This handsome Victorian Gothic church sits on Summer Street in Somerville, defining the northern edge of the Union Square area. The church was built for the local Methodist congregation, which was established in 1855. The group would meet in local meeting halls and houses until this building was completed in 1874. The towering brick church was once even taller, but its steeple came down following the Great New England Hurricane of 1938. The church closed in the second half of the 20th century and the building was used by the Somerville Community News for years until it was purchased by a developer and converted to condominiums.
This charming, gambrel-roofed house at the corner of Vinal and Pleasant avenues in Somerville, Massachusetts, was built in 1894 from local developer H. W. P. Colson, and sold upon completion to Mrs. Laura (French) Haley. An architect could not be located. Laura Haley was recently widowed and lived in the house with her daughter, with her son purchasing the house next door. The Haley House is notable for its gambrel roof with gambrelled center gable, pilastered dormers, stained glass windows, and full-length porch with columns and rubblestone base. The well-preserved house blends Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles under one broad roof. It is magnificent!
One of the best and most successful examples of adaptive reuse in the Boston area has to be Bow Market in Somerville’s Union Square commercial district. Tucked away behind buildings on the busy streets, a former concrete block storage facility was reimagined as a vibrant, European style marketplace of local vendors and businesses. The project was envisioned by business partners Matthew Boyes-Watson and Zach Baum, who worked with Matthew’s father, architect Mark Boyes-Watson, to renovate the storage building to create storefronts. The team worked with landscape architects, Merritt Chase, to make the public courtyard more enticing, which each micro-commercial space opening onto the landscaped communal courtyard. Design elements include seat walls constructed from recycled granite from the renovation of the Longfellow Bridge and reclaimed wooden beams from a ship building facility in Hingham. If you haven’t been to Bow Market yet, you must. This project is exactly what good urban planning and design is all about!
The former Somerville District Courthouse at 19 Walnut Street in Union Square, is a two-story masonry building constructed in 1925. While much smaller and less ornate than other courthouses, the small building is significant as the first courthouse built in the young city and an architecturally significant example of a Classical Revival style civic building designed by architect Charles R. Greco. The building served as the Somerville District Courthouse until the late 1960s, when the legislature authorized a new district courthouse. The City of Somerville purchased the old courthouse in 1969, and the building has housed offices for the City’s Recreation Commission since that time. Interestingly, the building was used for the filming of a courthouse scene in the 1980’s “Spencer for Hire” TV detective show.
One of the most eccentric and architecturally unique houses in Somerville can be found on Bow Street, in the middle of the busiest commercial district of the city. This is the Dr. Edson F. Whitman House (often known as the E.C. Mann House), which was built around 1852 and long-occupied by Dr. Whitman until just before his death in 1900. The house was likely a modest, 1850s Italianate style residence with its gable facing the street. Over time, as business increased, Dr. Whitman expanded his house and practice, adding Victorian flair to the once usual house. An entry tower with pyramidal roof and final was added with quatrefoil window and Stick style porch, an angled two-story addition was also added to the facade with a second-story porch, and applied ornament and curiosities were added to the doctor’s office and residence through the 19th century. Luckily for us, the Dr. Whitman house has remained relatively unaltered for the next 125 years!
Built in 1896, this handsome, four-story flatiron building at the corner of Bow Street and Somerville Avenue in Union Square, Somerville, was the largest tenement building in the city when completed. The property was developed by Charles Drouet, from plans by local architect, Aaron Hibert Gould. The block originally housed 37 apartments above six retail spaces at the street-level. The series of projections and an interior courtyard provided light and air into the apartments, which made them highly functional and desirable for families in the area. The building is more Colonial Revival than the 1892 Queen Anne style Richmond Apartments, also designed by Aaron H. Gould for Mr. Drouet nearby. The Drouet Block is a well-preserved example of late 19th century tenements in Somerville.
The Richmond Block on Bow Street in Union Square, Somerville, is a historic and architecturally significant mixed use building. Constructed in 1892 as one of the substantial wood-frame buildings in the western section of Union Square, the Richmond was designed by architect Aaron Gould for Mr. Charles Drouet, who developed the Drouet Block, a historic flatiron building just years later. Designed in the Queen Anne style, this building is noteworthy for its corner tower, octagonal oriel bay windows, sleeping porches on the side facade, and polychromatic color scheme to highlight the many architectural details on the block.
Located at the corner of Bow and Walnut streets in Somerville’s Union Square commercial center, the former Prospect Hill Congregational Church is one of the finest examples of the Richardsonian Romanesque style in the city. The congregation here was established in 1874 and originally met in private residences before erecting its first building on Warren Street in 1876. After two decades, the membership and prosperity of the congregation grew, allowing it to purchase a more prominent lot nearby and the ability to hire an architect for a new, substantial building. Architect Henry Squarebridge McKay furnished plans for the masonry building in 1887, clearly taking inspiration from the late Henry Hobson Richardson, who died the year prior. The church is constructed of brick with stone trimmings, features irregular massing with tall belfry tower, and a large arched entrance. After WWII, the congregation dwindled, and the building was later sold off. In the 1980s, the church was converted to residential use but without altering the exterior.
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?
This altered, yet significant building on Bow Street in Somerville’s Union Square commercial district, was built in 1908 as the Somerville National Bank. The Somerville National Bank was chartered in 1892 and was the city’s first and only local bank until the 1930s. After nearly two decades of renting space in another building, the bank hired the architectural firm of Gay & Proctor, to furnish plans for this handsome suburban bank building. Constructed of brick with stone trim, the building originally featured a large, arched window at the facade, which was replaced by a more contemporary opening. Classical Revival details remain, from the monumental gable pediment with dentils, to the parapet with classical moldings. The bank has been repurposed into mixed use space, with a cafe on the ground floor and yoga and wellness studio above.
Union Square is the oldest and largest commercial district in Somerville, and its growth is tied to the residential and commercial growth of the City. The three main streets that form Union Square—Somerville Avenue, Bow Street, and Washington Street—were originally 17th- and 18th-century trade routes used by farmers in Somerville to transport products, mostly dairy and produce, to larger markets in Charlestown and Boston. As the region grew, so did Union Square, with later hotels, civic buildings, churches and later, more car-centric uses like automobile garages and gas stations. By the 1920s, prosperity stagnated and one-story commercial blocks replaced larger, more ornate structures. This small building, the Cities Service Refining Co. Fuel Station at 69-71 Bow Street, was built in the mid-1920s and is an example of the wave of automobile-oriented development that occured here at the time. Before WWII, many service station companies created brand-identities by designing the appearance of their service stations like the Cities Service Stations and Beacon Oil Company, who regionally, developed distinctive Colonial Revival cottage prototypes for their chains to fit better within local context. This small service station, now 100 years old, is Colonial Revival in style with a hipped roof with cupola, symmetrical facade, and fanlight transom over the center entrance. When a developer proposed to demolish the station, the local preservation commission found the building preferrably preserved, initiating a delay on the demolition, forcing the developer to either wait out the delay or incorporate the structure into the new building. They chose the latter, and now we can visually see the layering of history on this site in Union Square, incorporating preservation with a 24-unit passive house development with the old station used as a mailroom. What do you think of this story?
Somerville, Massachusetts, was long part of Charlestown, until it incorporated as a separate town in 1842. From the 1840s until just after the Civil War, Somerville went from a sleepy farming village to manufacturing center, spurring a sharp influx of immigrants to the city, industry boomed and brick manufacturing became the predominant trade. The town of Somerville incorporated as a city in 1872, and one of the first civic buildings constructed as a new city, was this Victorian Gothic building on Bow Street in Union Square to house the growing Somerville Police Station. Built in 1874 from plans by architect, George Albert Clough, a prominent and busy local designer. The handsome station was in use until the new Police Headquarters further east in Union Square was built in 1932. This building was sold off by the city and became offices and housed meeting spaces for a local boy’s club and an American Legion Post until it was converted into housing in the late 20th century.
The Highland Apartments, on Highland Avenue in Somerville, is one of the city’s most architecturally distinguished and significant late 19th century apartment buildings. Richardsonian Romanesque in style, the building is constructed of brick with brownstone trimmings, a rounded corner tower with conical roof, and Romanesque arched entrances. The building even retains its name, “Highland”, carved in brownstone at the corner. The building contained 12 units, all with multiple windows and views of the adjacent park or ever-growing Boston from its hilltop location. The architect, Samuel Dudley Kelley, was a noted designer of apartment buildings at the time. The Highland remains an important, preserved example of late 19th century multi-family housing, and showcases how far we have fallen when designing such structures today.
Located next to the colorful Wadleigh-Friend House on Highland Avenue in Somerville, the Dr. Thomas M. Durell House stands as a more academic example of the Colonial Revival style, but leaning more towards Arts and Crafts style than Queen Anne like its neighbor. This residence was built in 1897 for Dr. Thomas M. Durell, a Harvard-educated doctor and surgeon who, at the formation of the Tufts Medical School, was appointed Lecturer on Legal Medicine, and in 1895, was made Professor of that subject. Architects (and brothers) Edwin King Blaikie and William Everett Blaikie designed the residence for Dr. Durell along with a stable at the rear. While the house exhibits Colonial Revival detailing from the Palladian window and proportions, there are some Arts and Crafts style influences including the shed dormers, shingled siding, inset porches, and broad overhanging eaves with exposed rafters.
Buildings of New England 