Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

Joseph Burnett (1820-1894) was born in Southborough and studied chemistry in Worcester. In 1837, he moved to Boston, working for, and eventually partnering (in 1845) with, Theodore Metcalf. They had a chemist shop on Tremont Row (now Tremont Street). A woman’s request for vanilla in 1847 led him to develop a premium vanilla extract, which previously had to be imported from France. He eventually established his own business as a manufacturing chemist, Joseph Burnett and Company. Back in Southborough, Burnett purchased land and established the Deerfoot Farms Company, originally a dairy farm, which later also became known for its sausages. Burnett also established an estate, off Main Street in Southborough, where he built a stone mansion. Here he lived with his wife, Josephine Cutter Burnett, and twelve children. Constructed in 1849-1850, the house was updated in 1860. The house was sold out of the family in 1947.

Both civilians and military personnel worked at the Springfield Armory, with the military presence increasing during the Civil War and in the following years. Requiring more housing for junior officers, a duplex house was built for the purpose on Armory Square in 1870. The house is unlike other Armory buildings, having been designed in the Second Empire style with a Mansard roof.

Built in 1871, the Mansard-roofed French Second Empire style corner building of the Hotel Vendome, on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, was designed by William G. Preston, who had studied in Paris. The western section, designed by J.F. Ober and R. Rand, followed in 1881. Hotel Vendome was for many years the city’s premier hotel, but by the late 1960s attempts were made to demolish the outmoded building. Renovations were almost complete in 1972, when a fire destroyed the southeast section of the original structure. Nine firefighters died when part of the building collapsed after the fire was out. There is a memorial to the nine firefighters on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall at Dartmouth Street. A 1970s addition to the Vendome by Stahl/Bennett in the Brutalist style replaced the destroyed section. The building today houses apartments, offices and stores.

Another example of the Second Empire-style row house, built during the initial 1870s development of Mattoon Street in Springfield, is the building at nos. 50-52. The section of the structure to the right is the Eldredge House.

Mattoon Street in Springfield was first developed in the years after the Civil War. It eventually became the only street in the city to be lined with row houses. Many of these were in the Second Empire style with mansard roofs, like the two homes (see above) at 41-43 (the Slater House is on the left), both built in 1871. Next door, at 45-47, are two more homes with the same design: the Calhoun House and the Hallet House (see below), built the same year. (more…)

Boston’s Old City Hall, constructed from 1862-1865, was built on School Street, the location, from 1704 to 1748, of the Boston Latin School, America’s first public school. Preceded by a City Hall on the same site designed by Bulfinch, the 1864 building was one of the first in America to be designed in the elaborate French Second Empire style and further helped to popularize the use of the style throughout the country. With the 1969 move to the new City Hall, the old building was adapted to serve as space for offices and a restaurant, although at the cost of some of the original impressive interiors. The preservation of Old City Hall is one of the earliest examples of the adaptive reuse of a historic structure. Old City Hall is also on the route of Boston’s Freedom Trail. See below for more pictures:

(more…)

The Hollis H. Hunnewell House, on Dartmouth Street in Boston’s Back Bay, was built in 1869-1870. It was designed by Sturgis and Brigham for Hollis Horatio Hunnewell, son of Horatio Hollis Hunnewell, a wealthy financier, horticulturalist, and great benefactor of the town and college of Wellesley. Sturgis and Brigham designed the house with some of Boston’s earliest ceramic ornamentation on a building’s exterior. The mansard roofs atop the mansion’s irregularly sized towers, as well as a new one-story wing, were added to the building after a fire in 1881. In the early twentieth century, the house was owned by T. Jefferson Coolidge.