Commercial – Page 14 – Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

Mellen Law Office (1826)

by Dan/August 31, 2009/Commercial, Vernacular, Wayland

Located on a green in the center of Wayland is the Mellen Law Office. It was built in 1826 by Samuel Hale Mann, who only practiced law there for four years before ill health forced him to sell it (and his house across the street) to Edward Mellen, who eventually became chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Worcester. The office housed many other offices and businesses over the years, all the while remaining in the possession of the Mellen family. In 1971, it was donated to the town and is maintained by the Wayland Historical Society.

Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial Clinic (1922)

by Dan/August 31, 2009September 17, 2016/Colonial Revival, Commercial, Salem

In the nineteenth century, Lydia E. Pinkham started a company which produced a popular patent medicine named for its creator. It was an herbal-alcoholic tonic, or “Vegetable Compound,” created to relieve menstrual and menopausal discomfort. Her daughter, Aroline Chase Pinkham Gove, a supporter of what is now the North Shore Children’s Hospital, also established a baby clinic, in honor of her mother, in 1922. The Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial, designed by the Boston architectural firm of Haven and Hoyt, is a distinctive Colonial Revival building at the intersection of New Derby Street and Hawthorne Boulevard in Salem.

Prudential Tower (1964)

by Dan/July 9, 2009/Boston, Commercial, Modern

The Prudential Tower, part of Boston’s Prudential Center complex in the Back Bay, is the city’s second tallest skyscraper. It was designed by Charles Luckman and Associates for Prudential Insurance and built between 1960 and 1964. It towered over the nearby John Hancock building of 1947, which prompted the rival insurance company to build a taller tower in 1975.

West India Goods Store (1804)

by Dan/June 30, 2009June 30, 2009/Commercial, Salem, Vernacular

Typical of the waterfront commercial buildings of early nineteenth century Salem is the West India Goods Store on Derby Street. Now a part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, the Store was built sometime between 1800 and 1815, probably around 1804, by the merchant, Captain Henry Prince, Sr., when he lived in the Derby House next door. Prince probably used it as a warehouse, its first documented use as a store being in 1836. The store actually sold goods from all over the world, the term “West India Goods Store” being a generic term for a store selling international goods. The building was altered many times over the years, being moved at one point from the left of the house to the right. It was restored by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1928 and was acquired by the Park Service in 1937. Today the Store sells items similar to those it would have sold in the nineteenth century.

Old Masonic Building, Springfield (1893)

by Dan/February 10, 2009January 21, 2020/Commercial, Organizations, Romanesque Revival, Springfield

The old Masonic Building, at the corner of Main and State Streets in Springfield was perhaps built around 1893, as a volume entitled, Masonic Building, Springfield, Mass, “Authority of Committee on Dedication,” was published that year. The building once had a brownstone facade in the Richardsonian Romanesque style which has since been completely removed. A new Masonic Temple building on State Street was built in the Classical Revival style in 1924.

Haberstroh Building (1886)

by Dan/January 26, 2009June 12, 2011/Boston, Commercial, Houses, Renaissance Revival

The Haberstroh Building, at 647 Boylston Street in Boston, next to the New Old South Church, was originally a house, built in 1886. From 1888 to 1902, it was the home of Dr. Edward Newton Whittier, a Civil War recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, who worked at Harvard Medical School. The house became a business and in 1905, Albert Haberstroh, of the Boston firm of L. Haberstoh & Son, added the four-story bay, which has elaborate copper ornamentation, designed by Haberstroh and done by the Van Noorden sheet metal company.

Ames Building (1889)

by Dan/January 25, 2009/Boston, Commercial, Romanesque Revival

The Ames Building, at 1 Court Street and Washington Mall in Boston, was built in 1889 (although interior work was not completed until 1893) and is considered to be Boston’s first skyscraper. For a number of years the 13-story building dominated the city’s skyline. The building was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by the successors of H. H. Richardson: the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. It is the second tallest masonry bearing-wall structure (9 feet thick at the base) in the world. The building, left unoccupied for eight years, is now being renovated by Tishman Construction Corporation of New York to become a luxury hotel.