Tag: Howells

48 Mount Vernon Street, Boston (1825)

by Dan//Boston, Federal, Houses

48-mt-vernon.jpg

Nos. 44, 46 and 48 Mount Vernon Street in Boston were built in the 1820s and are typical examples of the smaller houses found on the south slope of Beacon Hill. Frances Weston Carruth, in Fictional Rambles in & about Boston (1902) identified No. 48 (c. 1825) as William Dean Howells‘s inspiration for the home of the Coreys in The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885). Victorian Boston Today (2004), on the other hand, notes that Carruth’s photograph and the description in the novel do not fit no. 48 and that therefore no. 45 is the correct address.

2-22 Louisburg Square (1835)

by Dan//Boston, Greek Revival, Houses

louisburg-square.jpg

Located in the middle of Boston’s exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood, Louisburg Square, planned in 1826, consists of a narrow park between Pinckney and Mt. Vernon Streets, which is now the last private square in Boston. By 1844, most of the Greek Revival-style row houses facing the square had been built and the Louisburg Square Proprietors formed the first homeowners association in the country. This was one of the last areas of Beacon Hill to be developed, but these new buildings honored the spirit of the Federal-style houses built elsewhere in the neighborhood earlier in the century. Those on the west side are mainly bow-fronted houses and have had a number of notable residents. It is still an exclusive neighborhood today. Read on for more about Louisa May Alcott, William Dean Howells and Jenny Lind.

Continue reading “2-22 Louisburg Square (1835)”