HomeMy WebLinkAbouthayes-lane_0029 FORM B - BUILDING
Assessor's Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION 10048000213 Boston N. 668
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD Town Lexington
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Place(neighborhood or village)
el photo Address 29 Hayes Ln.
b
Im roll Historic Name Ell of Charles G. Fletcher House
oto to
1 photos Uses: Present Residential
( Original Residential
Date of Construction 18th century Source Interior inspection
x
Style/Form
v
Architect/Builder
Exterior Material:
Foundation Fieldstone
dation to Wall/Trim Wood Shingle
rtures.
znd Roof Asphalt Shingle
eets Outbuildings/Secondary Structures
er the
H VI Major Alterations(with dates)
� , o
1� .\ Condition Good
Moved ❑ no ® yes Date 1895
Acreage 1.1 A.
HAV
Setting On a quiet side street with predominantly 20th-
century houses
Recorded by Nancy S. Seasholes
Organization Lexington Historical Commission
Date(month/year) March 1998
Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.
BUILDING FORM
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION ❑see continuation sheet
Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community.
29 Hayes Ln. is one of several ells of 18th-or 19th-century houses in Lexington that have been separated from their parent
building and moved to a new location(other examples are at 15 Belfry Terr. [MHC#683], 40 Forest St. [MHC#681], and 9-
11 Cedar St. [MHC#688]). This house is rectangular,two stories, four(irregularly-spaced)-by-two bays, and side gabled with a
rear chimney. It is set on a fieldstone foundation, clad with wood shingles, and roofed with asphalt shingles. The off-center entry
is under a front-gabled roof,windows are 1/1 double hung sash. The house is of post-and-beam construction and the roof framed
with a principal rafter/common purlin system where the ridge purlin is mortised through the overlapping rafter and the roof boards
run vertically from eave to ridge—techniques typical of the 18th century.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ❑see continuation sheet
Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local(or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the
role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community.
This house was originally the ell of what was known as the Fletcher House, which was on the northwest corner of the present
intersection of Massachusetts Ave. and Fletcher and Woburn streets, now the grassy area east of the school administration
building at 1557 Massachusetts Ave. The Fletcher House had belonged to Benjamin Estabrook(1729-1803),though was not the
house in which he lived, and after his death was sold by his sons in 1808. It is not clear who had been living in the house or when
it was built,although the construction of the ell definitely points to an 18th-century construction date. A ca. 1923 photograph of
the Fletcher House shows it as five-by-two bays, side-gabled with two ridge chimneys, and having a center doorway surround with
a molded projecting cornice and full-length sidelights. The house was acquired in 1820 by Abner Pierce(1766-1837)and it may
have been Pierce who added the Greek Revival entry. When Pierce died the property was inherited by his daughter Lucy Turner
and she sold it in 1868 to Charles G. Fletcher(1821-1904),a horse trader from Groton who soon moved to Lexington. Beginning
in the late 1880s Fletcher subdivided the 30 acres associated with the house,which extended north from Massachusetts Ave. into
the area where Fletcher Ave. and Hayes Ln. now run, into houselots and built houses intended as rental properties (see Area form
G). In 1895 the ell of the Fletcher House was cut off and moved to its present location on Hayes Ln., an early 18th-century track
that had become a town road in 1822.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES ❑see continuation sheet
Church, Burr. Photograph Collection. Lexington Historical Society, Lexington, MA.
Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington. Revised and continued to 1912 by the Lexington Historical Society.
Boston: Houghton Mullin, 1913. 2: 221-22, 537, 191-92.
Lexington Directory. 1922-1936.
Middlesex Registry of Deeds. Deeds. Cambridge, MA. 188: 61; 231: 271; 246: 212; 1038: 195; 2389: 98.
Worthen, Edwin B. Notes on buildings burned,torn down, and moved. "Houses"file,Worthen Collection. Cary Library,
Lexington, Mass.
Tracing the Past in Lexington, Massachusetts. New York: Vantage Press, 1998. 13-16, 25.
❑ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked,you must attach a completed National
Register Criteria Statement form.