Boston Historic Houses

Faulkner-Hayden House // 1881

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This unique house at 29 Brimmer Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill, was completed in 1881 is architecturally distinctive compared to the early 19th century homes that the neighborhood is known for. The five-story residence has a raised entrance up a flight of steps set within an arched opening. To the side, an arched window frames the facade and has an ornate terracotta panel as a base. More terracotta ornament can be found at the second floor and under the cornice as a thick band frieze with a copper-clad mansard roof above. The single-family residence was built in 1881 for Charles Faulkner (1811-1885), a commission merchant, for his daughter, Ann Ruth Faulkner the year of her marriage to Charles Rowley Hayden. Mr. Hayden was a musician and vocalist. For the new wedding gift, Faulkner hired the esteemed architectural firm of Bradlee & Winslow prepare the designs. The former Faulkner-Hayden House today contains five condominiums.



Baker-Byrd House // 1888

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Located on Brimmer Street in Beacon Hill, this handsome residence is constructed of rough-faced brownstone laid in a random ashlar pattern and is among the most unique in a neighborhood known for brick townhouses. Decorative treatment includes a stone band that is carved with foliate and faces, colonettes that rise along the facade at the bay, and an ornate molded copper entablature and parapet at the roof. The residence dates to 1888 and was built for Seth R. Baker, a Boston real estate developer at the end of the 19th century. It can be inferred that the building was designed by architect, Ernest N. Boyden, as Baker hired Boyden as architect for a half-dozen other apartment buildings between 1888-1890. Antoino Xavier, a Portuguese-born mason is listed as the builder. In the 1910s, the property was purchased by Marie Ames Byrd, wife of polar explorer Richard A. Byrd, who lived a few houses away at 9 Brimmer Street. She rented the four apartments to boarders through the 1930s.


West Hill Place // 1916

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West Hill Place is a small development in Beacon Hill that feels like it was transported to Boston from London! The group of 14 four-story brick townhouses that comprise West Hill Place were built on the site of a gas holder in 1916. The Georgian Revival style development was designed by the firm of Coolidge and Carlson, who aligned six of the townhomes to face west on the Charles River Embankment and arranged the remaining eight residences around a circular court. The development was inspired by Charles River Square, located to its south and built six years prior. The driveway extends off what is today Storrow Drive, with a second exit set within an arched passageway that connects through the Charles Street garage, which was built later. The dark brick with cast stone trim works elegantly with the curving facades facing the courtyard, many of which are adorned with arched doorways and the original iron lanterns. The development has been harmed by the creation of Storrow Drive in the 1950s, but it remains one of the most unique and picturesque enclaves in New England. 

Charles River Square // 1910

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Charles River Square, a delightful development of red brick and cast-stone Colonial Revival townhomes in the Beacon Hill Flat, was developed in 1910 from plans by Boston architect, Frank A. Bourne. The development consists of a total of 21 residences, 19 of which front on the courtyard that is known as Charles River Square. The development is accessed off Charles River Road (which was made a busy thoroughfare in the 1950s and renamed Storrow Drive) and through a Palladianesque passageway off Revere Street. Along with its neighbor to the north, West Hill Place (1916), another group of attached townhouses organized around a courtyard built years later, its layout is a departure from the previous approach to urban planning, resembling the atmosphere of an old London street or mews. Charles River Square remains one of the most desirable developments in the exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Charles and Elizabeth Ware Mansion // 1870

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Located at the corner of Brimmer and Mount Vernon streets in Beacon Hill, this stately mansion showcases the various architectural styles and methods utilized by architects in the waning decades Victorian-era Boston. Set atop a brownstone base, the floors above are in the “Panel Brick” style, which utilizes brick masonry in a variety of decorative patterns of slight projecting or receding panels. The style was popularized by the Boston architectural firm of Ware & Van Brunt, as noted by architectural historian, Bainbridge Bunting. As expected, this house (and the attached townhouse next door) was designed by William Robert Ware for his uncle, Dr. Charles Eliot Ware (1814-1887) and his wife, Elizabeth Cabot Lee Ware. Dr. Ware was a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and secretary of the Massachusetts Medical Society. After the death of Dr. Ware and Elizabeth, the property was inherited by their daughter, Mary L. Ware (1858-1937), a naturalist and botanist who was the principal sponsor of the Harvard Museum of Natural History‘s famous Glass Flowers. After the death of Mary, the property sold out of the family to Robert Wales Emmons III, a financier from a yachting family. The mansion remains in a great state of preservation, and is among the great Victorian-era residences in Beacon Hill.

Simmons House – Japanese Relocation Hostel // 1856

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Together with its two neighbors to the south, this townhouse at 6 Walnut Street represents the development of the South Slope of Beacon Hill in the second half of the 19th century, when larger estates continued to be carved up for housing, typically in the Italianate/Second Empire styles. Built in 1856, this residence was constructed on one of the last undeveloped lots in the area and was originally owned by George W. Simmons. Simmons was the owner of a well-known clothing emporium at Oak Hall, North Street, where he sold all kinds of ready-made clothing for men, including that needed by sailors, as well as sets of clothing for those headed for the California gold fields. His business was renowned also for its ambitious and creative advertising campaigns. Simmons died in late 1882, leaving this property to his heirs who sold the property. After successive ownership, the residence was converted to a boarding house during the Great Depression and rented out to families who could no longer afford the large single-family dwellings in the city. After WWII, in 1945, the boarding house was converted into the first Relocation Hostel for Japanese Americans in New England. The mission of the Relocation Hostels was to provide temporary lodging and career guidance to Japanese Americans who had been uprooted from their homes because of unfounded accusations of sabotage during World War II. Massachusetts joined New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and other states in establishing these hostels. Today, the residence is a four-unit condominium. 

Henry S. Grew Townhouse // 1856

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Built in 1856, the townhouse at 2 Walnut Street is a unique Second Empire style townhouse erected on one of the last undeveloped lots on the South Slope of Boston’s exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood. The three-story, brick residence is capped by a mansard roof and its facade is dominated by a full-height octagonal bay, which at the center on each floor, is a recessed brick panel in lieu of windows. The property was originally owned by Henry Sturgis Grew (1834-1910) a real estate developer and politician who split his time between this residence and a large estate called Grew’s Hill, that grew to several hundred acres and contained an active farm, part of which was later incorporated into Stony Brook Reservation. Henry Grew’s daughter, Jane Norton Grew, would go on to marry John Pierpont Morgan Jr. (J. P. Morgan) in 1890. The Grew House was modernized in the 20th century with a Classical door surround, but otherwise, it maintains the appearance of when it was built in 1856. 

Tudor Apartments // 1887

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Frederic Tudor (1783-1864) was a businessman and merchant known as Boston’s “Ice King” having founded the Tudor Ice Company and becoming a pioneer of the international ice trade in the early 19th century. Frederic Tudor lived in a house at the corner of Beacon and Joy streets in Beacon Hill, Boston, and after his death, the property was inherited by his widow, Euphemia Fenno and their children. By 1885, the old Tudor House was demolished and replaced by The Tudor Apartments, which was built between 1885 and 1887 to house twelve upper-class families who sought smaller living space as opposed to the typical townhouses in Beacon Hill. Designed by architect, Samuel J. F. Thayer, the nine-story Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival building features a brownstone base with brick walls above, combining the traditional Boston bowfront with late 19th century flair at the upper floors with the partial mansard roof punctuated with dormers and oriel windows. Thayer designed the Joy Street elevation with cascading bays to provide interiors with views of the Boston Common and ample natural light.


Callender-Sedgwick House // 1802

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Built in 1802, this large residence at 14 Walnut Street is among the oldest extant mansions on the South Slope of Beacon Hill and includes a large hidden garden behind a granite block retaining wall. John Callender, Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth, purchased land at the corner of Mount Vemon and Walnut streets for $2,000 and immediately started construction on his requested “small house finished for little money $5,000-$7,000”, but this was anything but modest. The house originally had its primary facade facing Mount Vernon Street, but in 1821, Walnut Street was lowered by city officials, so Callender had the granite retaining wall built for the garden and new entry built on Walnut Street. Mr. Callender lived here until his death in 1833 and the property was purchased by members of the Lyman family and later by Harriot Curtis (1881-1974) an early amateur female skier and golfer who used her fortune as a philanthropist, funding medical facilities in Boston for impoverished immigrants and served as dean of women in Hampton Institute in Virginia, an HBCU from 1927-1931. The most significant owner, Ellery Sedgwick (1872-1960), lived here from 1908 until his death in 1960. Sedgwick worked as editor of the Atlantic Monthly (now known as The Atlantic), and under his ownership, the magazine became one of the most circulated magazines in the world. The Callender-Sedgwick House features unique flushboard siding, providing a seamless surface that resembles a masonry wall when painted earth tones and a 19th century oriel window. The brick end elevation is punctuated with bays of hung windows and the recessed entry with a long, granite garden wall which has been well-preserved by owners.


Lyman-Gray House // 1834

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Mount Vernon Place is a short, dead-end street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The street was once an entire block of eight rowhouses, and was developed in the 1830s on land formerly owned by John Hancock and his family. The residences numbered 1-5 Mount Vernon Place were torn down during the 1910s to accommodate the expansion of the landscaped grounds of the State House, leaving just 6, 7, and 8 Mount Vernon Place. The center rowhouse, 7 Mount Vernon Place, was built in 1834 and is believed to have been designed by Alexander Parris, a prominent local architect who designed Quincy Market and mastered the Federal and Greek Revival architectural styles with many notable buildings all over the east coast. The residence has a three bay facade and brownstone sills, lintels, and door surround and has been preserved for nearly two centuries. The house was long-owned by George W. Lyman, an industrialist who lived nearby on Joy Street. The residence was rented for decades until it was purchased by Francis C. Gray a physician, and inherited by his grandson, Ralph Weld Gray, an architect through the 1940s.