At 90 Brattle Street in Cambridge is a house, built in 1882-1883, that is considered to be the masterpiece of the Shingle style of architecture. With little exterior ornament and covered with wood shingles, it was designed by H. H. Richardson for Mary Fiske Stoughton, the mother of John Fiske, a philosopher and historian who later lived in the house. Although additions were made to the house in 1900 and 1925, it remains an icon of American architecture.
William A. White, a Boston lawyer, built a shingle-style home on Main Street in Southborough in 1906. In 1921, the house was acquired by White’s friend, Charles F. Choate, who donated it to the Southborough Village Society, a village improvement society organized in 1922. Called the Community House, the building became a focal point for local activities and even had a bowling alley at one time. When he gave the house to the Society, Choate stipulated that it be shared with the Leo L. Bagley Post of the American Legion. Choate hired architect Charles M. Baker to design a one-and-a-half story east wing (1921-1922) to serve as the Post’s headquarters.
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.
Stonehurst was the country house of Robert Treat Paine, Jr., a lawyer, housing reformer and great grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Located in Waltham, the earliest part of the house was a Second Empire building, designed by Gridley James Fox Bryant and constructed in 1866 for Paine and his wife, Lydia Lyman Paine. This house was moved to a new site atop a ridge and a large addition in the Shingle style was designed by the architect H.H. Richardson. Begun in 1884, the project was almost complete when Richardson died in 1886. In collaboration with Richardson was the great landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. The organic relationship of the completed house and the landscape is a notable feature of what is considered to be an architectural masterpiece. The estate was given to the City of Waltham and is open to the public.
