Hasket Derby (1835-1914), was the grandson of Elias Hasket Derby, a prominent trader in Salem, MA., who was thought at one time to be the richest man in the United States. Hasket married Sarah Mason and the family lived in Boston. Dr. Hasket Derby was a renowned opthamologist and had this townhouse built in the Back Bay of Boston in 1886. He hired architect William Ralph Emerson, who ditched his prototypical Shingle style for the urban townhouse in the Colonial Revival style. The townhouse exhibits a brownstone swans neck pediment at the entry, three-story rounded bow, dentilled cornice and brick pilasters framing the bays. Its an often overlooked house in Back Bay, but so very special.
Teardowns have always been a common occurrence in cities, though replacement buildings from before WWII tended to be more substantially designed and built. This stately manse on Beacon Street in the Back Bay was built in 1902 on a lot previously comprised of two townhouses! This residence was built in 1902 for John and Gertrude Weld Parkinson from plans by the renowned firm of Peabody and Stearns. The Classical Revival style house has a limestone face and chunky stone lintels at the second floor to break up the facade. After income tax was introduced in the early 1900s and changing economic conditions for wealthy homeowners shifted, large single-family homes were no longer the norm. This home (and many others in Back Bay) was converted to a multi-family apartment building and today is home to eight condo units.
One of the most ingeniously symmetrical and academic facades on Beacon Street in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston can be found at the Peleg Chandler House. Built in 1860 for Peleg Whitman Chandler (1816-1889), the two-bay bow-front townhouse appears to have been designed by architect Charles Kirk Kirby, a relatively unknown architect of Boston in this time period. The brownstone home originally had a mansard roof, but it was removed and replaced with a flat roof with parapet during the Great Depression, possibly to reduce the property taxes. Peleg Chandler was an attorney and publisher of the Law Reporter, which he established in 1838. He served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1845 to 1847 and as Boston City Solicitor from 1846 to 1853. He was an early advocate of the Public Garden and led efforts in 1859 to prevent the construction of houses on the eastern side of Arlington Street. The house has been divided up inside and now five fortunate families get to call this stunning building home!
New England is home to just three projects by world-renowned (and sometimes maligned) architect Frank Gehry. To me, architecture is best when it makes you stop, look, critique, and comment on it. Architecture is an art, and it should evoke emotion and discussion. Gehry’s work does just that. His only project to date in Boston is located at the corner of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay, a project I would assume most don’t realize was a Frank Gehry design. The building was originally built as a seven-story office building (originally planned as eight stories) over an MBTA station lobby in 1918. Designed by Arthur Bowditch, the building was completed a year later, built of buff brick and concrete. The Boston Elevated Railway Company (BERy) moved into the top floors of the building and it became known as the Transit Building. The construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike in the 1960s removed neighboring buildings to the south, exposing the southern, unadorned façade of the building. By 1986, owner-developer Richard Cohen began a major renovation of the building with Tower Records as the main tenant. Gehry worked with local architects Schwartz-Silver who added an eighth floor with a cornice support by angled struts. The south and east sides of the building were sheathed in lead-coated copper with the street-facing west and north sides retaining their original brick and stone, but with added glass canopies supported by more angled struts. As housing became more desirable, the top five floors were converted into 54 condominiums. The design is timeless and showcases how new and old can work together in a juxtaposition of styles well! What do you think of the building?
Buildings not built for people, but for horses! This handsome masonry building sits at the heavily trafficked corner of Newbury Street at Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. It may get overlooked by some, but when you are not attempting to avoid shoppers on Newbury and cars and bicycles speeding along Mass. Ave., you’ll notice the amazing brickwork and details found on the former Charlesgate Stables. The building was constructed in 1892 as a five-story plus basement brick livery stable for owners Charles Kenney and Eugene L. Clark. Their permit called for storage of over 200 horses and other goods. The architectural firm of Peabody and Stearns designed the building to fit well within the surrounding area which is dominated by large, ornate townhouses and institutions. Inside the building horses were led up ramps to second floor stables leaving the first floor for carriage storage. This layout made it very difficult to save horses when fires occurred. The Renaissance Revival style building with contrasting brick was purchased by the Maxwell-Briscoe Trust after owners Eugene Clark died in 1907 and Charles Kenney died in 1909. The trustees were manufacturers of the Maxwell automobile, and they converted the former stable into an auto salesroom and garage, to keep up with the shift from horses to automobile. The building today has been converted to commercial use with retail on the ground floor and offices above.
An exemplar of late International Style, this stucco-clad concrete building stands apart from its traditional Back Bay neighbors and is located on one of the city’s most busy streets, Newbury Street. Built as the showroom and offices for Knoll International furniture, its crisp design is an elegant statement in form and details of Bauhaus- and Le Corbusier–inspired architecture, including its asymmetrical composition, curvilinear lower facade, horizontal window bands, and stairwell located behind a glass brick wall. The building was designed by Gwathmey, Siegel and Associates who have a great diversity of commissions, all with thoughtful site-specific designs. The building reinforced the positive qualities of modernist architecture at a time when some architects were advocating for historic revivals and Post-Modernism. The building was later occupied by DKNY and is presently rented out by Lenscrafters.
Another of my favorite townhouses in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston is this Victorian Gothic mansion on Beacon Street, built for Daniel and Mary Knowlton. The residence was designed by the firm of Allen and Kenway and built in 1880 and stands out architecturally for its use of style and use of material amongst a sea of brick. A former cotton merchant, Daniel Knowlton was treasurer of the Flexible Shoe Nail Company and later worked as a stockbroker. The large single-family dwelling was converted into four condominium units in 1989, but has since been switched back to a single-family residence. It sold for $11.2 million dollars as a five bedroom, six full and two half bath home in 2017. Yikes!
Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood is a dream, no matter what time of year, though I am a huge fan of it in the winter so the leaves don’t obscure the architectural details! This home just steps from the Public Garden was built in 1903 for Walter Baylies (1862-1936) and his wife, Charlotte. The couple had purchased a c.1860 Second Empire mansion (basically a sister house or twin to the adjacent at 3 Commonwealth Ave), and demolished it for a more “modern” residence. Baylies was extremely wealthy with investments in nearly everything, and he wanted his city residence to stand out amongst the earlier, brick and brownstone townhouses on the eastern edge of the neighborhood. Architect Arthur Rice designed the house in the Renaissance Revival style, and it is finished with Indiana Limestone. Of particular note is the one-story ballroom, which was built to the side of the home, set back behind a small garden. An empty house lot, formerly occupied by a stable, was used simply for the Baylies’ ballroom, constructed in 1909 for their daughter. Talk about a status symbol! The home was purchased by Walter’s heirs in 1941 by the Boston Center for Adult Education. The home was again purchased in 2020, and is back to a single-family home! I can’t even imagine how stunning the interior is!
These two townhouses were built in 1860 and were once part of a row of four matching homes constructed for wealthy Bostonians. The end units feature stronger detailing with the center two homes being slightly recessed and less ornate, all four constructed of brick with brownstone facades. The original owners wanted to ensure that their new homes would be harmonious in design, both with each other and with the other houses being built nearby.The property already was subject to restrictions contained in the deeds from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who sold much of the land in the Back Bay for development, but the owners added further stipulations. Among them that “the front of said houses shall be of free stone and the height not less than three stories” and “the cornice and roof of all the houses shall be uniform, and shall conform to a plan to be hereinafter agreed upon.” The right house seen here was occupied by Henry Atkins, a grocer and importer of wines and spirits. The left home was occupied by John Chandler, a dry goods merchant and his wife. They both died at a young age in 1875 and 1876 respectively, and the home was sold off by their children’s guardian to Charles Porter, a physician and surgeon. He served as a doctor of anatomy at Harvard Medical School under Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and worked as Chief Surgeon at Mass. General Hospital. His wife, Margaret Cochran Dewar, who also was a physician and was resident surgeon at Sheffield Hospital in England. She had graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1894, among the first women in Scotland to receive a university degree and the first to receive a university medical qualification. In 1925, the two homes here were purchased and combined to one multi-family apartment building and remodelled the structure with ugly brick additions. By 1996, a developer purchased the building and restored them by installing a new façade and fenestration more consistent with the historical nature of the building, making their heights identical once again.
Boston has many examples of adaptive reuse, likely none as frequent as converted horse stables and carriage houses from the 19th century. These one-story stables with a mansard roof on Stanhope Street in the Back Bay were constructed by 1868. The street once held other stable buildings, but those lots were either redeveloped or closed for the extension of Clarendon Street. The stables were used to store the horses and carriages of wealthy Back Bay residents including Jacob Pfaff, Dexter Follett, and Barney Corey. When automobiles replaced horses as a primary way of getting around, these buildings were converted to garages. As the land value raised here, they were adapted to commercial use eventually as restaurants. The building at the far left (now Red Lantern) was originally occupied by Gundlach’s Hofbrau German Restaurant, followed by the Red Coach Grill. A large fire occurred at the restaurant in 1955, likely destroying any historic fabric inside. The Stanhope Stables are threatened for redevelopment as the high-value land facilitates a higher and better use (presently proposed as a hotel). While the preservationist in me wants to see these stables remain intact, my stance is that the brick facades should be reconfigured into a new development in a lobby or restaurant.
Buildings of New England 
