This stately Federal style mansion at 10 Walnut Street in Beacon Hill, was built in 1811 for Ebenezer Francis as an investment property on land he had purchased from Uriah Cotting, one of the premier real estate developers of 19th century Boston. By 1823, Thomas Motley, the father of historian John Lothrop Motley, lived here, and hosted impromptu melodramas enacted by a young John Motley and two of his friends,
Wendell Phillips and Thomas Gold Appleton, both of whom lived close by on Beacon Street. After the Civil War, the property was owned by James Davis (1806-1881), a wealthy coppersmith who co-founded The Revere Copper Company with Joseph Warren Revere, grandson of Paul Revere. James Davis remodelled the Federal style house with Second Empire detailing including a brownstone-faced first story and quoins, with an oriel window at the second story, and a slate mansard above a bracketed cornice. During the 1920s, 10 Walnut Street’s Victorian facade was removed and a Federal Revival facade was constructed in its place, closer to original conditions. Today, the Motley-Davis Mansion rises four stories from a low granite basement to a flat roof enclosed by a low parapet. The off-center entrance is marked by columns supporting a cornice-headed entablature. This entablature interrupts the continuous stone belt course separating the first and second stories. What a beauty.
Buildings of New England 