'''FORM B − BUILDING'''
Massachusetts Historical Commission
Massachusetts Archives Building
220 Morrissey Boulevard
Boston, Massachusetts 02125
Photograph
{| | [[File:media/image1.jpeg|361x270px]] |}
'''Locus Map''' ''(north is up)''
{| | [[File:media/image2.png|362x283px]] |}
{|
| '''Recorded by: John D. Clemson''' |
|---|
| '''Organization: Medford Historical Commission''' |
| - |
| '''Date''' (''month / year): April, 2015'' |
| } |
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
{| | L-08-36 | | Boston North | | M | | MDF.385 |}
NRDIS (4/21/1975); LHD (2/15/1985)
{|
| '''Town/City:''' Medford |
|---|
| '''Place:''' ''(neighborhood or village)'': Medford Square [[Category:Medford Square]] |
| - |
| '''Address:''' 31 Hillside Avenue |
| - |
| '''Historic Name:''' Frank H. Hamilton House |
| - |
| '''Uses:''' '''Present: single-family residential''' |
| - |
|
'''Original: single-family residential'''|- | '''Date of''' '''Construction:''' 1890-1893 |- | '''Source:''' Atlas and directories |- | '''Style/Form:''' Queene Anne [[Category:Shingle Style/Queen Anne]] hip block |- | '''Architect/Builder:''' Kingsbury & Richardson |- | '''Exterior Material:''' |- |
'''Foundation: granite block'''|- |
'''Wall/Trim: wood clapboard and shingle'''|- |
'''Roof: asphalt'''|- | '''Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:''' none |- | '''Major Alterations''' ''(with dates):'' none |- | '''Condition:''' excellent |- | '''Moved: no''' '''yes''' '''Date:''' |- | '''Acreage:''' 6,611 square feet |- | '''Setting: A contemporaneous residential development largely consisting of similar large-scale late-19th-century examples with some mid-20th-century and more recent infill.''' |}
Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
''If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.''
'''''Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets.'''''
'''ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:'''
''Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community.''
''The Hamilton House is an exceptionally well-preserved example of the Queene Anne [[Category:Shingle Style/Queen Anne]] style with asymmetrical, complex massing. Although the house has several projecting elements that give it a picturesque silhouette, its two-and-a-half story, three-bay, cube-like main body is compactly massed under a pyramidal hipped roof. It appears to enclose a plan with a corner entry/stair hall and parlor in the front pile and dining room, pantry, and kitchen to the rear. Its most dramatic feature is a three-story projecting octagonal tower located in the right-front corner of the building, likely encircling the parlor. A second octagonal bay sheltered by an overhanging gable projects from the center of the right elevation. An open half-width porch in the left half of the façade balances the strong verticality of the corner tower at the opposite end of the main façade. Two smaller elements, an oriel window in the left bay of the second story and a small gabled dormer directly above, provide a second balance against the corner tower.''
''The house is richly embellished with heavily textured architectural detail. Its sheathing includes a skirted shingle upper section above a clapboarded first story. The upper section is divided from the lower by elaborate horizontal moldings at the second floor level. The building is surrounded by a second heavier cornice that cuts across the third level of the tower, softening its strong verticality. The front porch appears to retain its original turned columns and decorative brackets. Both the small dormer in the façade and the gable in the right elevation are supported by heavy console brackets. The oriel window in the left side of the second-story façade is supported by graduated moldings. The eight-over-two and six-over-two sash, protected by modern storm windows, appears to be original. A large chimney emerges from the peak of the roof and a second stove chimney is centered in the left slope.''
''The house is situated in a residential development of similar buildings on minimal suburban lots. The neighborhood is located on the steep south-facing slope of Pasture Hill. The house faces west at a shallow setback on a lot heavily landscaped with mature plantings and specimen trees. Although the National Register Nomination for the district mentions a carriage house as part of the original build, no such building was ever depicted on Sanborn atlases.''
'''HISTORICAL NARRATIVE'''
''Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community.''
''Although Hillside Avenue was laid out as early as 1875, it was not developed until the closing years of the century. The steep hillside location and sweeping views down into Medford and Boston give the two neighborhood streets their names: Hillside and Grandview avenues (although an early plan shows Grandview as Patten Street). The neighborhood was developed in the 1890s as a cluster of mostly Queene Anne [[Category:Shingle Style/Queen Anne]] style single-family houses on small lots. During the 19th century the land belonged to Thatcher Magoun (17 Jun 1775 – 16 Apr 1856), a prominent Medford merchant. After his death, his two surviving children, Thatcher Magoun, Jr. (4 Aug 1808 – 27 May 1883) and Martha Bradshaw Magoun Adams (17 Oct 1812 – 13 Jun 1885), inherited the property, and are marked as the owners on an 1875 map.''The elder Thatcher Magoun’s daughter Susan married Rev. William Adams in 1831, but she died in 1834. He then married her sister, Martha Bradshaw, the following year. The younger Thatcher Magoun married into the Tufts family, another prominent Medford family. See Cleveland, pg. 1582. ''In 1890, a plan was filed with the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds dividing the land on the east side of Hillside Avenue into nine lots, and laying out what was then called Patten Street. Martha Bradshaw Magoun Adams inherited the land after her brother’s death, as the plan covers land belonging to “Mrs. M. B. Adams.”''
''The house was occupied from its earliest documentation in 1893 through 1930 by its likely first owner, for whom it was built, Frank H. Hamilton (b. 1864). A native of Medford who was raised at 7 Ashland Street, he was the son of Albert Hamilton, a native of New Hampshire who was a railroad conductor. Frank Hamilton spent his entire career as a clerk and later an agent for life insurance with the New England Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Boston, where he worked at 87 Milk Street between 1893 and 1930. In 1887 he married Jeannette Sofia Hintze (b. 1864) of Malden, the daughter of clergyman Otto H.W. Hintze. The couple had two sons, Kenneth D. (b. 1891) and Leicester F. (b. 1893). By 1940 the Hamiltons had left Medford, wintering in Miami Florida, and summering in a boarding house owned by John F. Shaw at 145 Pleasant Street in nearby Arlington.''
''The house was subsequently owned by Philip J. Dwyer (1892 – Oct. 15, 1974), a history teacher at Revere High School, where for a time he served as chair of the History Department. A native of Medford, Dwyer was educated at Boston College High School (1913) and Boston College (1917), from which he later earned a master’s degree. He resided at the subject house between 1938 and 1942 with his wife, Alice K. (b. 1892). By the time of his death he had moved to 287 Fellsway West.''''Boston Daily Globe'', Oct. 23, 1974, p. 53. ''Census records from 1940 demonstrate that the house remained a single-family residence at that time.''
The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing feature of the Hillside Avenue Historic 4/21/1975. The district was made a Local Historic District 2/15/1985.
''Edmund W. Kingsbury, Kingsbury and Richardson, Architects''
''Edmund Winchester Kingsbury (12 September 1862 – 1931) is listed as the architect on the 1975 inventory form for the Hillside Avenue Historic District [[Category:Hillside Avenue Historic District]]. No source is listed for this information, so it is unclear how the authors established an attribution for Kingsbury. Born in Boston, Kingsbury graduated from the Architectural Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston in May, 1883.''Information on Kingsbury from Hotchkiss’ ''Winchester Notes'', pg. 141. ''He formed a partnership with W.P. Richardson, a fellow M.I.T. graduate, in 1889. The firm maintained offices at 43 West Street in Boston. “They make a specialty of designs for fine dwelling houses…and the services of the firm are in constant request throughout New England.”''''Boston and Bostonians'' (American Publishing and Engraving Co., 1894) p. 185. ''A second attribution of Kingsbury and Richardson in the Hillside LHD is 7 Hillside Avenue (MDF.389). The firm also designed several houses in Brookline; one for Charles B. Appleton in Brookline, as well as the Nickerson-Alexander House (BKL.703) and the Davis-Macomber House (BKL.704).''''American Architect and Architecture, Vols. 51-54'' (The American Architect, 1896) p. vii. ''In Cambridge the firm designed buildings at 6 Buckingham Place, 270 Mt. Auburn Street and 16 Traill Street.''Harvard/Radcliffe Online Historical Reverence Shelf, “Index of Personal and Building Names,” web site. ''Kingsbury was also considered an accomplished watercolorist. A review of an exhibition of 50 works he held at the gallery of Charles E. Cobb in 1898, the following was reported:'' “among them some very excellent bits of landscape, and some fine effects in sea scenes, painted from Mount Desert, Jamaica, Florida, Italy and also from Framingham where Kingsbury lives. His ‘Old Spanish Steps Jamaica’ was especially admired.”''Technology Review, Vol. 13'' (Assoc. of Alumni and Alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1899) p. 417. ''He married Helen Ovington of Brooklyn, New York on May 15, 1894. The couple lived in Framingham and had two children, Theodore Ovington Kingsbury and Elizabeth Winchester Kingsbury.''
'''BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES'''
Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line] Ancestry.com.
1875 Beers, F. W. ''County Atlas of Middlesex, Massachusetts''.
1889 Geo. H. Walker & Co., ''Atlas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts.''
1898 Geo. W. Stadly & Co., ''Atlas of the City of Medford, Middlesex County, Mass.''
1900 Geo. W. Stadly & Co., ''Atlas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Volume 1''.
Sanborn Insurance Atlas, 1903, 1936.
Medford City Directories, 1890, 1893, 1895, 1897, 1900, 1905, 1912, 1916, 1918, 1920, 1924, 1930, 1938
Boston City Directory, 1930
Federal Census, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1930, 1940
[[File:media/image3.jpeg|477x358px]]
''Left elevation showing porch posts and foundation material''
[[File:media/image4.jpeg|477x357px]]
''Right and rear elevations''