Now standing isolated on block that once contained a row of houses, 284 Maple Street is the sole survivor of an affluent neighborhood in Holyoke. Nothing is now known about who built the house (c. 1880) or who first lived in it. The concrete steps are not original. Today the building houses a law firm.
The Cushing-Endicott House, at 163 Marlborough Street in Boston, is considered one of the Back Bay‘s greatest architectural achievements. Designed in the French Academic Style, it was built in 1871 of brick, with Nova Scotia sandstone trim, for Thomas F. Cushing by the firm of Snell and Gregerson. The house later served as the home of William C. Endicott, secretary of war under President Grover Cleveland. In 1903, John Singer Sargent used one of the bedrooms as his studio. The house is now divided into condominiums. The house is joined to two neighboring houses, one with an interesting T-shape interior plan, which are located around the corner at 326–328 Dartmouth Street and have a similar architectural style.
At 20 Hancock Street on Beacon Hill in Boston is the home once occupied by Senator Charles Sumner. It was built in 1805 by Ebenezer Farley and was purchased by Sumner’s father in 1830. Charles Sumner was a fiery opponent of slavery and the victim of a famous caning, delivered by Representative Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate on May 22, 1856. After the Civil War, Sumner was a leader of the Radical Republicans. He lived in the house until 1867 and was possibly the one who added the Greek Revival portico that links nos. 20 and 22 Beacon Hill.
The Nathan Appleton House, at 39 Beacon Street, and its partner, the Daniel Parker House, at no. 40, were designed for the two former business partners by Alexander Parris, a noted Boston architect. Built in 1818, a fourth floor was added to both houses in 1888. These two bowfront row houses which are transitional between the Federal and Greek Revival styles, at one time mirrored each other more closely, but the Appleton house had an extra window added on each of its floors. Nathan Appleton was a pioneering textile manufacturer. The marriage of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to Appleton‘s daughter, Fanny, took place in the house in 1843. From 1914 into the 1990s, the building housed the Women’s City Club of Boston. In more recent times, it has been subdivided into condominiums. There is a video of the house’s exterior on YouTube.
The house at 51 Chestnut Street, on Boston’s Beacon Hill, was built in 1830. It was the home of Rev. Charles Lowell, who was the pastor of West Church in Boston from 1806 to 1861. Rev. Lowell, who was the father of the poet, James Russell Lowell and grandfather of the Civil War General Charles Russell Lowell, later acquired and moved to Elmwood, a Georgian-style house in Cambridge.
No. 77 Mount Vernon Street in Boston is part of a row of Greek Revival Houses constructed in 1836-1837 on the site of the former Bulfinch-designed mansion of Jonathan Mason. These buildings are set back 30 feet from the street, in line with other earlier houses in this block. It later nineteenth century, the house at no. 77 was the home of Sarah Wyman Whitman, an artist and graphic designer who created book bindings for Houghton Mifflin. Whitman‘s work appeared on books by such authors as Sarah Orne Jewett, Celia Thaxter, Lafcadio Hearn and many others. In 1936, the house became the headquarters of the Club of Odd Volumes, a society of bibliophiles founded in 1887. The club had previously rented space in a large building across the street.
In 1805, Charles Bulfinch began building twin houses on the adjoining lots at nos. 87-89 Mount Vernon Street in Boston, which he had purchased from Harrison Gray Otis. There is an unverified story that he had intended one to be his own home, but facing financial difficulties, he sold them: no. 87 to Stephen Higginson, Jr., the father of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and no. 89 to David Humphreys. The two buildings were set back from the street in order to line up with the adjacent Second Harrison Gray Otis House, also designed by Bulfinch. No. 89 was later replaced by a new building, which was later remodeled in the Colonial Revival style. No. 87 was, for a time, the residence of Gen. Charles J. Paine, a Civil War general and yachtsman. Since 1955, it has been the home of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
