The asymmetrically-laid-out house at 40 Summer Street in Salem was built around 1762 by Capt. Thomas Eden (d. 1768), who lived with his family in one part while running a retail shop in the other. Later owners partitioned the house as a residence between them. In 1889, the entire house was owned by the Browne family and in 1923 it was purchased by the Sanders family. The house has a matched-board gable end.
Built by Seth Russell in 1796, the house at 66 Bridge Street in Northampton is part of Historic Northampton’s complex of buildings. It is known as the Shepherd House because Susan Monroe Shepherd purchased it in 1856 and lived there with her husband, Henry Shepherd. Their son, Thomas Monroe Shepherd (1856-1923), left the house to the Historical Society, now called Historic Northampton. The late colonial-style house was much altered over the years by its various owners. The Gothic-style front porch was added in 1840 and the columned porch on the west side was added in 1899. The house is now rented as the headquarters of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.
Peletiah Morse’s Tavern, at 33 Eliot Street in South Natick, was built in 1748 to serve as a residence, tavern and stage stop on the Old Hartford Road. Located not far from the 1730 house of Morse’s father, David Morse, it was one of the oldest taverns in Natick and the last to survive from the colonial era, although its center chimney was later removed. According to tradition, an acre of land on the property had been a gift from the Natick Praying Indians to John Eliot. The planned construction of new buildings on the property around the house by a Montessori School has recently caused controversy in town. In 2008, the school was fined for improperly removing trees from the land.
Built around 1750 and later altered to its present appearance, the Capt. Thomas Mason House is at 1 Cambridge Street, off Essex Street, in Salem.
This is the 500th Post for Historic Buildings of Massachusetts!!! The Old Town House in Marblehead was built in 1727. The upper level contained the town hall and the lower level was originally used as a market. The building is sometimes called “Marblehead’s Cradle of Liberty” because of meetings held there before the Revolution where such leaders as Elbridge Gerry and General John Glover debated independence. The building‘s lower level, originally at ground level before the addition of a granite foundation to the structure in 1830, served as the town’s Police Station from 1853 to 1961 and is now home to the Marblehead Police Museum. The second floor also has a Grand Army of the Republic meeting hall maintained as a museum.
In the 1940s, historical novelist Anya Seton‘s research into her ancestry led her to Marblehead, and she based her 1948 novel, The Hearth and Eagle, on the history of the seaside town. She set the novel in the Hearth and Eagle Inn, based on the house at 30 Franklin Street in Marblehead. The house was built c. 1715-1721 by the father of Elbridge Gerry and was enlarged in 1750. It was owned by the captain in command of Fort Sewall during the War of 1812 and soldiers were billeted in the house.
The house at 65 Washington Street in Marblehead was home to members of the Trevett family, a prominent Marblehead shipping dynasty. The sign on the house states that it was built in 1717 for Capt. Benjamin Trevett and his wife, Elizabeth Russell Trevett, as a gift from her brother, the merchant Samuel Russell. They had married in 1710 and their son, Russell Trevett, had been born in 1714. Russell was the father of Capt. Samuel Russell Trevett, who was born in 1751 in the house (the house is named for him, although in the past it was mistakenly called the Capt. Richard Trevett House). Capt. Samuel Trevett led the Marblehead artillery company at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
