The Brewer-Young House in Longmeadow is a Colonial Revival mansion built in 1884 as a residence for Rev. Samuel Wolcott. The house was next occupied, in 1889, by State Senator George Brewer, who covered the exterior of the house with brown shingles. It was sold, in 1922, to Mary Ida Young, wife of Wilbur Fenelon Young, the inventor of the liniment Absorbine. Young had the brown shingles removed.
In 1871, an old schoolhouse on Lexington Street was converted to become Waltham’s Police Station. A new station was built adjacent to the earlier structure in 1892 and remained in service as a police station for seventy-two years. Afterward, it housed other city offices, but is now home to the Waltham Museum. Founded in 1971 by Al Arena, the Museum was housed for a time in the 1871 James Baker House, but from 2005 to 2007, the old Police Station was renovated to become the Museum’s new home.
The earliest Methodist meetings in Sudbury were held in the schoolhouse of the town’s north-west district until 1835, when the town decided to no longer allow the use of school buildings for religious meetings. That year, a Methodist meeting house was constructed between Sudbury Green and the Old Revolutionary Cemetery. The church was expanded in 1896, but it now serves as the Presbyterian Church in Sudbury.
In 1846, the same year Sudbury’s original Town Hall (rebuilt in 1932) was constructed, a schoolhouse was built on the southeast corner of Sudbury Common. The structure was later raised to two-stories. The building, later moved to its current location next to the Town Hall, served as a school until 1890, when it was sold to the Sudbury Grange. In 2006, the building was acquired by the Sudbury Foundation and has been restored and modernized, with a new rear addition. The first floor is now the Foundation’s offices and the second floor is used by the Sudbury Grange and as a public meeting space by the town.
Sudbury‘s original Greek Revival-style Town Hall, built in 1846, stood in Sudbury Center until it was destroyed by fire in 1930. A new building, following the same design but enlarged to plans by Charles H. Way, a Sudbury architect, was built in 1932. The Sudbury Historical Society is located on the Town Hall’s upper floor.
In 1819, the First Congregational Society of Lexington became Unitarian. The minority of Trinitarian Congregationalists attended the local Baptist church for a time, but in 1868 formed the Hancock Congregational Society. The Congregation occupied the old Lexington Academy building until 1893, when the current Hancock Congregational Church was built. The church, designed by Paine and Lewis, features both Shingle Style siding and fieldstone walls. Many additions have been made over the years, including a new stuccoed wing in 1951.
Opposite the Battle Green in Lexington is the Lexington Masonic Building. It was originally built in 1822 to house the Lexington Academy, which only lasted eleven years. From 1835 to 1837, it was used for the Lexington Manual Labor Seminary, an early trade school, and in 1839 the building was taken over by the state to become the first Normal School in America. A school for the training of teachers, it was established by Horace Mann, who chose Rev. Cyrus Pierce to run it. This educational experiment proved successful and soon moved to larger quarters, first to Newton in 1844 and then to Framingham in 1853. The building was later used for tenements and a grocery store. It served as the Hancock Congregational Church from 1868 to 1893. The former school became a Masonic Lodge in 1917.
