Asa Stebbins House (1799)

by Dan//Deerfield, Federal, Houses

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The Federal-style Asa Stebbins House, now one of the museum houses of Historic Deerfield, was built in 1799 and was the first brick house in Franklin county. Stebbins, a wealthy farmer and mill owner, was on the building committees for two other brick structures: the original building of Deerfield Academy (now the Memorial Hall Museum) and the town’s “brick church“. He was also a town selectman and state representative and built and decorated his house in the popular Federal style. Inside, the house has French scenic wallpaper by Joseph Dufour depicting the voyages of Captain Cook.

Haberstroh Building (1886)

by Dan//Boston, Commercial, Houses, Renaissance Revival

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The Haberstroh Building, at 647 Boylston Street in Boston, next to the New Old South Church, was originally a house, built in 1886. From 1888 to 1902, it was the home of Dr. Edward Newton Whittier, a Civil War recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, who worked at Harvard Medical School. The house became a business and in 1905, Albert Haberstroh, of the Boston firm of L. Haberstoh & Son, added the four-story bay, which has elaborate copper ornamentation, designed by Haberstroh and done by the Van Noorden sheet metal company.

Ames Building (1889)

by Dan//Boston, Commercial, Romanesque Revival

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The Ames Building, at 1 Court Street and Washington Mall in Boston, was built in 1889 (although interior work was not completed until 1893) and is considered to be Boston’s first skyscraper. For a number of years the 13-story building dominated the city’s skyline. The building was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by the successors of H. H. Richardson: the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. It is the second tallest masonry bearing-wall structure (9 feet thick at the base) in the world. The building, left unoccupied for eight years, is now being renovated by Tishman Construction Corporation of New York to become a luxury hotel.

King’s Chapel, Boston (1749)

by Dan//Boston, Churches, Colonial

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King’s Chapel, originally founded to serve British officers, was the first Anglican church in Puritan Boston. The Chapel‘s first building was a wood structure, built in 1686 on land that had been part of the town’s oldest burying ground. The current Chapel, built of Quincy granite, was constructed around the old one in 1749-1754 (the dismantled remains of the old church were then removed through the windows). The architect was Peter Harrison, of Newport, RI, considered to be America’s “first architect,” who modeled the Georgian-style building on those designed by James Gibbs in England, like St. Martin in the Fields in London, except the steeple of King’s Chapel was never built due to a lack of funds. When the British evacuated Boston during the Revolutionary War, there were few Anglican families remaining in town. James Freeman, a lay reader, became minister in 1783 and led Stone Chapel (as King’s Chapel had come to be called) to become America’s first Unitarian church in 1789 (although the congregation continued to follow a liturgy based on the Book of Common Prayer). That same year, George Washington attended an oratorio at the Chapel intended to raise funds for the construction of a portico of wood Ionic columns, painted to resemble stone. When the Chapel’s bell cracked in 1814, it was recast by Paul Revere. Both the Chapel and the adjacent King’s Chapel Burying Ground are on the Boston Freedom Trail.

Park Street Church (1809)

by Dan//Boston, Churches, Federal

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Boston’s Park Street Church was built in 1809-1810 on the site of the 1738 town granary (the Old Granary Burying Ground is next door). The church‘s architect, Peter Banner, adapted the steeple from a design by Sir Christopher Wren. Solomon Willard carved the wooden capitals of the front columns. Either because of the “fire and brimstone” sermons of its Congregational preachers or the fact that gunpowder was stored in its basement during the War of 1812, the corner of Tremont and Park Streets, where the church is located, came to be known as “Brimstone Corner.” The church has had many firsts: the first Sunday School in America was founded here in 1817; the first missionaries to be sent to Hawaii started from here in 1819; the first prison aid society was founded here in 1824; William Lloyd Garrison made his first public anti-slavery speech here in 1829; and Samuel Francis Smith’s hymn, America (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee“) was sung for the first time on the church‘s steeps by Park Street’s Children’s Choir in 1831. Park Street Church is on Boston’s Freedom Trail.