Preliminary Study Report on the Establishment of the

Wild-Sargent Local Historic District

Brookline, Massachusetts

February 27, 2012  

 

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REPORT PREPARATION Written by Norah Mazar, Architectural Conservator Ken Liss, Brookline Historical Society Edited by Greer Hardwicke and Jean Innamorati, Preservation Planners, Brookline Preservation Commission, Department of Planning and Community Development Summary Sheet Contact: Greer Hardwicke, Preservation Planner Jean Innamorati, Preservation Planner Brookline Preservation Commission 617-730-2089 Study Committee: Brookline Preservation Commission James Batchelor, Chair David King, Vice-Chair Paul Bell Linda Leary Elton Elperin Wendy Ecker Judith Selwyn Kirsten Gamble Bridier, Alternate Rosemary Battles Foy, Alternate Peter Kleiner, Alternate Rick Schmidt, Alternate Date of Public Hearing: on or about April 23, 2012 Date of Town Meeting: begins May 22, 2012 Total Number of Properties in Proposed District: 1 ________________

 

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Table of Contents Introduction Methodology Preservation Need and Neighborhood Interest Report Documentation Public Hearings and Town Meeting Historical Significance Washington Street Aspinwall Hill Dr. Charles Wild and Subsequent Residents Development of Blake Park and Current Residents Architectural Significance Overview Development of Existing Buildings Boundary Description and Justification Conclusion Appendix - Map of Proposed Local Historic District

 

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Introduction The house and carriage barn at 26 Weybridge Road were built around 1822 for Dr. Charles Wild. The house was remodeled in the 1860s. In the 1880s the property was acquired by the Blake family, whose real estate holdings covered most of the lower part of Aspinwall Hill. Occupied by several Brookline families during the period it was owned by the Blakes, the house was sold again in 1916, along with most of the Blake estate, for a development called the ‘Blake Residence Park.’ Redesigned in the 1920s by architect Clarence Thayer McFarland, the former Wild house became the home of publisher and education critic Porter Sargent and a centerpiece of the new middle class neighborhood developed as Blake Park. The neighborhood was populated by the families of bankers and brokers, doctors and lawyers, salesman, college professors, contractors, and local merchants. The home is still owned by the Sargent family. Washington Street was known as the Brighton road when the Wild house was built. One of the oldest streets in Brookline, it remained rural in character until after the arrival of the railroad in Brookline Village in 1848. It officially became Washington Street in 1846. Before 1850 only three houses were built on Aspinwall Hill and of these, only 26 Weybridge Road remains. Still entirely residential in character, Blake Park and Aspinwall Hill are well preserved neighborhoods of predominantly single family homes developed in two stages. Houses on the slopes of Aspinwall Hill were built beginning in the 1880s while, lower down the hill, Blake Park was subdivided and developed in the 1920s and 1930s (26 Weybridge Road had been incorporated into the Blake Park development in 1916). Since the completion of the Blake Park development in the 1940s, only four new homes have been added, and the neighborhood retains its early twentieth century character. The owners of 26 Weybridge Road, along with residents of the Blake Park and Aspinwall Hill neighborhoods wish to investigate a Local Historic District for 26 Weybridge Road, including the house and the adjacent carriage house. The district would serve as a tool for managing development pressures that could affect the unique nature of this property, and ensure that restoration and adaptive reuse be compatible with the property’s historic and architectural character. The first Local Historic Districts in Massachusetts were established in 1955 at Nantucket and on Boston’s Beacon Hill. Since then, over 220 districts have been established statewide and six in Brookline under MGL Chapter 40c. A Local Historic District offers the strongest protection possible for the preservation of historic structures and community fabric. It provides a mechanism to manage change and avoid inappropriate alteration and demolition. Within a Local Historic District, any significant alterations to the exterior of a structure visible from a public way, park, or body of water are subject to the review of the Preservation Commission in its role as the Historic District commission. In 2006 the Brookline Preservation Commission “encourage[d] neighborhoods to establish local historic districts as the best way to preserve the unique character of the Town of Brookline.” Brookline currently has six local historic districts. Cottage Farm, established by Town Meeting in 1979, was the first in Brookline, followed by Pill Hill (1983), Graffam-McKay (2004), Chestnut Hill North and Harvard Avenue (both 2005) and most recently, Lawrence (2011). Note: For further information on design review in local historic district in Brookline, see the booklet Design Guidelines for Local Historic Districts, (2003; rev. ed. 2006), available through a link from the town website, http://www.brooklinema.gov/Preservation/.

 

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Methodology Preservation Need and Neighborhood Interest Blake Park has remained remarkably unchanged since its completion as a residential subdivision in 1941. While residential real estate in Brookline has continued to hold its value during the current economic downturn, there remains a potential that historic buildings on large lots could be threatened by demolition. The open space surrounding the Wild-Sargent house and carriage house, as well as the undeveloped land in front of the house, form an environment typical of the early nineteenth century that is unusual in this neighborhood and worthy of preservation. Examples of losses of historic houses on Aspinwall Hill include the Aspinwall house and the Tappan house, the earliest homes built on the hill. The Aspinwall house, a very large wood-frame Federal style home built in 1803 for Dr. William Aspinwall, was razed in 1900 and replaced by another imposing residence designed by Architect W.G. Preston, which in turn was torn down and replaced by the house that now stands at 73 Gardner Road. The Tappan house, built in the 1820s by the merchant and abolitionist Lewis Tappan (1788-1873) just down the hill from the Aspinwall house, later became the home of the Blake family, and was demolished in 1939. Other demolitions of historic houses include the Bowditch house, built at 125 Tappan Street in c. 1867, demolished in the early years of the twentieth century. It was built by William Ingersoll Bowditch, a Boston businessman and abolitionist. Many of the late Victorian-era homes built on Gardner Road in the 1890s were torn down to make way for newer houses. Blake Park and Aspinwall Hill represent a wide range of residential architectural styles and periods of construction that span from the 1820s to today. These homes and their settings create the historic, architectural and landscape feeling and associations of the neighborhood. The house and carriage house at 26 Weybridge Road, along with the surrounding property, represent a unique oasis of open space that is a vestige of the earliest period of settlement in the neighborhood. Losing either of the structures, or the open space that surrounds them, would negatively impact the integrity of the neighborhood. This property, which is proposed as the Wild-Sargent Local Historic District, is the last remaining estate from the early nineteenth century on Aspinwall Hill. While the size of the property itself is diminished from its original configurations of 1822, it remains an outstanding example of Brookline’s early nineteenth century history. Establishing a LHD would allow for the structures to be sympathetically conserved and restored while allowing the original fabric of the estate to remain. In an attempt to preserve open space and prevent the demolition of the historically and architecturally significant structures at 26 Weybridge Road, the owners are seeking LHD designation to best protect the property. There appears to be broad support from the surrounding neighborhood for the designation. Several dozen neighbors attended a meeting of the Preservation Commission on January 10, 2012 when a proposed local historic district was discussed. Neighbors in attendance were unanimous in expressing their belief in the importance of protecting the structures and open space of 26 Weybridge Road. Neighborhood residents at the meeting as well as one of the owners of the house spoke about their appreciation of the location and setting of the property and how the structures represent a very significant part of the character of their neighborhood. Neighbors on Greenough Street mentioned how special it is to look out their windows onto this unusual property.

 

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Creation of a LHD would give the owners useful tools to manage change. A LHD would prevent loss of the historic fabric of the property at 26 Weybridge Road and give the Preservation Commission the ability to review additions and other significant alterations to the exterior of the buildings, almost all sides of which are visible from public ways. The character of the open space and the setting of the structures in the proposed Wild-Sargent LHD contribute to its unique historic character. The importance of the Wild-Sargent LHD to Brookline as a whole lies in its intact historic fabric of both pre-Civil War residential development, and as part of a post-World War I neighborhood development.

 

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Report Documentation The basic research for this study report derives from historic building survey forms prepared for the Massachusetts Historical Commission and supplemented by documentation from primary source research conducted by the authors of this report, including local and regional newspapers; Brookline's building permits; deed records; town atlases; tax lists and directories; and the Official Street Lists and the Brookline directories for the years 1904 -1916 published by the W.A. Greenough Co. The second major source of primary materials was the extensive holdings of the Brookline Room of the Brookline Public Library, as shared by Anne Clarke and the rest of the library reference staff. These resources included copies of Brookline atlases, plat maps, and the Olmsted maps; runs of Brookline city directories, tax lists, and Blue Books; the contents of the pamphlet and vertical files; and the numerous published Brookline histories. The website of the Brookline Historical Society was also helpful, with its collection of digitized maps and reports and its links to digitized books. Secondary sources consulted include: Bradford Kingman, History of Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts (J.W. Lewis and Co., 1892); History Committee of the Brookline Education Society, A Guide to the Local History of Brookline, Massachusetts (Riverdale Press : C.A.W. Spencer, 1897); David Hackett Fischer, ed. Brookline : The Social History of a Suburban Town, 1705-1850 (Brandeis University, 1986); Theodore F. Jones, Land Ownership in Brookline from the First Settlement (Brookline Historical Society, 1923); Nina Fletcher Little, Some Old Brookline Houses (Brookline Historical Society, 1949); Roger Reed and Greer Hardwicke, Carriage House to Auto House (Brookline Preservation Commission, 2002) and Images of America: Brookline (Charleston: Arcadia, 1998); Harriet F. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, Massachusetts (Boston: Davis, 1874); Jean Kramer, Brookline, A Pictorial History, 1989; and A History of Brookline, Massachusetts, from the First Settlement of Muddy River until the Present Time, 1630-1906 (Brookline Press Co., 1906). The Historical Significance section of the report is based on the description of 26 Weybridge Road on co-author Ken Liss' Blake Park Web Site: < http://blakepark.muddyriver.us >. It was modified and updated for the report. Public Hearings and Town Meeting The Preservation Commission will hold a public hearing on the proposed Wild-Sargent Local Historic District on or about April 23, 2012. The proposed local historic district will be considered at the Spring 2012 Town Meeting, which begins on May 22, 2012.

 

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Historical Significance Washington Street Brookline Village, at the intersection of Washington and Harvard Streets, became the civic and commercial center of Brookline after the second town house was located there in 1844 and the arrival of the railroad in 1848. The original development centered on land allotments around lower Washington Street after the building of a cart bridge over the Muddy River in 1639. Various roads were laid: a road to Sherburne in 1658, Harvard Street, the road to the colleges in 1662, and the Newtown Road to Watertown, now Washington Street, in 1657. By 1650 there were about 25 families settled near the bridge. By the early nineteenth century, most activity in the area centered around the Punch Bowl Tavern, erected near Pearl Street about 1730. A stagecoach route was established by 1806, and the Boston and Worcester Turnpike, now Boylston Street (Route 9), began to be laid out. During the first half of the nineteenth century the Washington Street corridor, also known as the road to Brighton, was a pastoral area with a scattering of houses, farms and tanneries. Auxiliary streets were usually either cart roads or paths to homesteads. The Tannery Brook ran parallel to Washington Street, on the east side, before flowing into the Muddy River. The 1844 map of Brookline made by E.F. Woodward shows fourteen homes and two tanneries along Washington Street between the Brighton line to the north and the intersection with Cypress and School streets to the south. The Wild house is shown as the third house north of Cypress Street, after two houses owned by the Crafts to its south and the large Aspinwall family holdings to the north. Nina Fletcher Little, in Some Old Brookline Houses (1949) describes four early houses along Washington Street: The Joans Tolman house, c. 1796, at 384-386 Washington Street; the Captain Samuel Croft house, built in 1765, originally at the corner of Cypress and Washington streets, later moved to 7-9 Thayer Place; the Enos Withington house, c. 1794, at 633 Washington Street; and the Deacon Timothy Corey house, c. 1806, at 808 Washington Street. Of the Croft house, Little wrote that

Before 1746 [Samuel Croft] had purchased a lot from the Sharps which was located on the northerly [sic] side of Washington Street, a short distance west [sic] of Cypress, and here, on April 23, 1765, he raised the frame of the present house. This was subsequently owned by his son Samuel Junior, after whose death it passed to his wife Susanna Sharp Croft, who had received the fee simple in the ninety-three acres of Croft land on Cypress Street. By her will in 1821 her nephew, Samual Crafts, was to choose one quarter of the farm, and Dr. Charles Wild, a young man who had come to board with her a few years previously, was to take any two acres he wished for his house lot.

The new town house and the railroad accelerated commercial and residential development in Brookline Village, then called Harvard Square. New areas of growth began to radiate out from the village center, primarily along Harvard and Washington Streets. This period also saw the settling of Irish and German immigrants who came out from Boston and settled near the village. Blacksmiths, livery stables, and carpenter and paint shops established businesses in the area beginning in the 1850s and 1860s. Several gasometers were built by the Brookline Gas Company.

 

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Aspinwall Hill Aspinwall Hill, located on the east side of Washington Street, is a classic drumlin, approximately 220 feet in elevation above sea level, one mile in length, and just under half a mile wide (although some of the periphery of the hill has been trimmed by development and through the creation of Washington and Beacon Streets). Aspinwall Hill, rising to a height of approximately 220 feet above sea level, is the middle of three high hills north of Route 9 in Brookline. Corey Hill is to the north, north of Beacon Street. Fisher Hill is to the south, south of the tracks of the MBTA Riverside Line (formerly the Boston & Albany railroad tracks). The hill is also shown in the center of the map below, taken from a 1946 topographical survey map.

The Aspinwalls were one of the early families to settle in Brookline. Peter Aspinwall bought land from William Colborne in 1650 and built a house near the intersection of present-day Saint Paul Street and Aspinwall Avenue. In 1788, his great grandson, Dr. William Aspinwall, bought land on what is now called Aspinwall Hill. Dr. William Aspinwall (1743-1823) built a house in 1803 near what is today the corner of Gardner and Winthrop Roads. The Aspinwall property included most of the hill, from Gardner Road to Beacon Street. Two other houses were built on Aspinwall Hill early in the 19th century. 26 Weybridge Road is the only one of these three early houses still standing. It was built around 1822 near the bottom of the hill close to

 

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Washington Street. It was the home of Dr. Charles Wild (1795-1864) who succeeded William Aspinwall as the town's leading physician. The second house was built in the 1820s, just down the hill from the Aspinwall house, by the merchant and abolitionist Lewis Tappan (1788-1873), and later became the home of the Blake family. It was demolished in 1939. These three homes, with their various outbuildings, remained the only houses on Aspinwall Hill until the 1850s. The 1855 map below shows Aspinwall Hill as it likely was settled by 1855. The Blake (lower center), Aspinwall (to the right, near Washington Street), and Wild (lower right) houses are all marked along the west side of Washington Street.

1855 Map

The Aspinwall property began to be developed in earnest in the 1880s, as some of the land was divided among family members and other parts sold off (most notably to Boston University). Plans to develop the lower part of the hill were first drawn around the same time. But the Wild House (now known as 26 Weybridge Road) would remain a private estate for many years to come.

 

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Dr. Charles Wild and Subsequent Residents of the House Charles Wild (1795-1864) was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard in 1814, and was granted a medical degree in March 1818. (His dissertation was on delirium tremens). Coming to Brookline less than a month later, he boarded with a widow, Mrs. Croft, on Washington Street. The Croft family had owned land in this part of Brookline since 1746. Around 1820, Mrs. Croft gave Dr. Wild two acres of land on the south side of Washington Street, at the base of Aspinwall Hill. Dr. William Aspinwall, the town's principal physician, was winding down his own medical practice at that time (he died in 1823) and Wild soon took over as the leading physician in town. He built a house and carriage barn on the land in c. 1822.

Dr. Charles Wild

Harriet Woods in her Historical Sketches of Brookline, published in 1874, presented a lengthy profile of Dr. Wild. (Pages 163-170):

Those who can remember the doctor in his prime can well recall his tall, well-formed figure, his firm tread, his deep voice which seemed to come from cavernous depths, and eyes which seemed to look from behind his spectacles into and through one.

Woods described the doctor's typical way of announcing his arrival to see a patient:

He had a breezy way of entering a house, stamping off the snow or dust with enough noise for three men, throwing off his overcoat, untying a huge muffler that he wore around his neck, and letting down his black leather pouch with emphasis. There was an indescribable noise he made sometimes with that deep gruff voice of his which cannot be represented in type.

 

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Dr. Wild, according to Woods, was widely respected in town for his knowledge, abilities, and advice. He was skilled in the mixing and administering of potions, in bloodletting, and in other techniques practiced by the physicians of his day. In 1839, he became interested in the emerging ideas of homeopathy. The second meeting of New England physicians interested in this new kind of practice took place at the Wild house in 1841. It led to the formation of the Massachusetts Homeopathic Fraternity. Also active in town affairs, Dr, Wild served at various times on the School Committee and as a justice of the peace, among other responsibilities. He was a member of the Rev. John Pierce's Unitarian church, where he sang in the choir and played the flute in the days before the church had an organ. Edward Augustus Wild Dr. Charles Wild and his wife Mary (1799-1883) had eight children. Their second son, Edward Augustus Wild (1825-1891) followed in his father's footsteps, graduating from Harvard in 1844 and earning a medical degree in 1846. He practiced medicine in Brookline until 1855, when he went to Turkey (with his new wife) and served as a medical officer with the Turkish Army during the Crimean War. Returning to Brookline after the war, Edward Wild resumed his medical practice until the outbreak of the Civil War when he was commissioned captain of a company of troops comprised principally of men from Brookline and Jamaica Plain. Wild was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines in Virginia and, after returning to action as a colonel, was wounded again at the Battle of South Mountain. During this battle his left arm had to be amputated; he was said to have supervised the amputation himself.

Edward Augustus Wild

 

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An ardent abolitionist, Edward Wild became involved in the formation of regiments of African-American troops for the Union Army. He advised Col. Robert Gould Shaw on the selection of officers as Shaw was forming the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (celebrated in the movie “Glory” and the St. Gaudens sculpture on the Boston Common opposite the State House). In 1863, Wild was appointed a brigadier general and sent to North Carolina to recruit troops from among freed slaves in areas the Union Army had occupied. He continued to recruit and to lead these troops until the end of the war. (An excellent account of Wild's efforts, "Raising the African Brigade: Early Black Recruitment in Civil War North Carolina," from the North Carolina Historical Review, has been made available on the Web). Unable to practice medicine after the war because of his injuries, Wild became involved in mining ventures in the West and eventually in South America. He died in Columbia in 1891 and is buried in the city of Medellin. The Wild house was sold in 1861 to H.A. Rhoades of Providence, Rhode Island, while William Lincoln resided there. In 1864 Rhoades sold the house to William Lincoln. Lincoln sold it again in 1868 to Stephen Dexter Bennett who made unspecified alterations to both the house and the stable. The image below shows the house after the 1868 alterations. No pictures have been found showing the house as it had looked before being altered.

House c. 1870s from photographs by A.H. Folsom

 

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Stephen Bennett (1838-1906) was a merchant. He had been in the rubber business in New York early in his career and maintained an office in Boston although, according to his obituary in the Brookline Chronicle, he had not been active in business for some 30 years at the time of his death. He and his wife Helen (1841-1927) moved to Brookline from Cambridge. They had four children. Their oldest son Henry (born 1862), offered the following description of the family's time in the Wild house in a reminiscence in the Brookline Chronicle (May 8, 1924):

In April, 1868, our family moved to Brookline from Cambridge, my father having bought about four-and-one-half acres of land known as the Dr. Wilde [sic] place, well laid out by both Dr. Wilde and Mr. William Lincoln, a later owner. After some alterations to the house and carriage house, we settled down and lived there until 1882. A more ideal place on which to bring up a family of three children, later four, would be hard to find. A long cobble-guttered driveway, with hedge on each side about six feet high, led to the house, with a turnaround in front and an avenue at the side leading to the stable and sheds in the rear of the house...The whole place was well laid out with fruit trees and flower beds by two former owners and kept up by my parents...Washington Street was then the Old Brighton Road, with its traffic of animals to market on Wednesdays and Saturdays and the racing by our place in sleighing time. Our lawn was a fine place on which to coast and also to see the sleighing, which had two lines on either side and a racing space in the middle. Many were the accidents there in the season. In '82 my father sold our beautiful place to Mr. Arthur Blake.

The first occupants of this house after its acquisition by the Blakes were William and Jane D. Whitman and their family. William Whitman (1842-1928) was a leading textile manufacturer. He was the head of Arlington Mills and other companies and for many years was president of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers. He wrote frequently on economic topics and was a prominent voice in debates over tariffs for the wool industry. Whitman was born in Nova Scotia and came to Boston at the age of 14. He worked for a dry goods commission house for 11 years, according to his obituary in the New York Times (8/21/1928), "showing such aptitude that he attracted the attention of woolen manufacturers." At the age of 25, he was named treasurer of Arlington Woolen Mills (later Arlington Mills) in Lawrence. He later became president of this and other textile firms and of William Whitman Co. Inc., a Boston-based dry goods firm. Whitman and his wife Jane (1842-1929) had a large family. One of their sons, Malcolm D. Whitman (1877-1932) became a tennis champion. He beat Harvard schoolmate Dwight Davis (of Davis Cup fame) for his first of three straight U.S. National Championships (now the U.S. Open) in 1898. Two years later, Whitman teamed with Davis and a third Harvard player to win the first Davis Cup competition for the U.S. over Great Britain in 1900. The Whitmans were listed as tenants in the Wild house in Brookline directories from 1883 until 1894, when they moved to Goddard Avenue. Following the Whitmans in the Wild house were Henry A. Young and his family. Young (born c.1838) was a Boston bookseller, but was listed alternatively as a merchant and an "estate trustee" in various directories during the time he lived in the Wild house. His wife Sarah had apparently died before the family moved to Brookline, but three grown children, daughters Agnes and Elsie (or Essie) and son William, lived with him for at least part of the time he was there. The Young family was listed in the Wild house from 1894 to 1902.

 

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Major changes were made by the Blake family to the land property in the years that the Whitmans and Youngs were its occupants. First, the portion of the property farthest from Washington Street (approximately between today's Stanton and Somerset Roads) was broken off into separate lots in the 1880s. More significantly, a new road across the property, leading from Washington Street to Gorham Avenue, was cut through as far as Cypress Place and maintained as a private road known as Greenough Street. (See the 1895 plan by Ernest Bowditch, from the files of the Olmsted Brothers firm, below). In 1899, the road was taken over by the town and extended to Gorham Avenue. 1895: Land Plan Showing House and Barn Some time after the private road was built, the portion of the property across the new street from the house was broken off and divided into separate lots. The Wild house itself, which was first listed with a numbered address (446 Washington Street) in 1897, later had a separate entranceway added from Greenough Street. It was briefly listed as 9 Greenough Street during part of the Youngs' occupancy, before reverting to the Washington Street address.

1895: House and barn can be seen at the top

The house and the stable underwent some renovations in 1904, after the departure of the Youngs, who moved to 35 Gardner Road. A permit was issued in August 1904 for a $1,500 project to change something. (The word following "change" on the permit may be "driveway," but it is difficult to read).

 

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Additional buildings permits were issued in September and October. Those permits are noted in town records, but the permits themselves, with any details of the work, have apparently been lost. The architect for one of the stable permits is listed in town records as Frederick Richardson. This was likely to have been Frederick L.W. Richardson, Frances Blake's son-in-law and the youngest son of H.H. Richardson. No architect is listed for the work on the house itself. The builder on all of the 1904 permits was Burton W. Neal. A prominent Brookline builder and businessman, Neal did work for the Blakes on several of the older buildings that were later incorporated into Blake Park, including 12-14 Lowell Road, 128 Gardner Road, and 53 and 55-57 Greenough Street. The occupants of the Wild house changed frequently between 1904, when the renovations were done, and 1916, when the property came under the ownership the P.H. Park Trust as part of the Blake Park development. Fisher Ames Jr. (born 1869), a lawyer and writer, and his father, former Boston solicitor Fisher Ames Sr. (1838 - 1919), also lived in the house for a short time. Development of Blake Park and Current Residents In the fall of 1916, the former Wild property was sold by the Blake family along with the bulk of the family estate. In September, the Brookline Chronicle announced “one of the largest land sales in Brookline recorded in recent years,” more than one million square feet of the Blake Estate valued at around $500,000. In another article the Chronicle said was “the last of the big Brookline estates near the heart of town to remain intact.” The buyer was the P.H. Park Trust led by Parvin Harbaugh, a real estate developer whose projects had included Hollis Park Gardens in Queens, New York and Coolidge Park in Watertown, Massachusetts. Harbaugh announced plans for a new development to be known as Blake Park. Only the Blakes’ own house and six acres of land around it were to remain in the hands of Francis Blake, the son of Arthur Blake who had died in 1893. The Wild house, like the rest of the Blake property acquired by the P.H. Park Trust in 1916, remained unchanged (and apparently unused) when the Blake Park project came to a halt after the untimely death of the Trust's founder Parvin Harbaugh. It was sold again in 1919, with the rest of the property, to a new development company, the Inter-City Trust. Two years later, Inter-City's architect, Clarence Thayer McFarland, undertook the first major redesign of the house in more than 50 years. McFarland was born in Maine in 1866. It is not known where he received his education or architectural training, but he designed numerous residential, civic, and religious buildings in Massachusetts over the course of a 35-year career. In Brookline, in addition to the redesign of the Wild-Sargent house, he is credited with three other Blake Park houses (80, 112, and 150 Gardner Road) and houses at 48 Hawes Street (with Herbert Warren Colby) and 264-266 Tappan Street (with A.W. Laurie). Other residences designed by McFarland can be found at 14 and 16 Wallingford Road in Brighton, 63 Neshobe Road in Newton, and 136 Crescent Street in Quincy (all with Colby), as well as 12 Blakeslee Street in Cambridge and the Sheraton apartment house in Worcester (both with Laurie). A member of the Christian Science Church, McFarland designed several buildings for the Christian Science Benevolent Association complex on Singletree Hill in Brookline, and the Christian Science Church in Malden (with Laurie). Other buildings co-designed by McFarland include the Glendale Baptist Church and the Everett Armory in Everett; the National Guard Armory in Adams; and Memorial Hall in Townsend. McFarland died on the site of the Benevolent Association project in 1923, and interestingly never saw his work at the Wild house completed.

 

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The August 1921 building permit included a brief description of the changes planned for the house: "Take off ell on right rear corner filling in cellar of sand. Take off roof of main house & replace with flat roof & general alterations." The ell that was removed is visible in the detail from the 1919 atlas shown below. McFarland's design, much changed from the 1868 design, can be seen more fully in the illustration in Inter-City ad for Blake Park that appeared in the Brookline Chronicle on November 19, 1921.

1919 Atlas

The building permit put the cost of the alterations at $2,500. A separate permit in November, 1921, called for two eight-foot-by-eight-foot doors to be cut through the outside wall of the stable at a cost of $200. The November ad in the Chronicle said the house would be completed in about two months, but financial troubles encountered by Inter-City's put a halt to the work before it was completed. Inter-City Trust collapsed in scandal in February 1923 with much of its promised work on the Blake Park development left unfinished. Work on the house was stopped and it remained unfinished and unoccupied until the property, along with the rest of Blake Park, was taken over by Inter Urban Estates, the new corporation formed to protect the interest of Inter-City's investors. The renovations were then completed by a new developer, Benjamin F. Teel, in 1925. An April 9, 1925 permit listed a cost of $3,000 to complete the work begun by Inter-City in 1921. A separate permit a month later detailed plumbing work (at a cost of $2,000), including a kitchen sink on the first floor, a drain and wash trays in the basement, and "2 baths, 3 WC, 3 lav., 2 showers" on the second floor. After the renovations were completed, publisher, editor, and writer Porter Sargent and his family became the new owners and the first occupants of the house in nearly a decade. Sargent (1872-1951) was born in Brooklyn, New York. He came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard in 1893, graduated in 1896 and continued with post-graduate work in neurology while teaching science at the Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge until 1904. Sargent also earned a master’s degree in botany from Harvard and studied for a doctorate in zoology. For the next 10 years, he ran Sargent's Travel School for Boys, taking five separate trips around the world with the sons of wealthy Boston families as his students. According to a 1949 profile of Sargent in the Journal of Higher Education, it was "'the ‘grand tour' so inherently a part of young Bostonian Brahmins' education."

 

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World War I ended the travel school, and in 1915 Sargent published the first edition of The Handbook of Private Schools, an annual guide that he continued to produce until the end of his life (and that is still published each year by the Porter Sargent Publishing Company). Sargent's annual prefaces to the handbook, sometimes also produced as separate publications, and other writings earned him a reputation as a fierce critic of American education. A 1947 review of one of these writings, in the New England Quarterly, offered high praise for his views and his willingness to express them:

What Porter Sargent says here and in his various books is important, but not as important as what he is. He is an independent and intelligent dissenter, a type once thought to be rather characteristic of New England and of which we were justly proud. It is our misfortune and the country's that this type is now rare.... [Sargent] keeps his thinking open at both ends, knowing the tendency of thought to stagnate and become ideé fixe. He is one of our best provokers of thought, and by taking thought the human venture may still have a future.

Advertisement for Blake Park in the Brookline Chronicle (1921)

Sargent was first listed at the Wild House in the 1926 Street List. Sargent's sons Upham and Porter lived with him, though they were too young to be listed in the Street List at that time. Sargent's wife Margaret

 

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had died in 1920. A housekeeper and governess were also listed in 1926, and various housekeepers, governesses, maids, and secretaries (one or two at a time) were listed with the family until the mid-1930s. The property, as acquired by Sargent, was reduced significantly in size from what it had been a decade earlier, yet it was still quite large compared to the typical Blake Park property. Three separate house lots were carved out of it along the Greenough Street side (the sites of 3, 9, and 15 Greenough Street, built between 1925 and 1926), and the Washington Street frontage was taken as a lot for 454 Washington Street, built in 1929. The address of the Wild-Sargent house was shown as 26 Blake Road East (the original name for Weybridge Road) in the 1926 Street List. It was changed to 26 Weybridge Road beginning with the 1927 Street List. This was the first year other houses, built as part of the revived Blake Park development, were listed on Weybridge Road, the former main entrance to the Blake estate from Washington Street. (See The Streets of Blake Park at http://blakepark.muddyriver.us/ for more on the evolution of this and other streets in the development). A permit to add a one-story conservatory to the house was granted in 1929. The work, estimated to cost $800, was done by Burton W. Neal, who had performed the 1904 renovations on the house for the Blake family, as well as other work for the Blakes. Porter Sargent's older son Upham was first listed in the Street List, as a student, in 1933 at the age of 20. He disappeared while on a solo kayak trip in the wilds of northern Canada, near Hudson Bay, in 1934. He was last seen by native Americans in early September and his paddle and parts of his kayak were found later. He was presumed dead. Upham's younger brother Porter was first listed in the Street List in 1936 when he was 20 years old. He had no occupation listed at first, but was later listed as a salesman, manager, publisher, and clerk. The elder Porter Sargent used his Brookline house as an office as well as a home. "In Sargent's early nineteenth-century Brookline house, on a knoll surrounded by terraced gardens, his light can be seen burning until 2 a.m.," wrote a biographer in a 1941 profile in Current Biography. "He and his secretary start editing Private Schools in January and it usually comes out and is sent to reviewers in May ...." A 1949 profile in the Journal of Higher Education, offered this description of Sargent's endeavors in his Blake Park home:

Today at seventy-seven, when most teachers have long since fallen back on the solace of inadequate annuities, the subtle and constant reassurance of their wives, and the somnolent armchair in thoroughly self-appreciative retrospect before the comforting open fire, this man works from two in the afternoon until early in the morning seven days a week and thinks he is having the time of his life. Work and play are interwoven without a break except when Jane Sargent, his very competent New England housekeeper, insists that he eat, or during the few minutes a day he spends in his beloved Brookline garden. He accomplishes an unusual amount of work, and saves the time usually spent going to and from the office, by having two or more house secretaries constantly available. Once a week he dons his favorite bow tie and makes a journey to the Beacon Street, Boston, office where the Private School Handbook, which sustains his critical ventures, is produced by a competent staff under the direction of his son, Porter. On Saturday nights a group of Harvard graduate students may usually be

 

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found around his generous table and, later, the library fireplace, to discuss until early morning any problem that may come up.

Porter Sargent died in 1951. The Wild house is still owned by members of the Sargent family. Cornelia Sargent, one of the current owners and granddaughter of Porter Sargent the elder, has wonderful memories of her years growing up and living in the house up to the present day. She has described the joy of sleeping on the second floor sleeping porch in the summer surrounded by a privacy screen of wisteria and concord grape vines, as well as the amazing experiences of her parents sharing their table with an eclectic mix of professors, anti-war activists, homeless political activists, international visitors including foreign diplomats, and students. In the 1960s the carriage house at 26 Weybridge Road was the center of the Boston Branch of the New England Committee for Nonviolent Action. One of the many residents of this extended community was David O’Brien, an MIT student and anti war activist who burned his draft card on the steps of the South Boston Courthouse. While a resident of the carriage house, O’Brien won his case at the appellate level and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. Growing up in the house, Nelia Sargent and her sisters enjoyed frequent concerts by friends and family in the music room, shared family time in nature caring for the beloved gardens and grounds, and explored the hidden pockets of this special house. Nelia and her husband continue Porter Sargent Publishers, working out of the living room of the house, continuing to publish, as did her father, the works of sociologist Gene Sharp, the foremost authority on strategic nonviolent resistance.

 

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Architectural Significance In its nearly 200 year lifespan, the Wild House has embodied several different styles, configurations and footprints. It likely was built as a center hall Federal/Greek Revival style home in 1822 before it was renovated in the 1860s with the addition of Italianate elements. At some point before 1874, an ell was added on the south west corner. In work during the years 1921 to 1925 the style of the house was changed again, this time to Colonial Revival, with Federal Revival elements. An addition built in these years along the entire north elevation changed the symmetry of the house. The stylistic and functional changes made to the carriage house may not have always paralleled those made to the house. Today, the house and carriage house retain, for the most part, their Colonial Revival design of the 1920s.

c. 1870 photograph of carriage barn and south elevation of house

1822: Federal/Greek Revival Farmhouse There are no images or descriptions of the original 1822 appearance of the Wild House and carriage house. Federal architecture was the favored style in the United States from about 1780 until the 1830s, while the Greek Revival style was just beginning to come into its own when the house was built in 1822. Most likely the original style of the Wild House was Federal with some elements of the Greek Revival, such as the pedimented gable and long first story windows. Both styles were inspired by the great temples of classical antiquity in Greece and Italy. Federal style borrowed heavily from the Adameque architecture as it developed in England. Greek Revival, on the other hand, became associated with America’s evolving national identity. In the 1870s photograph, the side elevation seems to be little

 

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changed from what would have been its original design, giving us a good idea what the house might have looked like before the Civil War. The fan in the gable end, the pilasters, the dentil molding at the cornice and pediment, and the symmetry of the windows are all hallmarks of 1820s high classical revival style in Massachusetts. 1860s: Italianate Alterations In 1861 the Wild family sold the property to H.A. Rhoades. It was sold to Deacon William Lincoln in 1864, and sold again to Stephen Bennett in 1868. As mentioned above, during this time the wood-frame house and carriage house were altered in unspecified ways. The c. 1870s photographs above and below show the house as it would have looked after these alterations.

Detail of c. 1870 photograph

It seems that the side elevations have remained in Classsical Revival style (the dentil molding along the cornice and pediment, the fan and attenuated wooden pilasters), while the front of the house was altered to reflect a more Italianate, or even a country villa style. A gambrel dormer was inserted into the roof at the east elevation containing a single arched Italianate window. Below this, an Italianate eyebrow was added above the central window of the second floor. A railed porch which spans the entire front of the house was built, held up by four smooth Tuscan columns. Tall windows on the first story probably date to the 1822 date of the original construction of the house. In terms of finishes, the side (and possibly original) elevation has a smooth finish which could be stucco or, more likely, flush boards. The front elevation has clapboard above the porch, and the smooth stucco or flush boards below. The c. 1870s photographs of the house show Italianate elements applied to the house. In the 1860s renovations were probably made exclusively to the front of the previously Federal/Greek Revival style house, including

 

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removal of the corner pilasters and the addition of clapboard siding, a gable and a porch, but the gable ends of the house (complete with temple front) were left as they were. Because of the lack of documentation prior to c. 1870s the original appearance of the house is not known, but it is clear that the style of the house in c. 1870s was a unique blend of Federal, Italianate and Greek Revival elements. The 1822 carriage house, partially obscured by trees, appears in the background of the c. 1870 photograph of the south elevation of the house. In the photograph, the carriage house appears to be a two-and 1/2 storied four-square wood frame structure similar in style to the main house. Clapboards on the sides of the carriage house echo the front of the main house, as the smooth stucco or flush board finish on the front of the carriage house reflects that on the side elevations of the main house. The ornamental fan above the central second story window of the carriage house copies one above the third story windows of the house. The attenuated pilasters of the carriage house are the same as those on the house, and the arched doorway with swinging doors on the carriage house is a direct reflection of the arched window in the third story front gable of the house. 1920s: Complete Redesign – Colonial/Federal Revival After the Wild house was incorporated into the Blake Park development, owned in the 1920s by the Inter-City Trust Company, architect Clarence Thayer McFarland redesigned both the main house and carriage house. The August 1921 building permit included a brief description of the changes: "Take off ell on right rear corner filling in cellar of sand. Take off roof of main house & replace with flat roof & general alterations."

East (front) of house – existing conditions

 

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In addition to these changes, the style of the house was changed once again, this time to a Colonial Revival style popular in these years, with Federal Revival stylistic overtones. To this end, the 1860’s porch spanning the front of the house was removed, and a rounded portico complete with four two-story Doric columns was added to the front of the house. The Italianate gambrel dormer was simplified and reduced in size to a simple dormer whose roof pitch is similar to the 1870s gambrel. Attenuated pilasters in Federal Revival style were added to the corners on the front elevation of the house. The steeply pitched roof was removed and replaced with a shallow pitched hip with a flat top, complete with a rectangular widow’s walk balustrade. It is at this point in time that a fourth bay was added to the north end of the house, providing pantries on the first floor, and an expanded master suite on the second floor, greatly enlarging the house and eliminating its symmetry. Likely the sleeping porch was added to the west elevation of the house at this time as well. The tall first story windows on either side of the front door in the 1860s were made into paneled French doors opening up on the brick patio in front, and sidelights flanking the front door were added.

East and north elevations of carriage house – existing conditions

The 1920s redesign also brought major stylistic and functional changes to the carriage house. It is at this point the use of the carriage house was changed to that of an automobile garage, while retaining its dual use as residential space. Two eight by eight foot doors were cut into the wall of the barn to allow automobiles to enter, and a concrete floor was poured. The carriage house was greatly expanded to the south with a cross-gabled second floor apartment added. (After consulting Brookline’s atlas maps from 1874 to 1819 it becomes clear that up until the 1920s redesign, the carriage house retained its original square footprint with only a slight build out at the north west corner, where the altered design or use is not known). The details added to the carriage house reflect to a certain extent the Colonial Revival style

 

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remodeling of the house, but the dentil moldings, corner boards, cornice returns, and the arched entry above the new large doors speak a slightly different vocabulary of neo-Greek Revival style. Interior details of the automobile garage and accessory apartment include bead-board paneling in parts of the structure. ________________

 

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Boundary Description and Justification The proposed boundary for the Wild-Sargent Local Historic District begins at the north-east corner of Weybridge Road and Somerset Road, following Weybridge Road north to the property line of 454 Washington Street. The boundary continues east along the property line of 454 Washington Street, and turns south when it meets the property line of 9 Greenough Street. The boundary continues south along the property line of 9 Greenough Street, taking in all of 0 Weybridge Road, a property that is free of structures. The boundary turns south-west along the property lines of 15 Greenough Street and 1 Somerset Road, until it reaches Somerset Road. The boundary then turns north-west to the corner of Somerset Road and Weybridge Road taking in the main house at 26 Weybridge Road as well as the carriage house on the property. There are very few extant houses and carriage houses that date to the early nineteenth century remaining in Brookline, a densely populated town that saw waves of demolition and rebuilding with the advent of regular trolley service to and from Boston, with whom it shares a border. Significant losses of Aspinwall Hill’s oldest structures began in the 1890s and continued through the early twentieth century, including the Federal-era homestead of the family for whom the hill was named. Other homes on Aspinwall Hill built in the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century and later demolished are the Tappan House (c. 1822) and the Bowditch House (c. 1867). The Wild-Sargent house and carriage house are the only remaining Federal/Greek Revival style buildings in the area. The next oldest property in its vicinity is the Candler Cottage at 447 Washington Street, a c. 1850 Gothic Revival house and carriage house designed by Richard Bond. This 26 Weybridge Road property has been characterized as an oasis of open space in the midst of a densely settled neighborhood of single family homes and apartment buildings. The surrounding streets of Blake Park were laid out and developed into small single family house lots in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus the proposed Local Historic District would be a valuable benefit to the community. The loss of this ensemble, which is located in a highly visible triangle at the junction of Somerset and Weybridge Roads, would negatively impact the integrity of the entire Aspinwall Hill neighborhood and the quality of life for its residents.  If established, the Wild-Sargent District would represent a period of significance rare even in Brookline’s existing Local Historic Districts. A predominance of the structures contained in the town’s districts date from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the early twentieth century; there are possibly fewer than ten historic resources among them that share the Wild-Sargent property’s vintage. Of the town’s six districts, only two contain resources of the same period, the Pill Hill and Cottage Farm Districts.

 

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Conclusion The two structures and undeveloped land included in the proposed Wild-Sargent LHD date from the early 1820s, but their many stages of redesign and reuse represent the entire spectrum of history from the early years of the nation, to the Civil War era, to the development of a pre-WWII middle class neighborhood, to today. The owners of the property believe that 26 Weybridge Road deserves the recognition and protection of a Local Historic District.

 

 

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