Romanesque Revival

South Main Street Engine House, Providence // 1892

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Built as a neighborhood fire station by the City of Providence in 1892, this handsome brick structure on South Main Street showcases how infrastructure and civic buildings can (and should) still contribute to the streetscape. Constructed along a streetscape of early 19th century brick buildings, the local architectural firm of Stone, Carpenter & Willson, sought to take cues of the materiality and massing of nearby structures, but employ new detailing and vocabulary for the fire station here. The result is a Romanesque style fire station with a pair of round-arched engine portals surrounded by stone facing, with the showstopping second floor and roofline with ornate brickwork around the arched windows and multi-staged corbeled cornice. The building with its smaller engine doors became obsolete with newer, larger fire trucks, and the building has since held a variety of commercial uses, today as a up-scale Italian restaurant.

Lyman School for Boys – Manual Arts Building and Powerplant // c.1900

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The former Lyman School for Boys was established in Westborough as the Massachusetts State Reform School in 1847, the first state-operated reform school in the country. Initially located on the eastern shore of Lake Chauncy and dominated by a single massive building, but its early history was plagued by conflict between inmates and administration. In 1885, legislative action authorized the Trustees to purchase and prepare a new site, the first in the state system to be developed on the dispersed cottage plan, the school thrived throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century until its eventual closure in about 1974. Much of the campus was designed by architect, William G. Preston, likely including this industrial building, which was used as a Manual Arts training building. Here, young men would learn trades, where upon graduation, they would be able to enter the workforce. The building appears to have been extended decades later with the addition of a powerplant wing, in a more Arts and Crafts style. The handsome building has been vacant for over 50 years and is literally a shell of its former self. With much of the old Lyman School campus razed for uninspiring replacement buildings, it would be a shame to see this building not restored and adaptively reused.

Westborough Arcade // 1890

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 The Second Meeting House of Westborough, Massachusetts, was built on this important site in the center of the village in 1749. It was a plain, wooden building and was used for both church services and town meetings, since church and state were essentially inseparable at the time. When a new church was built in 1837, this building was purchased and converted to commercial use. The first floor of the building was raised, and another floor was added underneath. The steeple was also removed. The building then became known as “The Arcade Building,” a kind of mall with small shops opening onto the porch. By the end of the 19th century, the old wooden building was nearing 150 years old and owners decided to demolish the structure, and replace it with a more permanent and stately block. The New Arcade was built in 1890 and is more Romanesque in style. The handsome brick block has retail spaces on the ground floor with residences above, a great example of mixed-use.

Somerville Journal Building // 1894

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The Somerville Journal was a local paper founded in 1870. The paper was originally published and printed in an office in Boston, but moved to Somerville by the late 1870s. After about 15 years of renting space in a commercial building in Somerville’s Union Square, the paper purchased a lot nearby and began planning for its first purpose-built building for their company. This structure on Walnut Street was built in 1894 to house a new generation of printing equipment and increased production for its growing market, along with the estimated 50 employees at the time. The building was designed by William H. Gerrish (1865-1915), an engineer. Romanesque Revival in style with the arched second-story windows, the building along with its plate glass storefronts, have been an important landmark in the Union Square area for over 130 years. The Somerville Journal vacated the building in the 1950s and the building was used as a photo developing and printing studio. During the 1970s the building was used as a youth recreation center for the city of Somerville. It has been used as artist studios since the 1970s and today, appears to be vacant. Does anyone know what the plans are for this building?

First Universalist Church of Somerville // 1917

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The First Universalist Church of Somerville is located on the north side of Highland Avenue across from the First Unitarian Church of Somerville, in a completely different design. The congregation acquired this site in 1915, and the church was built from 1916 to 1923 to a design by the noted ecclesiastical architect Ralph Adams Cram, who produced a somewhat more Romanesque plan than the typical Gothical Revival work he is best known for. One of the key members of the building committee was Gilbert Henry Hood of the Hood Milk Company family. The new church was planned to house an “assembly room,” Sunday school classes, and a parish house. The church operated here for decades, but most recently was home to the Highland Masonic Building Association as the King Solomon’s Lodge. The lodge moved from the building and the property was purchased by a developer who hoped to demolish the building and erect a housing development. The building was deemed significant and “preferably preserved” by the Somerville Historical Commission, and landmark designation was initiated. The building was recently re-listed for sale, and would make a great adaptive reuse or even partial demolition for housing incorporated into the old church. Kudos to the Somerville Historical Commission for standing firm on this significant church by a nationally recognized architect.

First Unitarian Church of Somerville // 1895

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Located on Highland Avenue in the Central Hill section of Somerville, Massachusetts, the First Unitarian Church of Somerville is a landmark example of a church in the Romanesque Revival style. The church was built in 1895 from plans by the esteemed architectural firm of Hartwell & Richardson, and was the fourth and final building of the congregation, which was originally established in 1844. The congregation’s first church was a Gothic Revival style building designed by Richard Bond, but was destroyed by fire in 1852. A year later, the second edifice was designed and built by architect Thomas W. Silloway, which also burned in 1867. The church was replaced again by a Romanesque style structure in 1869. In the 1890s, when the City of Somerville purchased the building as part of the site for the new Somerville High School, a lot down Highland Avenue was secured and planning began for this building. The church is built of granite block with a steeply pitched gable roof, and a square tower at its right front corner. The prominent gable contains two arched entrances with a bank of five rectangular stained-glass windows below three tall round-arch stained glass windows. The congregation was dissolved in 1975 and a year later, the building was purchased by the Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, an Apostolic Pentacostalist church, who continue to use the building today.

Salem Water Company Offices // 1879

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Salem, Massachusetts, was first settled by Europeans in 1626, and it would take 170 years until in 1796, an organization of citizens was established for the purpose of supplying the inhabitants generally of Salem and Danvers with pure spring water. The Salem and Danvers Aqueduct Company was incorporated in 1797  “for the purpose of conveying fresh water by subterraneous pipes into the towns of Salem & Danvers.” As Salem grew, the need for a more central water district and distribution network became a necessity for the health and prosperity of the city. A 1864 law allowed Salem to construct its own water works, and it formed a Board of Water Commissioners who designed and constructed the system. From this, funding was acquired and paid for the laying of tens of thousands of feet of subterranean water distribution pipes connecting the reservoir to buildings and hydrants in Salem. Offices of the Waterworks were scattered and obsolete until 1877, when funds for the construction of this structure at 32-34 Church Street were set aside as the new Water Department Offices. Completed by 1879, the building is a great example of a Romanesque/Italianate style masonry structure with corbelled cornice and arched openings. According to the city directories, this building continued to operate as the Salem Water Works into the late 1930s. By 1945, it was the headquarters of the United States War Price & Rationing Board. In 1964, it held a number of city offices including: Civil Defense headquarters, Fire Department headquarters, Licensing Board, Planning Board, and the City Veterans Service, before being sold by the City of Salem to private ownership in 1976.

Charles H. Farnam Mansion // 1884

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Charles Henry Farnam (1846-1909) was a lawyer, genealogist, and the son of Henry Farnam, a wealthy railroad industrialist in New Haven, Connecticut. Following his father’s death in 1883, Charles, who may have inherited a small fortune in the will, purchased a house lot on the finest residential street in New Haven, Hillhouse Avenue. The existing house on the lot, the Benjamin Silliman House, was relocated to front Trumbull Street (and recently relocated again to 85 Trumbull Street), clearing the site for his new mansion. He hired esteemed architect J. Cleaveland Cady, who designed a large, Queen Anne/Romanesque masonry home unlike anything else on the Avenue. The house features an asymmetrical plan, corner tower, a Flemish style gable, fancy brickwork and terracotta detailing, and a slate mansard roof. Charles H. Farnam would sell the property to Henry S. Parmelee, a noted businessman and piano manufacturer, who also is credited with inventing the first automated sprinkler head and as a result, owning the first building in the United States to be equipped with a fire suppression system, his piano factory. Parmelee hired local architect Leoni Robinson, to design a rear addition for the house. Parmelee died in 1902, and the property was maintained by his widow and daughter, until it was acquired by Yale University in 1920. Today, the Farnam Mansion is occupied by the Economics Department.

Ancient Landmark Building // 1887

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Tucked away on Boylston Place, a dead-end pedestrian way off the bustling Boylston Street in Boston, you will find a collection of 19th century buildings that have miraculously survived over a century of growth, urban renewal, and rebirth. This is the Ancient Landmark Building, constructed in 1887 as a IOOF Lodge. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a non-political, non-sectarian international fraternal order established in the United States 1819. The four-story Ancient Landmark Building blends Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles effectively with its two arched openings, arched windows in the top floor and two-story metal projecting bays. In the 1970s, the building was listed as “substandard” by the infamous Boston Redevelopment Authority, and luckily did not get demolished as part of its Urban Renewal push. The property was eventually acquired by Emerson College, a great steward for historic buildings and cultural institutions, who restored the building and built a new dormitory above and alongside the Ancient Landmark Building. The project preserves the important streetscape of Boylston Place, while providing needed dormitories for the school.

Walker Building // 1891

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On Boylston Street overlooking the Boston Common, this historic building with two distinct parts is not photographed as much as some of its neighbors, but it is an important visual reminder of the period of growth and development in the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is the Walker Building, an early office building that was constructed beginning in 1891 in two phases by owner Joseph W. Walker. Mr. Walker hired the architectural firm of Winslow & Wetherell to design the building, which was finished in the Romanesque Revival style with a notable cornice with nine-bay arcade of arched windows and ornate wreath and swag motifs. A major tenant in the building was the Boston office of the S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Company, the largest dental manufacturing company in the world. Less than a decade after the six-story Walker Building opened, Joseph Walker purchased and razed the parcels nextdoor and again hired the same firm (at this time renamed Winslow & Bigelow), to expand the Walker Building, building a ten-story addition in a similar style. The second Walker building housed piano company showrooms and offices along with professional offices of numerous architects and professionals. The Walker Building is now owned by Emerson College, and is used as classrooms, computer labs, and study spots for students with the dining center and bookstore in the former retail spaces.