Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

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Category: Harvard

Former Harvard Public Library (1886)

by Dan/December 16, 2014/Harvard, Libraries, Romanesque Revival

Harvard Public Library

In 2007, the old Broomfield School in Harvard reopened as the new home of the town’s public library. Harvard’s previous library building is located at 7 Fairbank Street. Built in 1886 and expanded in 1902, the Harvard Public Library was designed by William Channing Whitney (1851-1945), the nephew of Edward Lawrence, who had donated $5,000 for books provided the town constructed a building to house them. A further gift of $5,000 from Hannah W.C. Sawyer provided for purchasing the lot and building the library on the site of an inn that had burned down in 1880. Continue reading “Former Harvard Public Library (1886)”

Judge Bailey Aldrich House (1930)

by Dan/December 16, 2014January 28, 2015/Harvard, Houses, Vernacular

89 Shaker Rd., Harvard

The house at 89 Shaker Road in Harvard was built around 1930 on the site of one of the former dwellings of the Harvard Shaker Village. Judge Bailey Aldrich designed the house with the builder Harold Bigelow to reflect the Shaker tradition of simplicity.

Jonas Merriam House & Tavern (1807)

by Dan/October 1, 2014/Federal, Harvard, Houses, Taverns

Jonas Merriam House & Tavern (1807)

A tavern had long stood at the site where Jonas Merriam built a Federal-style house in 1807 at 1 Elm Street, near the Common, in Harvard. Merriam built the house to also serve as a tavern that would take advantage of traffic expected to pass by on the newly opened Union Turnpike. As described in Vol. 2 of the History of Harvard (1894), by Henry S. Nourse:

When the Union Turnpike was completed and Harvard expected to become a way station on a great thoroughfare between Boston and the upper valley of the Connecticut, Jonas Merriam’s tavern was opened in rivalry with Ezra Wetherbee’s, which faced it across the common. Neither turnpike nor inn rewarded the owners’ hopes, and Merriam removed to Shirley in 1816, selling his estate to Seth Nason.

Seth Nason was a founder of the Evangelical Church and town treasurer from 1825-34. He operated a shop in the house before purchasing the building at the corner of Still River Road and Massachusetts Avenue in 1820. Among later owners of the house was Dr. Augustus Robbins. The Evangelical Church also used it for a time as a parsonage in the mid-nineteenth century. The house has had various owners since then.

Calvin and Jacob Haskell House (1800)

by Dan/August 31, 2014/Federal, Harvard, Houses

Calvin and Jacob Haskell House

The house at 216 Still River Road in Harvard is believed to have been built by the brothers Calvin and Jacob Haskell around 1800. Calvin was licensed to sell alcohol to travelers along the well-traveled thoroughfare of Still River Road. In the 1820s he gave up this business and became active in the local temperance society. Jacob Haskell served as terms as selectman and Justice of the Peace in 1822. The house passed to his son Levi in 1843 and was bought by William Bowles Willard in 1864. He was clerk of the Baptist Society, to which he donated a Stevens organ in 1870. In 1868 he exchanged his house for the nearby Baptist parsonage. The house at 216 Still River Road then became the new parsonage until it was sold in 1939.

Jonathan Lewis House (1780)

by Dan/June 28, 2014/Federal, Harvard, Houses

212 Still River Rd., Harvard

Built around 1780, the house at 212 Still River Road in Harvard is known as the Jonathan Lewis House after the man who constructed it. In 1801 it was acquired by Dr. Ephraim Stone, a major benefactor of the Still River Baptist Church, which is located across the road. After Dr. Stone retired to Boston in 1840, the house passed through several owners. From 1885 to 1901, the house was owned by James Harrod, a blacksmith and son of the noted blacksmith Major Henry R. Harrod.

John Mycall House (1798)

by Dan/May 29, 2014/Federal, Harvard, Houses

John Mycall House

Stephen Cleverly began constructing the hip-roofed house at 204 Still River Road in Harvard in the early 1790s. As described in the History of the Town of Harvard, Vol. II (1894), by Henry S. Nourse:

Stephen Cleverly, an eccentric genius, son of Dr. John Cleverly, succeeded [the merchant John] Munroe [at Still River] at the close of the Revolution, but his business career was brief and unfortunate. He began the erection of the large dwelling well known as the Mycall or Jerome Gardner house, but his enterprise ended in financial trouble, and he removed to Lancaster with his father. Thereafter he indulged his taste for strong drink, became besotted and insane, and died at the age of seventy-two, A. D. 1832, in the alms-house. He was an educated man, had a talent for rhyming, and in his later years was wont to wander about, half-tipsy, repeating whenever he could find listeners certain scurrilous verses of his own composition, in which he satirized his fellow- men and scoffed at the world in general.

Cleverly’s creditors sold his unfinished house to John Mycall in 1798. Originally from Worcester, England, John Mycall (1757-1840) had emigrated to Newburyport in 1775, where he was editor of the Essex Journal from 1780 to 1790. Mycall operated a retail shop in the rear ell of his house in Harvard. Again quoting from Nourse:

Of John Mycall, when publisher at Newburyport, the following story has been more than once printed. The sheriff had been a regular subscriber to the Journal for a long time, but failed to pay the bills presented to him, save in profuse promises. One day, being urgently pressed for the amount due, the sheriff with his usual earnest manner, said: “Mr. Mycall, you shall have your money tomorrow, if I am alive; you may be certain I am a corpse if you are not paid in full.” When the sheriff began reading the next issue of the paper he was astounded to find staring him in the face the formal announcement of the “sudden death of Philip Bagley, Esq, Sheriff of Essex County,” followed by a flattering obituary, which closed with the sentence: “Alas! Sheriff Bagley had one grave fault—he neglected to pay the printer.” He threw down the sheet in a rage and rushed out to contradict the report. He met several acquaintances, but no one seemed at all surprised to see him in his usual vigor, until he entered the printing office. The publisher put on a look of grave astonishment, ejaculating: “Why, Mr. Sheriff, I thought you a corpse.” “Who told you so?” asked the angry official. “Why, you yourself were my authority”— and he recalled the solemn promise. The sheriff drew his wallet, paid the bill, and demanded that the statement be contradicted in the next week’s Journal. “O,” said Mycall, “that isn’t at all necessary; the notice was printed in but one copy of the Journal; that one sent to you.”

[In 1808] Squire Mycall became entangled in some litigation with Joseph Stone, shook Harvard dust from his feet and returned to Newburyport, where he died.

Mycall’s Harvard property was sold to Jerome Gardner, a merchant and prominent citizen who held a number of local offices. After the Civil War, the house served for a time as a summer hotel, run by Merrick Puffer. In the mid-nineteenth century, the house’s original center chimney was removed and replaced by an Italianate cupola.

Gardner-Wood-Hersey House (1817)

by Dan/May 21, 2014/Federal, Harvard, Houses

210 Still River Rd., Harvard

The center-chimney Cape house at 210 Still River Road in Harvard was erected sometime before 1817 by Reuben Gardner. It was later owned by Anne Adams, who sold it to Joshua Tucker in 1827. He sold it to Otis Atherton and Ameriah Wood, who worked at a tannery nearby on Still River, in 1830. Thomas Hersey acquired the house in 1839. He was a delegate to the 1820 convention to revise the state constitution. The house passed from Hersey’s heirs to the Haskell family in 1876.

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