The Gothic Revival receiving tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston is located not far from the iconic entrance gate and chapel/offices. The structure was built in 1871 and designed by architects, Carl Fehmer and William R. Emerson in the Gothic style, a prevalent aesthetic that the overseers encouraged for the various 19th century buildings constructed on the grounds. Historically, the Gothic Revival structure served as the entrance to underground holding tombs for the temporary storage of bodies awaiting burial or relocation, typically stored when the ground was too frozen for burial. The structure features a granite structure with oak ceiling and painted tile flooring. A massive project began in 2016 to excavate and build a new Garden Mausoleum, built into the landscape with the restored Receiving Tomb serving as the focal point. The tomb portico was adapted as a gateway to an open-air courtyard flanked by walls set into the slope which contain internment chambers for burials, with a restored fountain in front and woman archer statue atop.
Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston was established in 1848 in the rural cemetery tradition, which followed Mount Auburn Cemetery, established in 1831 in nearby Cambridge and Watertown. The site was a municipal cemetery in Roxbury until it was annexed into Boston in 1868, becoming a private, non-denominational burial place for the who’s who of the area. The cemetery was envisioned by Henry A. S. Dearborn, who was the mayor of Roxbury in 1847 and first president of the Massachusetts Horticulture Society, who had also been instrumental in creating Mount Auburn. Since its creation in 1848, Forest Hills has grown from its original 72 acres to a total of approximately 250 acres today and is known for the rich topography and vegetation, dotted by thousands of beautiful monuments to the deceased and some iconic architectural landmarks tucked away in its winding paths. Forest Hills Cemetery was located on this site due to its varied natural features, which included hills, valleys and lakes, which together were preserved to enhance the experience of those visiting nearly 200 years later. The site’s topography consists of a series of geological drumlins of Roxbury puddingstone, an important material that was used in building projects all over the region (and for some of the buildings and monuments in Forest Hills). It is the burial place of a remarkable cross-section of people that reflect almost every aspect of American life — from statesmen to soldiers to industrialists to abolitionists to artists to poets. Forest Hills Cemetery is a somewhat hidden gem and is one of the best places in the area to walk and explore.
The stone bridge in Forest Hills spans over Greenwood Avenue, linking Consecration Hill to Milton Hill, was designed by William Gibbons Preston and built in 1891-1892. It is 180’ long and 23’ wide and was constructed of random laid Roxbury puddingstone with granite trim and is capped by a stone balustrade inlaid with decorative cast iron. The bridge shows that even a traditionally functional structure in the cemetery was designed with intent and was a vessel to enhance the experience of those visiting. Stay tuned for more sites in this iconic landscape!
Adjacent to the Entrance Gate at Forest Hills Cemetery, the Forsyth Chapel and Cemetery Office building stands at the ceremonial entrance to the iconic landscape and architecturally compliments the adjacent structure and surrounding grounds. The Forsyth Chapel was designed by the firm of Van Brunt and Howe and completed in 1884 as a space for mourners and for celebration of lives well-lived. The chapel was expanded in 1921-22 when the Boston firm of Andrews, Jacques & Rantoul, was commissioned to expand the building perpendicular to the gateway, and expand the offices in the building, to serve the greater administrative needs of the busy cemetery and burial planning. The Neo-Gothic addition continues the architectural aesthetic of the cemetery, while being clearly of its time, a well-intentioned and designed addition.
Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston was established in 1848 in the rural cemetery tradition, which followed Mount Auburn Cemetery, established in 1831 in nearby Cambridge and Watertown. The site was a municipal cemetery in Roxbury until it was annexed into Boston in 1868, becoming a private, non-denominational burial place for the who’s who of the area. The cemetery was envisioned by Henry A. S. Dearborn, who was the mayor of Roxbury in 1847 and first president of the Massachusetts Horticulture Society, who had also been instrumental in creating Mount Auburn. Since its creation in 1848, Forest Hills has grown from its original 72 acres to a total of approximately 250 acres today and is known for the rich topography and vegetation, dotted by thousands of beautiful monuments to the deceased and some iconic architectural landmarks tucked away in its winding paths. Forest Hills Cemetery was located on this site due to its varied natural features, which included hills, valleys and lakes, which together were preserved to enhance the experience of those visiting nearly 200 years later. The site’s topography consists of a series of geological drumlins of Roxbury puddingstone, an important material that was used in building projects all over the region (and for some of the buildings and monuments in Forest Hills).
This iconic Boston building is threatened with demolition!
The clock is ticking for the Alley/Eblana Brewery, a historically and architecturally significant building in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. Located on Heath Street, the historic Alley Brewery, also known as the Eblana Brewery, stands as a striking reminder of the city’s once-thriving brewing industry. Founded by Irish immigrant John R. Alley (1822-1888) in the mid-1880s, the brewery produced the popular Eblana Irish Ale, a name derived from the ancient term for Dublin, reflecting Alley’s heritage and the strong Irish influence in the area. John Alley previously co-owned the Highland Spring Brewery nearby, but founded a brewery in his own name in 1885. For his brewery, Alley hired Philadelphia architect Otto C. Wolf, who was the nation’s premier brewery architect and engineer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The four-story complex was built in 1886 and showcased some of the most advanced brewing technology of its era while displaying an impressive blend of brick and granite craftsmanship. Its distinctive façade features a dramatic central bay, granite-trimmed arches, rough-faced stone braces, wrought-iron gates, and carved stone plaques bearing Alley’s initials and the date of construction. After John’s death in 1888, the business continued under the ownership of his two sons, Frederick and George. The brothers in 1899, added the adjacent bottling and refrigeration building, which employs similar architectural features and materials to the main brewery. Brewing here ceased with Prohibition and the structure later served a variety of manufacturing uses, when during the 1960s, many windows were filled with brick. The Alley-Eblana Brewery remains one of Boston’s most architecturally significant surviving brewery buildings, embodying Boston’s rich industrial and ethnic heritage, but it is threatened. Developers have owned the building since 2013 and have done nothing to preserve or even maintain the structure, making it a case of demolition by neglect. They are requesting to demolish both structures, but the demolition has been delayed 90-days through the Boston Landmarks Commission Demolition Delay review process. If you want to see the building repurposed and saved, reach out to the Boston Landmarks Commission and advocate for its adaptive reuse, which would provide housing and maintain a significant architectural landmark for the community.
Built from a historic stable building, this unique building on Lime Street in Beacon Hill served as a residence and studio for Martha Silsbee, a prominent New England watercolor and pastel artist. For her Boston residence, Martha Silsbee hired the firm of Richardson, Barott, and Richardson, an office founded by Philip and Frederic Richardson, sons of famed architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who had designed a house nearby with similar design elements years prior. Taking cues from Venetian architecture, the interior spaces were covered with cream-colored plaster with iron gates and walls lined with art. The design includes a massive studio window on the facade, which flooded Ms. Silsbee’s studio where she painted when not at her residence in the Dublin Artist Colony in New Hampshire. The facade also features pointed arches and artistic glass at the entrance. After her death, the property sold at auction. After WWII, the former studio and residence was purchased by Georges F. Doriot (1899-1987), a Parisian businessman who later taught at Harvard Business School and in 1946, founded the American Research and Development Corporation, the first publicly owned venture capital firm in the United States.
One of the most amazing townhouses in Beacon Hill can be found here on Lime Street, where an oversized mansard roof addition with multi-light dormer, dominates the facade. The townhouse was built in 1912 from plans by architect Richard Arnold Fisher, who lived a few houses away, replacing a livery stable formerly on the lot. The site was developed on speculation by the Brimmer Street Trust, a real estate firm run by Gerald G. E. Street and William Coombs Codman, who sought to develop the area into high-end residences and art studios, protecting the area from unsympathetic developments. A few years after the house was built, it was owned by Frederick Shepherd Converse, a composer who also taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. By 1927, the house was owned by a young Waldo Hayward Brown, who at 32-years-old, occupied the house with his wife, Frances, three young children and four servants. The year he purchased the property, he hired the original architect, Richard Arnold Fisher, to add a In 1927 Brown filed a permit application to build a tall new room over an existing roof terrace at the front of the house, where the architect designed it as a mansard addition, which is of a large scale and broken up by the massive studio window. The blending of Tudor Revival and the later mansard roof surprisingly work here to create the unique composition we see today.
This charming townhouse on Lime Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill, was built in 1912 for the Brimmer Realty Trust by architect, Richard Arnold Fisher, who lived two houses down the street. After the developers built the house on speculation, the townhouse was purchased by an A. G. Burgess, and soon after by Odin Roberts, a prominent patent lawyer with Roberts, Roberts & Cushman. After WWII, the townhouse was purchased by Jacob Wirth Jr., who took over his father’s iconic German restaurant, Jacob Wirth’s after his death. Jacob Wirth Jr. lived here until his death in the 1960s and it remained as the residence of his widow, Dorothy Wirth until 1995. The brick townhouse stands out for its two-story projecting copper oriel and the unique parapet at the roof.
This charming stable building on Chestnut Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill, Boston, was probably built around 1865 for Elijah Williams (1804-1879), a shipping merchant who also served a term on the Boston Common Council. Elijah and his wife, Mary, lived on Louisburg Square and had this stable built to hold their stable, sleigh and horses. Additionally, the stable housed a small residence inside for the stable-keeper and coachman, who would chauffer the Williams’ around and take care of their horses. In the early 20th century, the stable was owned by George Nixon Black (1842-1928), an heir to a Boston real estate fortune that came to Boston to manage the office of his father’s lumber business. He eventually became one of Boston’s largest individual taxpayers and besides his home in Boston, spent time in other homes including the late Kragsyde in Manchester-by-the-Sea and Woodlawn in Ellsworth, Maine, now a house museum. The stunning Second Empire style stable building is built of brick with granite lintels, sills, and surrounding the carriage doorway, over which is a mounted statuary of a horse head as a nod to the building’s original use.
One of the many charming buildings on the Flat of Beacon Hill can be found here at 73 Chestnut Street, which has long been one of my favorites when strolling in the neighborhood. The building was constructed around 1895, replacing a wooden stable on the site, and appears to have been built as a stable and converted soon-after to commercial use. In 1917, the building was leased to tradespeople, and included a plumbing shop and cabinetmaker, but as the area gentrified after WWI, the building was purchased by Israel Sack, an antique dealer as his new store. Israel Sack was born in Lithuania and emigrated to the United States, first working as a cabinetmaker and later becoming an instrumental force in the antiques world, where he assisted with developing the private collections of Henry Ford, Henry Francis du Pont, Ima Hogg, and other leading collectors and supplying the Americana collections of many major museums. A year prior to buying and renovating this building, in 1924, Sack purchased the Robert “King” Hooper House in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and turned the 18th-century mansion into a showroom for his antiques. Israel Sack gave the building at 73 Chestnut Street its distinctive Colonial Revival facade with its urn finials and Bullfinch-eque Federal Revival storefront. Later operators of antique stores within the building include: Louis D. Prince and Stephen Score, until recently when it was converted to a residence, with the owners removing bright blue paint from the brick and restored the facade, down to the iconic wooden statuette on the second story.
This handsome building at 81 Chestnut Street in Boston, began as a two-story brick stable and was later modernized with an additional floor and renovated for use as an artist’s studio, a perfect encapsulation of the history of the Flat of Beacon Hill from the “horsey end of town” to upper-class enclave and artist community. The stable was built around 1860 for Harleston Parker (1823-1888), the father of the more well-known, architect, J. Harleston Parker, and remained as a stable throughout the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the two-story building was converted to a auto repair shop but changed use in 1916 when owner, Edward H. Noyes hired architect, Harry Browning Russell, to convert the old stable to an artist studio. The second-story windows were enlarged and former carriage door were enclosed with small rounded art glass, likely for and by George Loftus Noyes, a painter who worked for a time at the New England Glass Company. Inside, a central landscaped courtyard flooded the spaces with natural light. In 1936, George Noyes moved to Vermont, divorcing his wife, Maybelle, but leaving her with the Boston studio. Maybelle remarried to George Lee, and soon-after hired architect, Frank Chouteau Brown, to add a third-story to the studio for conversion to a year-round residence. Brown added the unique Moorish arched windows and brickwork at the third floor.
This narrow three-story, two-bay brick house on Byron Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill, is one that I had never noticed before, but it instantly became one of my favorite houses in Boston. Built in 1914 as a two-story residence for Charles Lewis Harding (1879-1944) a wool merchant and agent for mills in the New England area. It appears that Mr. Harding had the building constructed but never resided here and may have rented out space or kept his vehicle inside. After his death in 1944, the property was owned by Ariel Hall and her husband, painter and etcher Frederick Garrison Hall. She removed the garage replacing it with a large window, and added the mansard roof, converting the entire building into a single-family residence from plans by architect, William Chester Chase. They likely expanded the second-floor windows to the present configuration for an art studio for Mr. Hall before his death in 1946. It is unclear the vintage, but the building also features a painted statuette of a Chinese figure, mounted on a pedestal in the space between the arches of the windows at the second floor.
The George G. Hall Stables on Byron Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood were built in 1895 for George G. Hall, a wealthy hotelier and developer, who razed three private stables occupying the site prior. For his private stables, George Hall hired Boston architect, William Whitney Lewis, to furnish the plans, which resulted in one of the finest buildings on the Flat of Beacon Hill. Designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the building was described in architectural publications as being constructed of Milford pink granite and coral-colored bricks with two carriage doors and a door for the stable-keeper with an extant hayloft on the second floor. While from afar, the stables are stunning, it is when you inspect it up-close that you see the attention to detail that was taken by the architect. Round stone medallions on the facade read: “G.G.H.” after its owner; “No. 11, 12, & 13”, the addresses; and “1895”, the year of construction. Additionally, at the ends of the arched stable openings, carved dog heads can be found, keeping guard of the horses inside. The stable was later converted to three residences in the 1960s by the architectural firm of Goody & Clancy, Associates.
In 1929, Eleonora R. Sears (1881-1968), a tennis champion and great-great-great granddaughter of President Thomas Jefferson, had a 19th century stable she inherited from her late father, demolished and replaced with this stunning residence with garage on Byron Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The present three-story building was designed by Henry Forbes Bigelow, who lived a few blocks away in his own mansion, as a unique Colonial Revival style building with symmetrical facade. Eleonora Sears was one of the first American women to drive an automobile and fly a plane and lived here with her chauffeur when she was not at one of her other properties. After Eleonora died in 1968, her Beacon Hill residence was converted into condominiums, while the facade retains its architectural features when built nearly 100 years ago.
Buildings of New England 
