HomeMy WebLinkAboutconcord-avenue_0389 FORD AREA FORM N0.B - BUILDING T 561
_ - j
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
294 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MA 02108
A
wn Lexington
dress 389 Concord Avenue
- storic Name Ebenezer Smith House
it
e: Present residential
- — Original residential
DESCRIPTION:
to c. 1815
-
ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE (Describe important architectural features and
evaluate in terms of other buildings within the community.)
One of the surviving farmhouses built along the Cambridge-Concord Turnpike
(see Concord Avenue area form) , this house, five bays wide, two stories high,
two bays deep, and with two rear chimneys -- has a typical Federal Vernacular
profile. Other features are the first story windows which are slightly longer
than those on the second and the pilasters on either side of the front door
which, before the addition of the porch, very likely formed part of a simple
Federal frontispiece. Like the Federal farmhouses at 353 Concord Avenue and
(see Continuation Sheet)
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE (Explain the role owners played in local or state
history and how the building relates to the development of the community.)
- According to an antiquarian account, this house was built in 1815 for
Ebenezer Smith. The house previously on the site burned on January 31, 1815,
one of the coldest days in years, and because Smith did not have it insured,
- the neighbors chipped in to help him build a new one (Smith 1891:107) . The
1830 map shows a house on this site, then the corner of Concord Avenue and
Waltham Street. (The stone wall that bordered the old Waltham Street can still
be seen to the east of the driveway of this house.)
.Ebenezer Smith belonged to a family that had first moved to Lexington
from Watertown in the late seventeenth century and by the beginning_ of the
nineteenth century had so many members who lived in the south part of town that
it was known as "Smith's End." Ebenezer himself was a shoemaker; most of his
customers apparently lived in Boston though his workshop was at his house in
Lexington. (None of the present outbuildings appear to be a shoemaker's shop,
however.) He reportedly retired in 1848 at the age of 68; the 1852 map indicates
that he still owned the house on this site (no longer the corner of Waltham
Street, which had been moved to its present location) , but the 1853 man indicates
that it was owned by Elbridge Farmer, Ebenezer Smith's son-in-law (Hudson 1913,
11:643) . Smith died in 1860 and by 1876 the house was owned by George O.
Wellington, a farrier who had moved to Lexington from Waltham in 1859 and was a
grandnephew of David Wellington on Pleasant St. (see 13&iPleasant St. form) .
_ George Wellington still owned the property in 1906;
(see Continuation Sheet)
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES (name of publication, author, date and publisher)
Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington, Volume II. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1913.
i
Kelley, Beverly Allison. Lexington: A Century of Photographs. Lexington,
Massachusetts: Lexington HIstorical Society, 1980.
Lexington Historical Society, Burr Church Collection.
Smith, A. Bradford. "Kite End"(1891). Proceedings of the Lexington HIstorical
Society II (1900) :99-122.
1830 map
1852 map
1853 map
1876 map
1906 map
1906 Directory
10M - 7/82
INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Comwni
ty: Form No:
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL CCWISSION Lexington 561
Office of the Secretary, Boston
Property Name: 389 Concord Avenue
Indicate each item on inventory form which is being continued below.
ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE
945 Waltham Street (see forms for these buildings) , this house has two windows
on each story on one side (in this case the east) and one window per story on
the other side. The mortared fieldstone is evidently an anomaly rather than an
indication the house was moved to this site.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
at that time it apparently had a barn as well as a house, but a shed attached
to the barn and shown in photographs taken in 1921 (Kelley 1980:10) and in 1923
is no longer standing.
Staple to Inventory form at bottom