Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

William A. White, a Boston lawyer, built a shingle-style home on Main Street in Southborough in 1906. In 1921, the house was acquired by White’s friend, Charles F. Choate, who donated it to the Southborough Village Society, a village improvement society organized in 1922. Called the Community House, the building became a focal point for local activities and even had a bowling alley at one time. When he gave the house to the Society, Choate stipulated that it be shared with the Leo L. Bagley Post of the American Legion. Choate hired architect Charles M. Baker to design a one-and-a-half story east wing (1921-1922) to serve as the Post’s headquarters.

The Tudor Apartments, designed by S.J.F. Thayer and built in 1885-1887, are at 34½ Beacon Street at Joy Street in Boston. Construction of the nine-story building so close to the Massachusetts capitol led to a height restriction law for the area. The Queen Anne-style building combines a variety of architectural styles. The design makes particular advantage of natural light on the Joy Street side of the building. Built as an apartment hotel, for much of the twentieth century the Tudor housed both apartments and offices. In 1999, it was renovated and converted into seventeen exclusive luxury condominiums.

According to the Official guide to Harvard University of 1907:

Weld Hall, containing 53 suites of rooms, of which 22 are single and the rest double, was built in 1871-72, at a cost of about $87,000. It was given by William Fletcher Weld in memory of his brother, Stephen Minot Weld, of the Class of 1826, a benefactor of the College, a member of the Board of Overseers from 1858 until his death in 1867, and one of the first to conceive the idea of Memorial Hall. It contains a common-room for the general social use of its occupants.

Given as a gift around the same time as Matthews Hall, Weld Hall was designed in the English Queen Anne style by the firm of Ware & Van Brunt. The dorm is notable for its two towers with clerestory windows, lighting the stairs, although these were enclosed as a precaution against fire in 1962. Famous residents have included John F. Kennedy, Michael Crichton, Daniel Ellsberg, Christopher Durang, Ben Bernanke and Douglas Kenney.

The 1872 Mansard-roofed house of industrialist and congressman Frederick L. Ames, originally designed by Peabody and Stearns and located at the intersection of Dartmouth Street and Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston’s Back Bay, was significantly enlarged in 1882 by the architect, John Hubbard Sturgis. Sturgis had earlier designed the Gothic Revival-style Museum of Fine Arts building of 1876 and in the Ames House he worked in the English Queen Anne style. The expanded Ames Mansion, which was occupied for 90 years by the Ames and Webster families, features a two-level conservatory, large tower and chimney and porte-cochere. The interior is lavish, with stained glass by John La Farge and murals by Benjamin Constant. In 1972, the house was converted to serve as offices, a notable example of adaptive reuse.

The Boston architect, J. Pickering Putnam, designed his own house, built in 1878 at the intersection of Newbury and Dartmouth Streets in Boston. With many references to Medieval architecture, this complex Queen Anne-style house features multiple towers and gables. The building now houses a restaurant.

The home of Sarah and Emma Carey, the unmarried sisters of Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, a famous educator and the co-founder and first president of Radcliffe College, was built in 1881-1882 on Brattle Street in Cambridge. The house is an excellent example of the Stick style, a type of Queen Anne architecture.

Next to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home on Brattle Street in Cambridge is the house of one of his three daughters, Edith, who had married Richard Henry Dana III, son of the author, Richard Henry Dana, who was a friend of Longfellow. Built in 1887, it is a Queen Anne house with twin gables on the facade. The house is now home to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.