Second Empire

Rockland Custom House & Post Office // 1873-1969

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Photo included in HABS documentation

It saddens me to see photos and learn about some of the amazing buildings demolished in the name of “progress”; it is even more disappointing when said building is replaced by a surface parking lot (over 50 years later)! This great stone building was built in Rockland, Maine, in 1876 as the town’s post office and custom house by the Federal government. Relatively unknown architect Alfred B. Mullett is credited with the design as he served from 1866 to 1874 as Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury Department. The building can be classified as Italianate-Second Empire in style and is constructed of massive, rough-faced granite block walls with a shallow mansard roof above. The building was offered for sale by the U.S. Government in 1967, likely due to the upkeep costs and a shrinking local population with the dependency on maritime trade diminished. The building was ultimately razed in late 1969, with a new, uninspiring, post office built next door to this site.

Joshua Silvester House // 1857

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This large house sits on Peabody Avenue in Danvers, Massachusetts, and is thought to be the oldest house built of cement in the United States! Joshua Sylvester Silvester (1803-1888), the house’s original owner, was born in Wiscasset, Maine, and began working in the shoemaking business, expanding his products in England, taking many business trips there. While in England, he is said to have particularly admired Charles Dickens’s estate, Gad’s Hill, and modeled his Danvers home after it. Joshua Silvester not only designed this house, but directly supervised its construction which is of hand-poured cement/stucco by two masons imported to town to work on the house. The fifteen-room residence with octagon-shaped barn was complete by 1858. In 1880, the property was purchased by Isaac B. Howe of Clinton, Iowa. Howe was a civil engineer who had helped to lay out the Transcontinental Railroad and had been superintendent of the Iowa division of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. Howe died within a year of moving to Danvers,
but his family continued to live in the house for many years.


Colby Hall – Andover Newton Theological School // 1866

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Colby Hall sits perched atop a hill overlooking Newton Centre, Newton, and is located in the Andover Newton Theological School campus. The building was constructed in 1886 for the Newton Theological Institution, which was founded on this site in 1825, and used for the a Baptist seminary, educating young students in theology. By the 1860s, the school had outgrown its space and following a donation from benefactor,  Gardner Colby (1810–1879), who was treasurer of the school (and was also the benefactor and namesake of Colby College in Maine) plans were drawn up for the new lecture spaces and chapel building. The unique building was designed by Alexander Rice Esty, a prominent architect at the time, and it blends Second Empire and Romanesque Revival styles under one roof. The three-story structure is of a light buff, rough cut stone with sandstone trim and features an imposing four-story tower at the eastern end. In November 2015, the school announced that it would sell its campus and become part of Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. The Newton campus was purchased by the Windsor Park School with Colby Hall now occupied by the Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute.

Farwell Hall – Andover Newton Theological School // 1829

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The Newton Theological Institution, a school originally founded for the Baptist ministry, opened on Institution Hill in Newton Center in 1825. The 40-acre campus started with six buildings, including this one, Farwell Hall, built in 1829. Farwell Hall is the oldest extant building on the campus today and is named after benefactor and early founder of the school, Levi Farwell. The brick building began as a late-Federal-designed building with a classic Federal Style window fenestration and Adamesque brick arches on the first story side elevations, but the formerly Federal style building was modernized in 1871 with the addition of a fourth floor via a mansard roof, and a more recent, unfortunate altered entry with projecting roof. After the Andover Newton Theological School sold their campus, the building has since been home to an assisted care facility.

Samuel D. Garey House // c.1870

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Samuel D. Garey (1825-1891) was born in Auburn, Maine, and worked as a carriage manufacturer there before moving to Newton, Massachusetts to use his carpentry skills building houses in the rapidly developing Boston suburb. He became a prominent builder and developer in Newton Centre, residing there and building this mini-mansard house on Gibbs Street before 1870. Garey likely rented the house out to tenants for supplemental income, with the family maintaining the charming cottage into the 20th century.

John H. Sanborn Mansion // c.1868

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One of the finest Second Empire style residences in Newton, Massachusetts, can be found on Herrick Road in Newton Centre. This is the John H. Sanborn house, built before 1870 for John H. Sanborn, a Boston broker and commission merchant who also served as a Representative to the Massachusetts General Court. The imposing residence is a two-story house based on a rectangular plan, and capped with a bellcast Mansard roof of gray, fish-scale patterned slates. The focal point of the design is the four-story, towered entrance pavilion which dominates the facade.

Tenney-Root House // c.1865

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This house in Georgetown Center, Massachusetts dates to the 1860s and appears to have been built for Milton G. Tenney, a shoe manufacturer. By the early 20th century, the home was owned by the third member of the Root family to practice medicine in Georgetown. The first, Dr. Martin Root, established a practice in 1827, serving the community for more than 50 years. His son, Dr. Richmond B. Root, owner of 24 North Street (featured previously), was in turn the father of Dr. Raymond Root (1882-1958), owner of this fancy Second Empire style dwelling. In addition to his private practice, Dr. Raymond Root was a school physician for many years, and served as Town Clerk from 1937 to 1944. The house is Second Empire in style with a mansard roof, window mouldings and two-over-two windows, but features a Colonial Revival portico with what may possibly be a Federal-period entry of fanlight with sidelights, salvaged from his father’s home when that house was renovated.

Dr. Jenks Apothecary Shop // c.1860

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Who doesn’t love a good flatiron building?! This charming three-story with Mansard roof building is located in the Bulfinch Triangle district of Boston. The triangular-shaped building was built around 1860 as an apothecary shop for Dr. Thomas Leighton Jenks (1829-1899), a doctor who was born in Conway, New Hampshire, but left for Boston while still a teenager. When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846 he enlisted in the Navy, where he served for three years in the hospital ward of the frigate U.S.S. United States. Upon returning from the war, Jenks attended Harvard Medical School, and wrote his thesis on Syphilis. Dr. Jenks apprenticed in a building on this site under Dr. Samuel Trull. He likely redeveloped or modernized the 1850s building, adding the mansard roof by the 1860s. During the Civil War, Dr. Jenks served as a front line surgeon. After returning home, he grew tired of the medical profession, and got involved with local politics. He was elected as an alderman, Massachusetts state representative, and in later years he earned appointments as Chairman of the Boston Board of Police, and Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Public Institutions. He tragically collapsed and died in 1899 at a Boston courthouse. As a tribute to his birthplace, Dr. Jenks made a provision in his will for the funds necessary to build a public library in Conway, New Hampshire, which is still in use today. Somehow, the old Dr. Jenks Apothecary Shop has survived all this time as the city grows and changes all around it. The building saw life later as a restaurant and offices.

Former Boston & Lowell Railroad Depot // 1871-1927

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Courtesy of Boston Public Library collections

The Boston and Lowell Railroad was established in 1830 as one of the first rail lines in North America. The first track was completed in 1835, and freight service began immediately connecting Boston to the newly established town of Lowell, which had just 6,400 residents at the time (compared to Boston which had 10x that). The original Boston depot was a modest structure, but after the Civil War, it was decided that a new station connecting two of the most important industrial cities in Massachusetts, should be built. Architect Edgar Allen Poe Newcomb and his father’s firm, L. Newcomb & Son, was selected to design a new station on Causeway Street. The French Second Empire masterpiece was built between 1871-1878. Inside, the concourse was lined with oak walls and marble flooring. The depot was added onto in 1893 and incorporated into a Union Station of multiple former lines, and ultimately demolished in 1927 for the first North Station.

Former Arlington House Hotel // 1870

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The Bulfinch Triangle area just south of the TD Garden in Boston is a cohesive and historically preserved district of similar commercial and industrial buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Somehow, the area has been preserved largely intact besides some sites serving as surface parking lots and some incompatible infill developments. Historically, the area was a tidal flat, before the land here was filled beginning in 1807, with Causeway Street as the northern boundary. The area’s namesake, architect Charles Bulfinch, designed the street layout for the landowners, and the area was filled with material taken by lowering Beacon Hill and Copp’s Hill. Development was fairly slow until railroad companies built depots in the area around present-day North Station, many of which connected the area to cities north of Boston. These new train lines boosted the value of the surrounding land, with manufacturers and developers building factories and hotels in the area. This handsome structure on Causeway Street was built in 1870 by William G. Means, a manufacturer who also invested in real estate in Boston. He commissioned architect Samuel J. F. Thayer to furnish plans for the apartment hotel in the Second Empire style with a mansard roof and window lintels of diminishing detail as the floors increase. In later years, the Arlington House Hotel changed hands and names, later known as the Eastern Hotel and Hotel Haymarket. Stay tuned for more Boston history in this series highlighting the North Station and Bulfinch Triangle district!