of the ca. 1790 part of the house occurred as part of the process of moving the joined buildings to a new location on the site. Several clues point to this. The three mantles and fireboxes that remain in the that portion of the house all date to the ca. 1895 period, using details associated with the Colonial Revival rather than late-18th century Neoclassical design. The fireplace in the west end wall of the ca. 1790 part of the house was constructed to share the chimney built in ca. 1895 with a fireplace in the east wall of the north parlor of the store portion of the dwelling; that west room of the early house became the dining room of the Colonial Revival plan. Finally, if the central chimney mass had been removed when the ca. 1790 house was initially moved in ca. 1816, it would have necessitated the creation of a replacement kitchen, or a new kitchen fireplace within the building. There is no evidence for a kitchen wing or replacement fireplace having been added to the house previous to the relocation of the house. It was probably at this same time (ca. 1895) that the lean-to portion of the earlier center-chimney house was removed and replaced with a covered porch and the wing and carriage barn were constructed. The present foundation under the house appears to be continuous and without seam between the two halves of the structure. 2008-2009 The present owners removed the interior finishes of the rear wing, or hyphen that connects the house to the “garage”—the former carriage barn— and the garage itself, retaining only the stud walls. The interior surfaces were found to have been sheathed with tongue-and-groove paneling of the same pattern that is retained in the room above the hall in the “store” portion of the house. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Researched & written by Kathryn Grover The house at 1445 Massachusetts is believed to be composed of two dwellings, the first part, currently the rear ell, built about 1790 by Levi Mead (1759-1828).2 Mead was a son of Matthew Mead (1717-96), whose house stood on the southeast corner of Main Street (Massachusetts Avenue) and Woburn Street, later the site of the Russell House hotel. In 1790 he transferred to son Levi one parcel, probably the site of 1445 Massachusetts Avenue, and in 1793, three years before his death, he sold Levi three-quarters of his 40-acre homestead.3 Levi Mead is listed with six in his household in the 1790 Lexington census and was taxed on 46 acres in the 1798 federal direct tax.4 2 The July 1975 Massachusetts Historical Commission building inventory form for 1445 Massachusetts Avenue gives the builder’s name as Levi Read, but no man of that name was a grantor or grantee in early Lexington, and the chain of title establishes the original owner of the parcel as Levi Mead. On the Mead family see Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts from its First Settlement to 1868 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 2: 417-18. 3 Matthew Mead, Lexington, to Levi Mead, Lexington, 7 January 1793, MSD 119:49. The earlier deed, Matthew Mead, Lexington, to Levi Mead, Lexington, 1790, MSD 103:76, is not currently viewable on the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds website. 4 The tax schedule listing dwellings that would have included Mead is not among those records on AmericanAncestors.org. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 D LEX.142 In 1800 Levi Mead and his family moved to Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and he sold his 40-acre homestead, another eight acres, and half of a .5-are lot he owned with two other Lexington men. A deed transferring the one-acre 1445 Massachusetts Avenue lot, which may not have been part of the homestead parcel, has not been located, but in 1815 John Chandler (1786-1817) of Lexington and John Kimball of Waltham sold the lot to Chandler’s son Daniel for $300.5 The deed identifies Kimball as a senior warden of Lexington’s Hiram Masonic lodge, of which Chandler was a past master, and it is possible that the lodge acquired the 1445 Massachusetts Avenue parcel from Mead in an unrecorded deed. This John Chandler was the son of John Chandler (1758-1804) and grandson of John Chandler (1731-1810), who had moved to Lexington from Concord by 1758. John Jr. served in John Parker’s Lexington company on Lexington Green and at Cambridge in May and June 1775, and then he entered the “marine service” in 1779 and was taken prisoner near Charleston, South Carolina, with fellow Lexington native Joseph Loring. The two were exchanged and somehow, without any money or other means, returned to Massachusetts in 1778. In 1786 John Chandler was living in Salem when he married Margaret Mack, and the two moved to Lexington in 1787. His son John was the eldest, and Daniel (1788-1847) was two years younger. Both were also military men. Daniel was an ensign during the War of 1812 and served at Plattsburgh and then on the “frontier,” and when peace was declared he returned to Lexington. In 1816 Daniel Chandler’s father sold him his own homestead farm and three other parcels with the proviso that, should she survive him, his wife Margaret be permitted to live in his house and be maintained “in a decenter manner” as long as she remained his widow. In 1817 he married Susanna Downing of Lexington, and in 1820 he was, unaccountably, head of a household of twenty persons enumerated next to the household of his widowed mother Margaret. He was an active member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and frequent contributor to the newspaper New England Farmer in the 1830s. The front, later portion of the 1445 Massachusetts Avenue dwelling was probably built for Daniel Chandler for use as a store and a residence, and he appears to have installed his brothers Samuel (1795-1867) and Abiel (1799-1861) as storekeepers there. Later owners of the property determined during renovation that the store building was probably moved back from a location closer to the road and joined with the ca. 1790 structure (however, the house had been joined to the store before they both were moved back).6 In April 1825 Chandler advertised this “house and store, now occupied by Samuel and Abiel Chandler,” for sale or rent. Noted to be a half-mile below the town meetinghouse and on the main road from Boston to Concord, the “stand,” Chandler said, “is pleasantly situated either for a Shop-keeper or a Mechanic.” In March 1827 Chandler sold the acre lots and its building to Stephen Cutter of Charlestown for $950.7 Born in Medford, Stephen Cutter (1780-1827) ran a sawmill and a grist mill in Charlestown at the time he bought the Lexington property. His father John was also a miller, in Medford. In 1802 Cutter married Sally Jipson of Old Town, Maine. It is unclear if he ever occupied 1445 Massachusetts Avenue, as he died only two months after buying it. The property passed to his heirs. The 1830 census lists the widowed Sally Cutter with nine in her household, probably all but the eldest of her nine children: daughter Sally had married in 1830. The other children were born between 1806 and 1822—Mary Jane, Stephen Jr., Susanna or Susan Barker, Amos Franklin, Elizabeth A., James Munroe, Rebecca, and Samuel Perkins Cutter. By 1840 Sally Cutter’s household included only four persons, and by 1850 she was living with her son-in-law William Henry Smith, a house painter who had married daughter Susan B. in 1834, Susan and their children Sarah Jane and Mary F., and an Irish immigrant domestic servant recorded with the same surname. The 1856 atlas plate for this part of Lexington attaches, incorrectly, “S. Cutler Est” to the property. 5 Levi Mead, Lexington, to Shove Howland, Boston, 14 April 1800, MSD 137:462; John Chandler, Lexington, and John Kimball, Waltham, to Daniel Chandler, Lexington, 1 September 1815, MSD 215:320. Levi Mead took out several mortgages on the homestead parcel, one with the Lexington “committee of the parish loan money” of which John Chandler was a member. When Mead sold the homestead to Boston housewright Shove Howland (1759-1833), Howland mortgaged the property both to the same committee and to Levi Mead; see 14 April 1800, MSD 137:653, and 15 April 1800, MSD 137:464. 6 As reported to S. Lawrence Whipple in 1984, cited in existing 1975 MHC B Form. 7 Concord Gazette and Middlesex Yeoman, 2 and 9 April 1825, 4; Daniel Chandler, Lexington, to Stephen Cutter, Charlestown, 6 March 1827, MSD 272:407. Daniel Chandler soon after became the superintendent of the Farm School on Thompson’s Island in Boston Harbor, then superintendent of Boston’s House of Industry and House of Reformation. He died of typhus in 1847. See New England Farmer, 14 December 1836, 7; Boston Semi-weekly Atlas, 19 June 1847, 5, and, on the sale of his Lexington real estate, Boston Courier, 3 July 1850, 3. On the Chandler family see Hudson, Lexington, 99-104; on the Cutter family see ibid., 2: 153-57, and William Richard Cutter, A History of the Cutter Family of New England (Boston: David Clapp and Son, 1871), 237-45. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 5 D LEX.142 By 1860 Sally Jipson Cutter had moved to the Cambridge household of her son James Munroe Cutter, a stationer. Susan Cutter Smith had died in 1857, and in 1860 her widowed husband William H. Smith lived at 1445 Massachusetts Avenue with children George H., Sarah Rebecca, Susan Jane, and Mary F. By 1865 only daughters Susan, Sarah, and Mary remain in the house with their father, and in October that year they and other heirs of Stephen Cutter sold the 1445 Massachusetts Avenue parcel to William Smith for $500.8 Smith’s name is attached to the house on the 1875 Lexington map. Two years later he and his children sold the property to Levi Prosser (1824-98) for $1200.9 Born in Bloomfield, Connecticut, Prosser was a realtor in Boston but listed in Lexington as a farmer; his wife Amanda was also from Bloomfield, and the couple had a daughter, Harriet. The Prossers lived at 1445 Massachusetts Avenue with a sister, a boarder, and a domestic servant in 1880. In 1884 Levi Prosser sold 1445 Massachusetts Avenue to Lydia J. Osgood Prescott for $1900.10 She was the wife of John H. Prescott, a Civil War veteran whose father Humphrey was a housewright in Burlington. By 1880 John H. Prescott was a cabinetmaker in Somerville and lived with his wife, six children, and a servant. The Prescotts owned and occupied the property for a decade and sold it in October 1894 to Katherine F. Harmon.11 She was born Katherine Farnsworth Griffiths in Charlestown and was living in Lexington in 1890 when she married Ohio native William Elmer Harmon, a realtor and partner in the Boston firm Wood, Harmon and Company. By 1900 the Harmons had moved to a house on nearby Percy Road and must have rented 1445 Massachusetts Avenue; Harmon’s name is attached to both houses on the 1906 atlas plate for this part of Lexington. By 1913 he and his family had moved to New York City, and the Harmons sold the Massachusetts Avenue property, then numbered 323, to Frances A. W. Kendall. A notice of the sale in the Boston Herald described the house as “a modernized colonial-type, 10-room dwelling” with a stable and lot of 40,000 square feet.12 Frances Kendall owned 1445 Massachusetts Avenue for about three years and had moved to Missouri by the time she sold it to Edmund Stevens Childs (1894-1947) in August 1917.13 Childs grew up in the Percy Street home of his father George Henry Childs (1868-1919), a founder and partner of the Boston wholesale provisioning firm Childs, Sleeper and Company. Son Edmund graduated from Harvard College, married Barbara Holmes of Belmont in 1916, and joined his father’s firm. The 1918 directory lists him as a provisions dealer living at 323 (now 1445) Massachusetts Avenue. In 1920 Edmund Childs transferred title to the property to his wife, and the family remained in this house until 1925. In that year Barbara Childs petitioned the Massachusetts Land Court to register the house lot (perhaps because of its north border with the town’s high school lot), a parcel of 8909.3 square feet.14 The rest of the parcel remained recorded land. The Childs family moved to Adams Street and sold 1445 Massachusetts Avenue to Robert H. Moore of Cambridge, whose family owned and occupied it for almost three decades.15 Robert Huse Moore (1898-1956) was born in Newton to draftsman Joseph W. Moore and his wife Mary E. Dutton. His father and grandfather, Charles E. Moore, were both machinery company founders and executives. The firm J. W. Moore Machine Company was founded in 1836; Charles E. Moore and Martin Luther Wyman founded Moore and Wyman Elevator and Machine Company, one of the first manufacturers of passenger and freight elevator machinery. Joseph W. Moore was president of Moore and Wyman in 1905; Robert H. Moore was president of J.W. Moore by 1925. The 1930 and 1940 Lexington censuses list him as a machinery company president living at 1445 Massachusetts Avenue with his wife Hazel Sprague Moore, their children Robert 8 Heirs of Stephen Cutter to William H. Smith, 5 October 1865, MSD 1344:23. The heirs, listed at the end of the deed, were son Stephen Cutter Jr. and his wife Catherine G. Thompson Cutter, son Amos Franklin Cutter and his wife Martha (Mahala), son James Monroe Cutter and his wife Harriet W. Boit Cutter, son Samuel Perkins Cutter, and the children of deceased daughter Mary Jane Cutter Thompson, George C., Louisa M., and Otis T. 9 William H. and Susan R. Smith, Lexington; George H. Smith, Philadelphia; Thomas H. and Sarah J. Kyte, Cambridge; and Roscoe G. and Mary F. Day, Lewiston ME, to Levi Prosser, 15 May 1877, MSD 1439:537. William H. Smith was living in Lexington with his daughter Susan in 1880 and died in Everett in September 1896. 10 Levi Prosser to Lydia J Prescott, 1 October 1884, MSD 1681:331. 11 John H. and Lydia J. Prescott to Katherine F. Harmon, 30 October 1894, MSD 2317:340 12 William E. and Katherine F. Harmon, New York NY, to Frances A. W. Kendall, 29 May 1913, MSD 3797:272; “Sales in Many Towns,” Boston Herald, 8 June 1913, 14. 13 Frances A. W. Kendall, Louisiana MO, to Edmund S. Childs, 13 August 1917, MSD 4159:529. 14 Edmund S. Childs to Barbara H. Childs, 21 May 1920, MSD 4353:374; Notice of Land Court Petition, Barbara H. Childs, Lexington, 5 June 1925, MSD 4853:443; Commonwealth of Massachusetts Land Court, Petition of Barbara H. Childs 10871, 24 August 1925, MSD 4880:220. See “Plan of Land in Lexington,” 4 May 1925, Land Court Plan 10871A. 15 This 1925 sale is reported in Boston Herald, 13 March 1925, 30, but the Certificate of Title, 20064 is not currently viewable on the registry website. On Childs see “Edmund S. Childs of Lexington Dies,” Boston Herald, 11 July 1947, 15. Barbara Holmes Childs died in 1982; see Boston Globe, 8 April 1982, 49. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 6 D LEX.142 H. Jr., Joseph W., and Meredith, and two domestic servants. During the Second World War Hazel Sprague Moore was a member of the Lexington Red Cross Motor Corps and first vice president of the Lexington Public Health Association; she later was among the organizers of the town’s visiting nurse association.16 Hazel Sprague Moore died in 1952, and later that year her husband sold 1445 Massachusetts Avenue and another parcel to George K. and Anna L. Makechnie of Peterborough, New Hampshire, for $1450; they sold it in 1955 to John Keith and Helen R. Butters.17 J. Keith Butters (1915-2005) earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1937 and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard. He was a professor of business administration at Harvard University from 1943 to 1986. Renovations he and his wife undertook revealed that the dwelling was two joined houses. In June 1973 the Butterses sold 1445 Massachusetts Avenue to Harvard University social historian Stephen Thernstom and his wife Abigail Mann Thernstrom (1936-2020).18 They owned and occupied the house for the next 44 years. Born in Port Huron, Michigan, in 1934, Stephan Thernstrom graduated Northwestern University and went to acquire his Ph.D. at Harvard under the tutelage of immigration historian Oscar Handlin. In 1958 he met Abigail Mann, a Barnard College graduate then in a Middle Eastern studies program at Harvard, and they married in 1959. Stephan Thernstrom is best known for his social histories of Newburyport and Boston, Poverty and Progress (1964) and The Other Bostonians (1973), the latter of which won the Bancroft Prize, and he was editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980). He was on the faculty of the Harvard- MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, the University of California at Los Angeles, and Brandeis University, and he became a full professor at Harvard in 1973. Abigail Thernstrom received her doctorate from Harvard in 1975 and was later a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Together the Thernstroms wrote the controversial America in Black and White (1997), which questioned the continued efficacy of affirmative action and racial quotas, and No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (2003). In 1999 Abigail M. Thernstrom sold 1445 Massachusetts Avenue to Robert E. and Jean C. Ricci, the owners of record in 2021.19 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). 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. Lexington Directory. various years. Lexington Minute-man. 1871-present. “List Simonds Tavern in National Register,” News-Tribune (Waltham, MA), 15 November 1976. 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. 16 See Boston Herald, 25 January 1942, 9; “Mrs. Hazel Moore Dies in Lexington,” Boston Sunday Herald, 9 March 1952, 76; “Robert H. Moore, Lexington, Dead,” Boston Herald, 19 May 1956, 5: 17 Robert H. Moore, executor will Hazel S. Moore, to George K. and Anna L. Makechnie, Peterborough NH, 29 November 1952, MSD 8004:22; George K. and Anna L. Makechnie to J. Keith and Helen R. Butters, 1445 Massachusetts Avenue, 3 June 1955, MSD 8486:363. 18 J. Keith and Helena M. Butters to Stephan and Abigail M. Thernstrom, 1445 Massachusetts Avenue, 28 June 1973, MSD 12468:279. 19 Abigail M. Thernstrom to Robert E. and Jean C. Ricci, 1445 Massachusetts Avenue, 9 August 2007, MSD 49922:19. On the Thernstroms see Boston Globe, 24 February 1965, 12; Boston Herald, 6 Sept. 1990, 43; and “The Racial Optimist,” Boston Globe, 16 Dec 1997, D1, D4. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 7 D LEX.142 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 First floor plan with field notes, Walter R. Wheeler, 2021. Store section built ca. 1816 on right and house section built in ca. 1790 and later joined to the store on left. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 8 D LEX.142 Second floor plan with field notes, Walter R. Wheeler, 2021. Store section built ca. 1816 on right and house section built in ca. 1790 and later joined to the store on left. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 9 D LEX.142 The Childs Land Court Plan of 1925 depicts the 1445 Massachusetts Ave. house and lot. (10871A) INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 10 D LEX.142 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Walter R. Wheeler, 2021) View from west. View of former store section from SW. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 11 D LEX.142 View of ca. 1790 house from NW; joined to former store section on right. View from SE; altered elevation of ca. 1790 house on right joined to rear of former store section on left. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 12 D LEX.142 View of connected carriage barn from SE. View of connected carriage barn from NW. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 13 D LEX.142 Entry lobby and stairs in ca. 1790 section. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 14 D LEX.142 Dining room (west room of ca. 1790 house) looking west. Fireplace & mantel ca. 1895. Dining room (west room of ca. 1790 house) looking east. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 15 D LEX.142 Fireplace and mantel (ca. 1895) in second-story chamber above dining room on west side of ca. 1790 house. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 16 D LEX.142 Living room with entry and stairs in ca. 1895 renovation of store section looking NW. Note ceiling beam for absent hall partition. Living room in ca. 1895 renovation of store section looking SE. Fireplace added in corner. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 17 D LEX.142 North parlor in store section looking east. Fireplace shares chimney with one in dining room. Second-story stair landing. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 18 D LEX.142 Southwest corner of south bed chamber showing corner posts, girts and tray ceiling Fireplace niche, south bed chamber. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 19 D LEX.142 North bed chamber looking NW. Paneling in closet adjoining south chimney. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 20 D LEX.142 Roof framing in ca. 1790 section. Basement under ca. 1790 house looking east to center chimney space. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 21 D LEX.142 South chimney base in store section. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 1445 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 22 D LEX.142 Upper level interior in carriage barn.