George G. Hall Stables // 1895

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The George G. Hall Stables on Byron Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood were built in 1895 for George G. Hall, a wealthy hotelier and developer, who razed three private stables occupying the site prior. For his private stables, George Hall hired Boston architect, William Whitney Lewis, to furnish the plans, which resulted in one of the finest buildings on the Flat of Beacon Hill. Designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the building was described in architectural publications as being constructed of Milford pink granite and coral-colored bricks with two carriage doors and a door for the stable-keeper with an extant hayloft on the second floor. While from afar, the stables are stunning, it is when you inspect it up-close that you see the attention to detail that was taken by the architect. Round stone medallions on the facade read: “G.G.H.” after its owner; “No. 11, 12, & 13”, the addresses; and “1895”, the year of construction. Additionally, at the ends of the arched stable openings, carved dog heads can be found, keeping guard of the horses inside. The stable was later converted to three residences in the 1960s by the architectural firm of Goody & Clancy, Associates.

Eleonora R. Sears Studio and Garage // 1929

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In 1929, Eleonora R. Sears (1881-1968), a tennis champion and great-great-great granddaughter of President Thomas Jefferson, had a 19th century stable she inherited from her late father, demolished and replaced with this stunning residence with garage on Byron Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The present three-story building was designed by Henry Forbes Bigelow, who lived a few blocks away in his own mansion, as a unique Colonial Revival style building with symmetrical facade. Eleonora Sears was one of the first American women to drive an automobile and fly a plane and lived here with her chauffeur when she was not at one of her other properties. After Eleonora died in 1968, her Beacon Hill residence was converted into condominiums, while the facade retains its architectural features when built nearly 100 years ago.

Burke’s Hack & Livery Stable // c.1865

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This handsome two-story brick stable on Byron Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood was built around 1865 for the Sigourney family, and its front façade retains a distinctive appearance associated with that period. The brick façade sits on a granite base, and the first story contains two entrances characteristic of its stable use: a vehicle door providing access to ground floor and a domestic entrance connecting to stairs leading to upper levels including stableman’s quarters on the top floor. Around the time of WWI, the property was owned by James F. Burke, who added the painted sign over the carriage entry. The stable was converted to a residence in about 1964 for owner, Jay Schrochet by architect, Benjamin S. Fishstein and remains a single-family home today.

Harris and Mildred Livermore Mansion // 1919

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The four-story brick residence on Beaver Street in Beacon Hill was constructed in 1919 in the style of a Venetian palazzo for Harris Livermore, president of the Coastwise Transportation Corporation, and his wife, Mildred. The large home was designed by the firm of Richardson, Barott & Richardson, an office founded by Philip and Frederic Richardson, sons of famed architect Henry Hobson Richardson. The large mansion was featured in architectural publications, highlighting the popularity for Italian styles and the interior design of the home. The facade is finished in brick a stone base, with notable lancet windows with blind arches in groups of three and projecting oriel bays. At the fourth floor, two windows are surmounted by Venetian arches. After Harris Livermore died in 1929, the property was inherited by his daughter, Elizabeth, and her new husband F. Murray Forbes Jr., a prominent Boston attorney.

Garcelon Stable – Byron Street Hall // c.1850

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This handsome vernacular building on Byron Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill is one of a row of 19th century stables converted to residences. The building typifies the scale and appearance of many private stables in Boston of teh period and is built of brick with stone lintels over the openings. Due to its form and lack of ornamentation and sans mansard roof, the stable was likely built in the mid-19th century for an owner who resided in a mansion along Beacon Street. By 1874, the stable was run by Alsom Garcelon (1815-1881), a stable keeper who was born in New Brunswick, Canada and arrived in Boston by 1860 quickly making a business operating stables for wealthy Boston residents. He ran at least a half-dozen stables on the Flat of Beacon Hill and became a fixture in the community until his death in 1881. The building operated as a stable and later as a blacksmith shop until 1925, when owner, Andrew N. Winslow, bought the building and hired the firm of Putnam & Cox, to convert the building into a clubhouse. The site became home to the Byron Street Hall, a small public hall. It was later known as the Byron Street House and was connected to the Community Church in Boston. In 1940, the former stable was converted to the Bishop-Lee School, founded by stage actress Emily Perry Bishop, as a school for speech and acting. The school relocated by 1960, and after successive business uses, the building was converted to a residence, which it has remained ever-since.


Toy Theatre – Copley Theatre // 1914-1921

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Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library collections.

When the Toy Theatre on Lime Street in Beacon Hill (last post) was formed in the early 20th century, the members of the small theatre group of well-connected artists and actors had their sights on something with permanence. By 1914, the group had funding and acquired land on Dartmouth street, a block away from Copley Square, and ground was broken to build a large new theatre. Designed by the architecture firm of Putnam & Cox, the fashionable Colonial Revival style building featured a large, rounded facade and was constructed of brick with a marble base and detailing. The theatre was designed with a retail space for supplemental income. Inside, decorations were refined and also included a staircase and railings donated by Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Fenway Court mansion, that were removed when she created the Tapestry Room in her home. The organization could not support running the building through shows, and the space was sold and rebranded as the Copley Theatre within a couple years. Continuing the bad luck, the City of Boston decided to extend Stuart Street by 1921, and this building was along the proposed route. The Toy Theatre was demolished in 1921, after just seven years.

Thayer Stable – Toy Theatre – Richard Platt House // c.1865

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This charming building at 16 Lime Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill, Boston, has seen a variety of uses from carpentry shop and stable, to working theater, and finally to a residence. Let’s dive in! 

The early ownership is murky, but by the 1870s, this two-story with mansard roof stable was owned by a “Nathan Thayer”, either Nathaniel Thayer Jr. or Nathaniel Thayer III of Lancaster, who also retained city residences in Boston. The building features two portals on the first-floor that originated as doorways, the wider on the left for horses and a carriage, and the smaller for access to residential space for the stable-keeper and likely a hay loft over the carriage door.  After the turn of the 20th century, the Flat of Beacon Hill gentrified into an exclusive enclave of residences, antiques shops, and artist studios and the former Thayer Stable was purchased by Frederick Oakes Houghton, an agent for transatlantic steamers. Houghton rented the building to an amateur theatrical group who organized as the Toy Theatre, that was founded in 1911 to present plays that had not been presented professionally in Boston. The founding group consisted of the usual, artistic, high society types, and had seating for 129 with no standing room. Houghton hired architect, Harold Symmes Graves, to convert the building into its theater use, enclosing the former carriage door and hay loft with multi-light windows, and creating a larger space inside for productions. The Toy Theatre did very well (due in part to its membership of upper-class Boston residents) and a new, purpose-built Toy Theatre was built in the Back Bay by 1914. In 1917, the former stable and theatre was purchased by Richard B. Platt, a musician and music teacher, and converted to a residence, a use that has remained ever since. 

Deutsch House // 1915 & 1981

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Originally built in 1915 as a two-car garage, this fanciful and diminutive residence was created atop the former garage in 1981 to become one of Boston’s best examples of Post-Modern architecture. Located at the corner of Beaver Place and Beaver Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill, the one-story brick garage was constructed behind 91 Beacon Street for Helen and Robert Emmons to store their personal automobiles. By 1981, the garage parcel was separated from the Beacon Street address and owners, Ira and Margaret Deutsch filed to build a one-story addition to the garage to create a residence. The couple worked with architect, Graham Gund, who designed a vertical, second-story addition to the brick garage, creating one of the most whimsical and unique buildings in Boston. The stuccoed walls with gables are covered with a projecting trellis which is set behind the framing of the windows to create a three-dimensional facade element.

The Brimmer School – Park Street School // 1914

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Now functioning as the Park Street School, the handsome brick building at 63-69 Brimmer Street stands on the site of a former three-story brick livery stable and is an excellent example of the early 20th century revival of the Flat of Beacon Hill from the “horsey end of town”, to an upper-class enclave. The school building, which was completed in 1914, was designed by R. Clipston Sturgis, one of the premier architects of Boston, as one of the first “fireproof” schools in Boston. The school building originally had an open-air rooftop playground, and was designed with special attention to light and air ventilation, with a library, gymnasium, and recitation rooms inside. In 1939, the Brimmer School merged with the May School, which had been founded about 1900, creating the Brimmer & May School. The new institution then hired architect, Walter H. Kilham of the firm, Kilham & Hopkins, to enclose the rooftop playground, allowing for more usable space for the school. After the Brimmer & May School moved to Chestnut Hill in 1954, the building was bought by C.F. Burdett, as a new location for a private business school that had been operating since 1879. Burdett College remained in possession of the building until 1970 when Emerson College took over the building for its performing arts department. In 2003, Emerson College sold the building to Park Street Kids, a children’s organization begun by mothers at Park Street Church, located on the east end of the Boston Common and it has since been known as the Park Street School. The school was recently restored by Mills Whitaker Architects.

Amy Gore Iasigi Townhouse // 1906

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This granite-faced townhouse at 76 Beacon Street in Beacon Hill was built in 1906, and was designed as an early 20th century continuation of the Asher Benjamin-designed row of granite-faced townhomes to its east, built in 1829. The handsome residence was built in 1906, when Amy Gore Iasigi, the widow of merchant and statesman, Oscar Iasigi (1846-1884), purchased the site a year prior and hired architect, A. W. Longfellow, to design a new townhouse for the site. Ms. Iasigi resided here with her daughter, Nora Iasigi Bullitt, who with her mother, helped establish of a manual training school for girls in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Nora was also a prize-winning sculptor, having studied under Daniel Chester French. As a woman of exceptional means, Amy G. Iasigi had seven domestic servants maintain her city mansion and carriage house on Byron Street. After her death in 1927, the proeprty was owned and occupied by wool merchant Robert Hooper Stevenson. The relatively modest Iasigi Townhouse’s granite facade is of a slightly different color than the 1820s granite townhouses nextdoor, importantly distinguishing it from its neighbors, and it also features flared granite lintels with pronounced keystones.

Chestnut Street Rowhouses // 1917

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Similar to the Brimmer Street Terrace development nearby, this set of three rowhouses on Chestnut Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill, is an excellently designed development of residences as a collection rather than individually designed townhomes. The Chestnut Street Rowhouses replaced a stable formerly on the site, and were designed by the architectural firm of Richardson, Barott & Richardson, made up of Philip Richardson, Chauncey Edgar Barott, and Frederic Leopold William Richardson. Philip and Frederic Richardson were sons of architect Henry Hobson Richardson, but they did not reach the same level of notoriety as their late father, and charted their own course. The rowhouses read as a single composition with a unique center section flanked by two matching wings. The center house has a three bay front façade with the first-story clad in limestone which is all recessed and supported by Doric columns.

Mason-Fitz House // 1829

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One of six attached houses townhouses between 70-75 Beacon Street, this stately granite-faced residence was built concurrently with its neighbors in 1828 on speculation for the Mount Vernon Proprietors, a group of wealthy Boston businessmen who helped develop Beacon Hill into the posh, architecturally significant neighborhood it is today. The Mount Vernon Proprietors knew how important Beacon Street was as the entry into the neighborhood, and thus, hired Boston’s premier architect, Asher Benjamin, to design the row. When completed, all of the houses were identical, but throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they all deviated from the original design, some gaining additional floors, others adding bay windows, but all together form a cohesive and architecturally significant span of houses. Completed in 1829, the residence at 75 Beacon Street is known as the Mason-Fitz House and was originally owned by Jonathan Mason (1756-1831), a U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator, and later inherited by his son, William Powell Mason (1791-1867), who engaged in real estate. It was likely William Mason who added the mansard roof in the late 1850s or 1860s, but the main unique detailing of the residence occurred in 1889 when newlyweds, Henrietta G. and Walter Scott Fitz hired the popular architectural firm of Little & Browneto reconfigure the front of the house in the Colonial Revival style. Little & Browne added the rather fanciful, oriel windows on the facade, which include the three, small hipped-roof oriels on the second story and larger projecting oriel on the first floor with fanlight and leaded glass. Cambridge architect, Edward T. P. Graham later purchased the residence and petitioned to convert the single-family house into eight apartments, but was denied, later converting the residence into four units. Today, the Mason-Fitz House is broken up into two larger condominium units. 

Greenough-Dwight House // 1829

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One of six attached houses townhouses between 70-75 Beacon Street, this stately granite-faced residence was built concurrently with its neighbors in 1828 on speculation for the Mount Vernon Proprietors, a group of wealthy Boston businessmen who helped develop Beacon Hill into the posh, architecturally significant neighborhood it is today. The Mount Vernon Proprietors knew how important Beacon Street was as the entry into the neighborhood, and thus, hired Boston’s premier architect, Asher Benjamin, to design the row. When completed, all of the houses were identical, but throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they all deviated from the original design, some gaining additional floors, others adding bay windows, but all together form a cohesive and architecturally significant span of houses. Completed in 1829, the corner dwelling is known as the Greenough-Dwight House and it retains its original three-story rusticated granite façade with segmental arch openings. The major change to the exterior of the Greenough-Dwight House is the addition of the ornate wood oriel window with iron cresting in 1874, the oriel and facade feature the iconic purple windows, which became a status symbol in the 20th century. The story goes, that between 1818 and 1824, an English company sent shipments of glass that contained too much manganese oxide into Boston Harbor. After being exposed to sunlight for an extended period of time, the manganese oxide in the glass began to turn purple creating the colored panes we love today. Over time, many panes broke or were replaced, creating the checkerboard appearance on so many windows, but many owners in the 20th century had imitation purple glass installed as a marker of wealth and prestige, like in this house and bay, which were built after the period that the glass was brought over from England. My favorite in the row, the Greenough-Dwight House shines with its granite facade and brick end wall, with panes reflecting the sun off her violet glass windowpanes. 

Ripley Apartments // 1925

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One of the taller apartment buildings constructed on Beacon Hill in the inter-war period stands at 81-82 Beacon Street, providing residents with sweeping views of the Boston Common, Public Garden, and the ever-growing city of Boston. The ten-story building replaced two, four-story townhouses formerly on the site owned by members of the Thacher family. The two parcels were purchased by James H. Ripley of the New York-based real estate firm of Goggin & Ripley, who then hired Boston architect, Joseph Daniels Leland, who founded the firm of J. D. Leland & Company. The building was originally planned as a seven-story co-op but was later expanded to a ten-story tower with one apartment on each floor, making the building a luxury residence for its residents. The two-story limestone base with side entrance, flemish bond brickwork, iron balcony, and traditional double-hung windows all showcase how the Colonial Revival style works well with multi-family housing.

Henry Forbes Bigelow House // 1916

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This massive five-story, five-bay building at 142 Chestnut Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill is today, an 11-unit condominium building, but it was originally built as a single-family home, designed by a prominent Boston architect as his own residence. Henry Forbes Bigelow (1867-1929) was born in Clinton, Massachusetts and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1888. He was hired by the firm of Winslow & Wetherill and soon became a partner of the same firm, which changed its name to Winslow, Wetherill and Bigelow. The firm designed many commercial buildings, hotels, stately mansions, and academic buildings in the New England area. Henry F. Bigelow purchased a two-story stable and cleared the site to erect his home in 1915-1916. This building remained his primary residence until his death in 1929. After his death, the Bigelow heirs sold the Chestnut Street mansion to Bernard Brooker, President and Treasurer of the Building Finishing Corporation, a real estate development company, who converted the building into apartments, which were later converted again into the 11 condominium units. The handsome structure could be classified as Renaissance Revival in style with its cubic form, recessed central entrance, cornice-like window headers, limestone base and entry, iron balconies, and corbeled cornice. The building was designed with an enclosed courtyard with fountains, which today, provide a private space for residents.