First Parish in Wayland (1814)

by Dan//Churches, Federal, Wayland

First Parish Church in 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//Colonial, Houses, Marlborough

Darling house

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.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn (1716)

by Dan//Colonial, Sudbury, Taverns

Wayside Inn

The Wayside Inn in Sudbury is the oldest operating Inn in the United States and was immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s sequence of poems, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863). Built in 1716, the Inn was first known as Howe’s Tavern, for its first innkeeper, David Howe. His descendants continued to operate the Inn, adding to the original structure over time, until 1861. These included Howe’s son, Ezekiel, who led the Sudbury militia to Concord for the battle of April 19, 1775. After passing from the Howes to new owners, the Inn served as a boarding house for temporary lodgers. In October of 1862, Longfellow and his publisher, James Fields, visited the Inn and this inspired the poet to write Tales of a Wayside Inn, which became a bestseller. Although it continued to serve as a boarding house, the Wayside Inn soon began to attract tourists, anxious to see the place which had captured the public imagination. In 1896, Edward Rivers Lemon, a wealthy Medford wool merchant, purchased the Inn as a business venture, inviting the Society of Colonial Wars to meet there in 1897. On that occasion, the orator Samuel Arthur Bent gave a speech entitled: “The Wayside Inn—Its History and Literature.” Lemon intended the Inn to be a literary and artistic retreat and a group artists, poets, and writers, known as the Paint and Clay Club, met there frequently.

The Wayside Inn entered a new phase of its existence when it was purchased by Henry Ford in 1923. He intended to create a living museum of Americana centered on the historic building and bought many acres of land around it. He built a gristmill and the non-denominational Martha-Mary Chapel on the property and and also relocated a schoolhouse from Sterling, which he believed was the actual building mentioned in Sarah Josepha Hale‘s poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The property was placed in a non-profit trust in 1947, with many representatives of the Ford family on the Board, and this transitioned to governance by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1957. Restoration of the Inn was necessary, with help from the Ford family, after a devastating fire in December 1955. As of 1960, the Inn came under the governance of local trustees. There would be no further support coming from Ford interests and there was no endowment, but by this time the Inn had become self-sufficient as an inn, restaurant and museum.
Below are pictures of some interiors in the museum section of the Inn: Continue reading “Longfellow’s Wayside Inn (1716)”

Munroe Tavern (1695)

by Dan//Colonial, Lexington, Taverns

Munroe Tavern

Munroe Tavern, located one mile east of Lexington Common, was built around 1695. The Tavern is named for William Munroe, who was its proprietor from 1770 to 1827. Munroe was also an orderly sergeant in Captain Parker’s minuteman company in 1775. During the Battle of Lexington, on April 19, 1775, the Tavern was occupied by the British for an hour-and-a-half. The Tavern‘s dining room became a field hospital and Brigadier General Earl Percy, who arrived with British reinforcements, used it as his headquarters. George Washington dined at the Tavern during his 1789 visit to the Lexington battlefield. The Tavern is now a museum operated by the Lexington Historical Society.

North Congregational Church, Springfield (1873)

by Dan//Churches, Romanesque Revival, Springfield

Hispanic Baptist Church

In 1868, H.H. Richardson won a commission to design the North Congregational Church in Springfield. Originally intended to be built where the congregation’s preceding church building was located, the plans for construction did not go through until a new site had been purchased, on the corner of Salem and Mattoon Streets in 1871, and the initial plan had been revised. Built in 1872 to 1873, the church was constructed of red Longmeadow sandstone and was one of Richardson‘s first works in the Romanesque style. The North Congregational Society disbanded in 1935 and the church was sold and renamed Grace Baptist Church. It is now called the Hispanic Baptist Church. UPDATE: The church was later called the Cristian Biblical Church and then Iglesia Apostolica Renovacion. The building was for sale in 2019.