August 2009 – Page 4 – Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

Cordis House (1832)

by Dan/August 5, 2009January 23, 2020/Federal, Houses, Longmeadow

The Cordis House in Longmeadow is a late Federal-style house with Greek Revival elements, built at 715 Longmeadow Street in 1832. It was originally constructed as a parsonage, occupied first by Rev. Jonathan B. Condit, who is described in Proceedings at the Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Longmeadow (1883), as “youthful, singularly winning, ornate, magnetic—for personal attractions most admired of all the occupants of our pastorate, before or since.” The house was then occupied by Condit’s successor, Rev. Hubbard Beebe. In 1845, the house was bought by Thomas Cordis, a Boston merchant, and has ever since been occupied by the Cordis family. The brick house’s elaborate porch ironwork was added in the late nineteenth century.

Loring Parsonage (1700)

by Dan/August 4, 2009January 18, 2020/Colonial, Houses, Sudbury

Built around 1700, the Loring Parsonage in Sudbury Center was later the home of Reverend Israel Loring, who became the first minister to serve west of the Sudbury River, settling there in 1723. The Parsonage was later known as the Wheeler-Haynes House and Walter Haynes kept a tavern there. Today the house, which is located behind the town hall, is owned by the town, having meeting rooms and other space which is rented to a credit union.

Kirkside (1815)

by Dan/August 3, 2009/Federal, Houses, Wayland

When Wayland’s 1725 First Parish meetinghouse was taken down, in 1814-1815, to make way for a new church, materials from the old building were used to construct a house and store just to the east. Originally known as the Old Green Store, it has a hipped roof and a second-floor meeting hall, which was used by the town from 1815 to 1845. This hall was constructed as part of the builders’ deal to get the old meetinghouse’s beams and timbers in exchange for letting the town use the hall for thirty years. In 1825, when the First Parish church was split between Calvinists and Unitarians, Rev. Lyman Beecher held a series of meetings in the hall to denounce the Unitarians. In 1849, choir members used the meeting room to rehearse the new hymn by Rev. Edmund Sears, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” The house was later converted into a summer residence, named Kirkside, by William Bullard, a wealthy Cambridge banker, in 1889. He expanded and updated the house to the Colonial Revival style and placed elaborate French wallpaper in the meeting hall/ballroom. In 1920, the house was purchased by William C. Loring, an artist who taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, and his wife, Mildred Loring, an antiques dealer, who used the meeting hall as her sales room. The restoration of the house by its current owners, in 1991, was featured on the PBS television program, This Old House.

First Parish in Wayland (1814)

by Dan/August 2, 2009August 6, 2009/Churches, Federal, Wayland

Sudbury was first settled in 1640 and successive meeting houses for the community were built, east of the Sudbury River, in 1642, 1652, 1682 and 1725. In 1780, the section of town west of the river separated from the eastern section, which was at first called East Sudbury and, from 1835, Wayland. The 1725 meeting house was replaced, in 1814-1815, by the current Federal-style church, built by Andrew Palmer of Newburyport to a design by Asher Benjamin. The church bell was cast by the foundry of Paul Revere and Son. The church became Unitarian in 1825, during the ministry of Reverend John Burt Wight. In 1850, the interior of the church was altered to to create a two-story plan, with an auditorium on the second floor. While he was minister at First Parish in Wayland, Reverend Edmund Hamilton Sears composed the Christmas hymn, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”

Amos and Jonas Darling House (1760)

by Dan/August 1, 2009January 19, 2020/Colonial, Houses, Marlborough

Located not far from Wayside Inn Road (which leads to Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury), is the Amos and Jonas Darling House, a Colonial Cape-style cottage (much added to over the years) on the Boston Post Road in Marlborough. Overlooking Hager’s Pond across the road, the house was most likely built around 1760 by Amos Darling, Sr., who came from Framingham (It may also have been built as early as 1726 and later bought by Darling). His sons were Jonas and Amos Darling, Jr. The family was associated with the nearby Hager sawmill and Amos, Jr. married Lovice Hager, daughter of Ebenezer Hager, Jr., in 1800. The house was later owned by Lovice’s cousin, Ephraim Hager. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was owned by George Jones and was known as Jones’s Tavern. The Jones property and the Hager Sawmill were acquired by Henry Ford in the 1920s, when he was developing the Wayside Inn as an historic attraction.