Another of the charming mini mansard cottages in Stoneham, Massachusetts is this home, the Lorenzo and Mary Hawkins House. The home was built for Lorenzo D. Hawkins and his wife, Mary around 1870. Lorenzo worked as a shoe and elevator manufacturer in town and in Downtown Boston. The house is a two-story wood-frame structure with irregular massing. It has the classic mansard roof, an ornately decorated entry porch, heavily bracketed cornice, and round-arch windows in its dormers and front bay.
Would you just look at this house?! Massachusetts may have the most Second Empire/Mansard style houses in the United States, but some really stand out. This home in Stoneham, Massachusetts was built around 1870 for local shoe dealer Erastus A. Durgin. The mini mansard home is pretty typical besides the prominent square tower with a steeply pitched gable roof that stands over the entrance. Charming!
Welcome to Brooklin, Maine! Constructed in 1896 by local builder Ralph E. Bent, the coastal town’s I.O.O.F. Hall is one of Brooklin’s largest and most architecturally significant nineteenth century buildings. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows is a historic and long-running (somewhat secret) fraternal organization which has branches all over the world. In Brooklin, this building was designed to accommodate commercial uses on the first floor, community functions and theatrical productions on the second floor and lodge meetings in the upper/mansard story. The building saw disinvestment by the turn of the 21st century, and by the time the building came on the market in 2017, the hall had languished for years, and the structure was in a serious state of disrepair. The building needed new plumbing and electrical wiring, a new foundation and roof, foundation repairs, and heat; its roughly $270,000 price tag reflected the amount of work it would need to be rehabilitated. John Ike, an esteemed architect, and frequent visitor to Brooklin, formerly of Ike Kligerman Barkley and now of Ike Baker Velten, had long been enamored by the decaying building, and felt compelled to act. With his two friends, Robert Baird and Steve White, the trio restored the old building which continues its connection to the small town’s history and became a vibrant contributor to its present. The upstairs space can be rented short-term, which helps sustain the maintenance of the old building.
In 1827, a young Andrew Luques (1791-1873) built a store in the village of Kennebunkport, Maine where he sold dry goods, hardware, and fancy goods to the area’s citizens. As the village grew around him, the store grew and occupied the entire block near a drawbridge, which spanned the Kennebunk River to Harbor Village in adjacent Kennebunk. The business did well and the store was eventually inherited by Anthony Luques in the late 1850s. Anthony expanded the store, modernizing it and added a Mansard roof for an additional floor. Anthony continued operating the store until his death in 1890, when it was sold to a member of the Dennett Family. Around 1900, the building was occupied by a few businesses, with one taking advantage of the town’s recent desirability as a summer resort colony by selling bathing suits and hammocks. The building remains a visual and important anchor to the human-scaled and walkable village of Kennebunkport.
Roswell Burrows Fitch (1833-1908) was born in the seaside village of Noank to parents Elisha and Mary P. Fitch. At twelve years of age he commenced to be self-supporting, and from then until he was fourteen, occupied a clerkship in a general store in town. In his teens, summers were spent aboard ships fishing for a livelihood, and his winters attending school. Upon completing his education, he became clerk in a store, and was afterwards engaged to assume the management of a union store which was erected for the special purpose of being placed under his charge. This building was constructed as the union store in 1851 with eighteen-year-old Roswell becoming an active partner in the business. In his twenties, he slowly bought out, one-by-one, the twelve other owners, until he possessed absolute control. The eclectic Greek Revival and Italianate style building features classical detailing, but with a bracketed cornice and gambrel roof which is capped by a parapet. Mr. Fitch retired from business in 1890 and got to work “Victorianizing” his nearby home. Stay tuned for the next post which features his home in Noank.
Another of Noank’s stunning Victorian-era seaside cottages is the 1872 Robert Henry Peckham house which is located across the street from the village’s most ornate cottage, the Deacon Robert Palmer House (featured previously). The house exhibits a gambrel roof which reads as a mansard roof at the side elevations. A round arched window is set into the gable end. Decorative cut bargeboards add much complexity to the design. It appears that in the early 20th century, as Noank was re-establishing itself as an artist colony, the owners added the small wrap-around porch and stone garden wall.
Perched on the highest hill in the coastal village of Noank, Connecticut, you will find this absolutely enchanting gingerbread Victorian mansion. The house was built in 1884 for Deacon Robert Palmer (1825-1913), a wealthy man who wasn’t only deacon of the village’s Baptist church, he was the owner of a flourishing shipyard, and it was his shipyard workers who built him, with loving care, a house he could be proud of! Robert ran the shipyard in town first with his brother, and then with his son. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the shipyard was the largest facility for building and repair of wooden vessels in southern New England, employing over 300 men. The yard specialized in building railroad car floats, schooner barges, and dump scows as well as fishing smacks. Robert Palmer and Son went out of business in 1914 with the passing of the Robert. The Stick style mansion with mansard roofed tower remained in the Palmer family until the early 2000s when it sold and was restored to her former glory. The residence features exposed rafters, a pagoda-like second story balcony, a frieze with geometric cut-outs, and a wrap-around porch which provides sweeping views of the ocean. I can only imagine how beautiful this old Victorian is on the inside!
The College Hill neighborhood of Providence has some of the finest residential architecture in New England, and some really fun stories of those who built these grand homes. In 1859, the house was built with a concave mansard roof punctuated with dormers and a bold bracketed cornice below. The use of round headed windows on the second floor is a really great design detail. The residence was first owned by Eliza Talbot Almy (1808-1886), who held the title to the property. Wives holding the title of properties in this period was fairly common as it would protect their personal property and residence from financial risk if the husband was met with lawsuits or financial hardship. Eliza’s husband was cotton broker and manufacturer Samson Almy (1795-1876), who had already been sued in a case heard before the United States Supreme Court in 1851. After Eliza’s death in 1886, her daughter, Susan Smith (1837-1917) and husband, Amos Denison Smith (1835-1912), a Civil War veteran, occupied the house into the early 20th century.
People don’t explore Roxbury enough! The neighborhood is full of amazing architecture with buildings in a great state of preservation and some waiting for the overlapping vinyl siding to be removed. This restored beauty sits perched above the road and is one of the best examples of a Second Empire merchant’s home in Roxbury. The house was built around 1870, within a year of owner Henry A. Thomas purchasing the lot here for $4,800. Mr. Thomas owned a boot and shoe retail store in Downtown Boston for years. The lot was later subdivided and stucco apartments were built to the side, notable at the time when Roxbury began to really densify with housing construction in the early 1900s.
The New England Hospital for Women and Children (known today as the Dimock Community Health Center), is comprised of eight major buildings on a nine acre site located on a small hill in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, close to the border with Jamaica Plain. The complex is significant for its role in the history of women in medicine as both a teaching and a practicing hospital, as well as for its architecture. The facility was incorporated as the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1863, almost five years before Roxbury was annexed to Boston. The Hospital was founded by Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska together with Lucy Goddard and Edna Dow Cheney in order to provide women with medical care by competent physicians of their own sex and to educate women in the study and practice of medicine. As such, it was one of the first hospitals of its kind in America. The oldest building in the complex is the Cary Cottage, pictured here. The charming building was constructed in 1872 by the architecture firm of Cummings & Sears. The Cary Cottage served as the hospital’s original maternity cottage, and is also important as an almost intact example of Stick Style architecture. The building was intentionally detached from the general surgical facilities to minimize the dangers of infection during childbirth.
Buildings of New England 