Victorian House

James W. Clapp House // c.1869

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In 1868, James Wilkinson Clapp (1847-1931) married Eliza Tuckerman and they soon after moved into this large Victorian-era house on St. Paul Street in Brookline. James was the second son of Otis Clapp, a politician, publisher, and promoter of homeopathy. Otis Clapp operated a large homeopathic pharmacy, Otis Clapp & Son, which continued as a business after his death, evolving to encompass different areas of medical technology. It was one of the oldest-operating pharmaceutical manufacturers in the United States by the time it was acquired by Medique in 2008. The business allowed James, at about 22 years old, to build this stately home for him and his new wife to move into. The residence is Second Empire in style with Stick style ornamentation, and while mostly obscured by vegetation all year, it commands the heavily trafficked corner of Brookline.

Potter-Leland House // c.1888

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Francis Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, has some of the finest Queen Anne Victorian residences in the Boston area. This is the Potter-Leland House, built by 1888 by William Potter, a wealthy shoe manufacturer and businessman who developed rental housing in the neighborhood not far from his house on Kent Street. He built this just before the larger Queen Anne duplex was built nextdoor from plans by Rand & Taylor, architects, and it was rented out as a single-family income-producing property. Various exterior wall textures, irregular massing, and turned supports on the front porch contribute to the Queen Anne character of this house, but the real showstopper is the rounded bay projection with three, 25-over-1 (yes you heard that right) curved sash windows! The property was later purchased by Herbert M. Leland, a broker.

William Potter Rental House // 1889

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William W. Potter, a shoe manufacturer and businessman, and his wife, Isabella Abbe Strickland Potter, lived in the Longwood section of Brookline and became active in the surround areas development in the last decades of the 19th century. William bought land off Kent Street and began to lay out house lots, becoming a developer overseeing construction of stately Queen Anne Victorian rental properties marketed to upper-middle-class residents. For this house on Francis Street, he commissioned architects George Rand and Bertram Taylor, who were known for producing stylish residential designs for the middle class in the Boston area. The massive property was a duplex, providing units to two lucky families! The building has just about every hallmark feature of the Queen Anne style including: the conical roof on a rounded corner bay, a complex roofline, asymmetrical plan, varied siding/materials, and applied ornamentation. In the 1920s, the house was owned by Simmons College, and used as a boarding house. Luckily, the property was restored and now is one of the finest residences in the neighborhood.

Webber Duplex // c.1890

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In the late 19th century, the Longwood section of Brookline, saw a second surge of development when larger pieces of land were sold by heirs of the original developers. On the lot across from the Longwood Towers and near the Longwood rail station, Maine-born lumber dealer, John Prescott Webber, built this two-family residence and rented it out for supplemental income. Webber lived in a large home on Beacon Street while renting this and other properties in town to middle-class commuters to Boston. The Queen Anne style residence exhibits a unique rusticated stone first floor with wide arched entry with Richardsonian Romanesque carved detailing.

Haven Avenue Cottages // c.1877

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When Andrews Point in northern Rockport, Massachusetts, was opened for development by speculators Eben B. Phillips and George Babson, they envisioned the colony, “Ocean View” as a rival to other nearby summer colonies of Beverly Farms, Gloucester, and Magnolia. Roads were laid out and house lots were plotted with larger lots for big summer cottages along the coast and smaller cottage lots at the interior of the development. The rocky coast and more limited access compared to its rivals, caused Ocean View to lack in sales, but there are still some great remaining cottages to be found here. These two early cottages are great surviving examples of the modest, middle-class homes for summer residents. These two charming Victorian cottages sit side-by-side and were owned by an L. Brigham and Benjamin Lewis and both are in a great state of preservation 150 years later.

Eben Phillips Cottage // c.1877

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In the mid-1800s, Rockport, Massachusetts was best-known as one of the main ports for the quarrying and shipping of fine granite up and down the east coast of the United States. While the rocky coastline made granite a prime industry, the natural scenery also made the coastal areas desirable for residential development. While many of the coastal developments here never took-off as they did in nearby Gloucester, Magnolia, and Beverly, there are some notable summer colonies that sprouted up! In 1855, Eben B. Phillips an oil dealer in Boston, purchased undeveloped wooded lots and pastures, and slowly began to lay out roads and survey for developable lots for summer cottages on a peninsula near Pigeon Cove. The development was named “Oceanview” and it was marketed as the extreme point of Cape Ann. Development was very slow to materialize, and started in earnest in the 1870s. Eben Phillips built this summer cottage before 1877 (possibly as early as 1850), where he would spend summers until his death in 1879. The cottage retains much of its original character and is a rare survivor of the rustic style cottages which were built before the phase of larger Shingle and Queen Anne residences were built in later decades.

Bay Crest Cottage // c.1850

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Located across from the Winthrop-Eckley Double House on Corne Street, this gorgeous Italianate style summer cottage is a perfect blending of stature and whimsy. The house was built around 1850 and owned by Charles B. Peckham. Built in the Italianate style, the symmetrical house stands three-stories with covered side entrances divided by a projecting two-story bay. The house exhibits broad, overhanging eaves and paired and ganged round arched windows. The property was known as “Bay Crest” and remains one of the unsung landmarks of the 1850s in Newport.

“Park Gate” Cottage // 1879

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“Park Gate” Cottage sits on Bellevue Avenue near Touro Park in Newport, Rhode Island and is one of many summer “cottages” for wealthy summer residents. The home replaced the Atlantic House, a large summer hotel formerly on the site. The wood-frame dwelling was designed by Newport architect George Champlin Mason for Seth Bunker Stitt of Philadelphia and constructed in 1879. Mason’s design for “Park Gate” includes many features typical of the Queen Anne style including the asymmetrical facades, wrap-around front porch, tower, and even the small details like dentils, spindle work and balustrades. The house was later purchased by Newport Lodge #104 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks in 1920, who own the building to this day.

Smith-Cottrell House // 1887

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Located next to the Channing Memorial Church and the Derby Cottage on Pelham Street, this Queen Anne style cottage stands as a significant Victorian era residence on the street dominated by Greek Revival homes. Built in 1878 for a William H. Smith for his residence and office. The home is an excellent example of the Queen Anne style with asymmetrical form and massing, complex roofline with multiple gables and towers, varied siding, and intricate millwork. By the early 20th century, the property was owned by John and Mary Cottrell, and later purchased by the Channing Memorial Church as “Channing House”.

Overlook Mansion // 1882

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Raised in an intellectual home of his widowed father, William Allen Jenner (1844-1915) graduated from Middlebury College as the youngest in his class with highest honors. He would go on to graduate from Columbia Law School and be admitted to the New York Bar in 1867, becoming a partner in a prestigious New York City law firm. Outside of practicing law, William Jenner studied and authored textbooks on the Latin language and was an avid horticulturalist. His landscape architecture passion was fulfilled when he purchased a large house lot on High Ridge Road in Ridgefield Connecticut, and built this home in 1882, named “Overlook”, where he and his family would spend their summers outside of the city. Mr. Jenner and his wife, Josephine Curtis Jenner, raised three daughters between New York and Ridgefield. One of their daughters, Anna, would marry Sterling Foote, a New York City cotton broker. The Foote’s would inherit Overlook and spend their summers here until their death. The Queen Anne/Shingle style mansion showcases the shift of Ridgefield from sleepy farming town to summer destination for wealthy New York residents, a trend which continues to this day.