The Queen Anne house at 315 Central Street, at the intersection of Columbus Avenue, in Saugus was built around 1895. Its first owner was George B. Blanchard, a Boston real estate agent. The building is now home to Gustafson Physical Therapy.
Going back to 1646, the Saugus Iron Works were the first integrated ironworks in North America. Various buildings of the Iron Works complex were reconstructed in the 1950s on their original sites and are today part of the Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site. A timber-framed seventeenth-century house, traditionally called the “Old Iron Works House,” is also located on the site. It was once believed to have been built in 1646, but is now thought to have been constructed in the 1680s, about a decade after the Iron Works ceased production in 1668. The first known resident of the house, from 1681 to 1688, was Samuel Appleton. By the early twentieth century, the house had become a tenement and had been much altered. In 1915, it was purchased by Wallace Nutting, antiquarian and entrepreneur, who hired Boston architect Henry Charles Dean to restore the house. Nutting renamed the restored house “Broadhearth” and it became part of his chain of colonial homes. As with his other properties, Nutting took photographs of his models posing in the house, which he marketed through a catalog. He soon hired a blacksmith to work at the site, but eventually decided to sell the property to an antiques dealer from Boston.
Is this a haunted mansion posted for Halloween? No, it’s the Town Hall of Saugus, built in 1875. An earlier town hall, built in 1837, is now an American Legion hall. Construction of the 1875 building put the town $50,000 in debt and was one of the reasons the neighborhood of East Saugus almost seceded to become a part of Lynn (the residents were unable to get a bill in both houses of the state legislature and the issue was dropped after the town appropriated $5,000 for laying water pipes in East Saugus). The Town Hall, which originally had the high school and library in the rear wing, was designed in the High Victorian Gothic and Stick styles by Lord & Fuller and underwent a $3 million restoration in 1998, when the building was returned to its original multi-colored, earth-toned exterior paint scheme. The Town Hall’s conference room was recently dedicated to the town’s history. There is also an organization called The Friends of Saugus town Hall.
The Boardman House in Saugus is believed to have been built around 1687 (or as late as 1692) by William Boardman, a Boston-trained joiner. The house is sometimes referred to as the Scotch House because it was later confused with an earlier building on the site that once housed indentured Scottish prisoners who worked at the Saugus Iron Works. Boardman may have occupied that building before constructing the current home. A lean-to was added to the house by 1696, giving the structure a saltbox profile. Around 1725, William Boardman, Jr. made changes to the house, including replacing the original casement windows with sash windows. At some point, the building’s original two front gables were also removed. The house remained in the Boardman family until 1911, when it faced danger from modern development. In 1914, it was acquired by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England). While some necessary repairs were made, SPNEA founder William Sumner Appleton left the house in unspoiled condition to preserve its seventeenth-century structural fabric.
