Boston House History

Henry Forbes Bigelow House // 1916

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This massive five-story, five-bay building at 142 Chestnut Street on the Flat of Beacon Hill is today, an 11-unit condominium building, but it was originally built as a single-family home, designed by a prominent Boston architect as his own residence. Henry Forbes Bigelow (1867-1929) was born in Clinton, Massachusetts and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1888. He was hired by the firm of Winslow & Wetherill and soon became a partner of the same firm, which changed its name to Winslow, Wetherill and Bigelow. The firm designed many commercial buildings, hotels, stately mansions, and academic buildings in the New England area. Henry F. Bigelow purchased a two-story stable and cleared the site to erect his home in 1915-1916. This building remained his primary residence until his death in 1929. After his death, the Bigelow heirs sold the Chestnut Street mansion to Bernard Brooker, President and Treasurer of the Building Finishing Corporation, a real estate development company, who converted the building into apartments, which were later converted again into the 11 condominium units. The handsome structure could be classified as Renaissance Revival in style with its cubic form, recessed central entrance, cornice-like window headers, limestone base and entry, iron balconies, and corbeled cornice. The building was designed with an enclosed courtyard with fountains, which today, provide a private space for residents.

David Sears Mansion – Greek Consulate // 1911

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The David Sears Mansion (now the Greek Consulate) at 86 Beacon Street in Boston, is a large, architecturally significant example of a mansion built in Beacon Hill in the early 20th century for a member of a prominent local family. In 1910, Dr. Henry Francis Sears (1862-1942), who had inherited his father’s property on this site, that included two townhouses and a double-stable at the rear, demolished the two houses and built a new mansion on the double lot. The architectural firm of Wheelwright & Haven was hired to furnish plans, which resulted in the symmetrical, four-story mansion with fifth floor mansard punctuated by dormers. The brick structure is trimmed with marble, including at the entry portico, keystones and headers at the windows, and the ornamental panels between the second and third floors in alternating wreath and swag motifs. In the 1920 census, Henry F. Sears lived here with his wife Jean, their four children, his older brother David Sears, and nine domestic servants. After Dr. Sears’ death in 1942, the property was conveyed to the Charlotte Cushman Club of Boston, a boarding house for touring actresses needing respectable, inexpensive, safe lodgings as single women performers were unwelcome in many hotels. In the 1950s, the property became the Katherine Gibbs School, a satellite campus of the higher education institution founded by Katharine Gibbs with the goal to provide educational opportunities to women, eventually becoming Gibbs College. The most-recent chapter of the mansion’s history began in 1993 when the building became home to the Consulate General of Greece in Boston, with the consulate occupying the first two floors of the interior, with condominium units above.

Burnham Townhouse – Engineer’s Clubhouse // 1911

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Located at the boundary of the Beacon Hill and Back Bay neighborhoods, this prominent townhouse on a corner lot at Beacon Street and Mugar Way was built in 1911, replacing an 1840s townhouse of the same form. The Colonial Revival style townhouse was built for Henry D. and Johanna H. Burnham from plans by the architectural firm of Wheelwright, Haven & Hoyt. Henry Burnham was the son of cotton broker, John Appleton Burnham and was in the real estate business. Henry and Johanna lived at 96 Beacon Street through at least 1938. The house was bought by the Engineer’s Club, a social and professional organization, in 1947. In the 1950s, the formerly mid-block townhouse suddenly became a corner lot with the construction of Storrow Drive, its off ramp as Mugar Way, and the addition of the Fielder Footbridge connecting Beacon Hill to the Esplanade. The Engineer’s Club took over renovations at the interior, which were done to adapt the former single-family residence for clubhouse functions, including a large banquet hall. In the 1960s, the property was acquired by Emerson College and used it as a college center and cafeteria until the early 2000s when it was converted into condominiums by Grassi Design Group, adding new openings to the formerly solid brick side wall.

Bayard Thayer House – Hampshire House // 1911

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This iconic building at 84 Beacon Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, is best-known for its bar, which in 1982, became world-famous as the locale for the bar in the television sitcom Cheers, one of the most-watched programs in television history; but its history begins earlier. This five-story building was constructed in 1911 as a mansion for Bayard Thayer (1862-1916), who split his time between Boston and his country estate in his home-town of Lancaster, Massachusetts. Thayer hired architect, Ogden Codman Jr., a favorite designer of Boston and New York high-society, to design his Boston mansion, which is an expressive and overscaled example of a Colonial Revival style townhouse. Bayard Thayer died in 1916 and his widow, Ruth Simpkins Thayer, lived here with her granddaughter, Ruth, and nine domestic servants. After Ruth Thayer’s death in 1941, the property was conveyed to the Colonial Properties Trust in 1944, operating the building as a small luxury apartment hotel. From this point on, the hotel became known as Hampshire House. In about 1969, the basement space in the Hampshire House opened as the Bull & Finch Pub, which later became the inspiration of the iconic sitcom Cheers. Pictures of the exterior of the building were used in the show’s credits and scene changes, and the interior was faithfully replicated from the set in Hollywood, where the show was actually filmed. The Bull & Finch Pub has permanently been renamed Cheers Pub and visited by many who wish to visit the place where “everybody knows your name”.

Elizabeth G. Evans – Edward A. Filene House // 1883

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This unique brick house at 12 Otis Place in Beacon Hill was built in 1883 by the architect, Carl Fehmer for attorney Glendower Evans and his wife, Elizabeth Gardiner. Mr. Evans died in 1886 of Hodgkin’s Disease at just 30 years of age. His widow, Elizabeth Glendower Evans (1856-1937) was greatly influenced by her husband during their brief marriage, even taking her husband’s first name as her middle name after his death. Elizabeth Glendower Evans became a prominent social activist, studying child labor conditions in the South and took up the cause of women’s suffrage and the associated problems of tenements and factory work arising from disenfranchisement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1915 Evans served as a delegate to the International Congress of Women at the Hague. She was the first National Organizer of the Woman’s Peace Party. From 1920 until 1937 she served as a national director of the American Civil Liberties Union. In the 1910s, Elizabeth sold the home to Edward Albert Filene (1860-1937), who, together with his younger brother Abraham Lincoln Filene, reorganized his father’s department store into “William Filene’s Sons Company”, which would later become Filene’s. He was a supporter of credit unions to help ordinary American workers to access loans at reasonable rates and allow workers to save their money so that when hard times hit, they were prepared.

Pickering-Apthorp Houses // 1870

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These two near-identical townhouses at 1 & 2 Otis Place in Beacon Hill are significant architecturally and as they are bounded by four streets. The unique lots were created when Otis Place was laid out on made land in 1869 and were built the following year as an identical pair sharing a party wall and with their front facades facing south on Otis Place. The two residences were designed by the firm of Ware and Van Brunt, who blendedSecond Empire and Victorian Gothic styles with gothic arched windows, bracketed cornices, slate mansard roof, and later Colonial Revival porticos added in 1916 by architect, Frank A. Bourne. No. 1 Otis Place (right side with the oriel bay window) was first owned by Henry G. Pickering, a dealer in engines and machinery at the height of New England’s industrial revolution. No. 2 Otis Place (left with later fanlight entry), was originally owned by Robert E. Apthorp, an attorney and realtor, who decades earlier, was an active member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, the group established to harbor and assist fugitives from slavery after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in September 1850.

Samuel and Emily Eliot Rowhouses // 1871

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These three identical three-story houses at 156, 158 & 160 Mt. Vernon Street in Beacon Hill Flat were built in 1871 as income producing properties for Samuel and Emily Otis Eliot who lived next door on the corner of Brimmer Street. The architect is not evident from my research, but they were likely designed by Abel C. Martin, who furnished speculative housing for the Eliot’s elsewhere in the neighborhood. All three residences feature brick facades with off-center recessed entries on raised stoops. The use of brownstone lintels and sills, decorative brick cornice, and second-story hexagonal oriel windows add intrigue to the design, along with the slate mansard roofs. The three houses were sold or rented and all were owned by various families, but notable owners of the central house include the architect George Russell Shaw (1848-1937) of the firm Shaw and Hunnewell through the early 1900s. Later in the 20th century, the house was owned by Kevin White (1929-2012), who served as the mayor of Boston for four terms from 1968 to 1984.
All three residences are well-preserved and look much as they did when constructed over 150 years ago.

Sunflower Castle // 1878

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This absolutely unusual and enchanting cottage on Mount Vernon Street in Beacon Hill, Boston, was originally was constructed in the 1840s but completely altered decades later in its distinctive English Queen Anne style. In 1878, Frank Hill Smith, an artist and interior designer, worked with architect, Clarence Luce to renovate what was originally a two-story Greek Revival house into one of the most eclectic and unique residences in New England. The Sunflower Castle, a name reputedly coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes, features a yellow stucco first floor with the upper floors covered with red fish-scale shingles. Further detail includes the half-timbering, decorative panels depicting a gryffin and a sunflower in the gable, and carved wood frieze over the doorway. Clarence Luce was likely so inspired by this project, that he built an even more extravagant example of this house for Edward Stanwood in Brookline soon after. By 1903, the property was sold to the painter, Gertrude Beals Bourne and her husband, architect, Frank A. Bourne, who were both key players in the revival and gentrification of the Beacon Hill Flat neighborhood west of Charles Street in the early 20th century. The Sunflower Castle was used as their home and as an artist’s studio for the couple, with Frank adding the side garden wall with tile-roofed gateway to enclose a private open space. The property remains as a private residence.


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.