Peirce Hill Road Historic Area, Lincoln, Massachusetts

PEIRCE HILL ROAD HISTORIC AREA

Prepared for theLINCOLN HISTORICAL COMMISSION & MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION

1907

Peirce Hill Historic Area

Location: Midway between the historic Lincoln Center Historic District theCommercial center/railroad in Lincoln, Massachusetts; roads involved areLincoln Road, Mackintosh Lane, Peirce Hill Road, and Tower Road

Period of Development: 1731-1940

Significance: Agriculture; Archaeology, Historic; Architecture; Conservation

Massachusetts Historical Commission: For guidance on the use of thesefiles as well as access to additional files on historic properties in Lincoln andMassachusetts–including more detailed individual inventory forms on each ofthe buildings located within the Lewis Street Area–go to: http://mhc-macris.net/

PEIRCE HILL ROAD HISTORIC AREA: INVENTORY FORM A

Lincoln, Massachusetts

John C. MacLean

[email protected]

2012

Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.

FORM A - AREA

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSIONMASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARDBOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125

Photograph

Assessor’s Sheets USGS Quad Area Letter Form Numbers in Area

74, 75, 84, 85 Maynard T 25, 252,287-301

Town: Lincoln

Place (neighborhood or village):Tower Road/Peirce Hill Road/Lincoln Road/MackintoshLane neighborhoodName of Area: Peirce Hill Road Area

Present Use: Mostly single-family residential; someconservation-restricted land used for haying

Construction Dates or Period: 1731 1940

Overall Condition: good

Major Intrusions and Alterations:Additions to a number of the houses within last 50 years;Austin-Hodges-Wheeler now ContemporaryAcreage: approx. 33 A. plus roadways

Recorded by: John C. MacLean

Organization: Lincoln Historical Commission

Date (month/year): July 2010

Topographic or Assessor's Map

_X__ see continuation sheet

INVENTORY FORM A CONTINUATION SHEET LINCOLN PEIRCE HILL ROAD AREA

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area Letter Form Nos.220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125

Continuation sheet 1

T 25, 252, 287-301

_X_ 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 DESCRIPTIONDescribe architectural, structural and landscape features and evaluate in terms of other areas within the community.

This Peirce Hill Road Area (spelling also appears as Pierce Hill Road; historically spelling “Peirce” is correct) is situated betweenthe historic Lincoln Center village (Lincoln Center National Historic District) and the depot/shopping area that developed after therailroad came to Lincoln in 1844. The route over Lincoln Road, Peirce Hill Road, and Tower Road had initially connected thosetwo areas, but in 1894 a shorter roadway was constructed from the intersection of Lincoln and Peirce Hill roads north, resulting inPeirce Hill and Tower roads now being secondary roadways that primarily serve local traffic, while Lincoln Road remains aheavily-travelled primary route through the town.

A brook running southeasterly from Flint’s Pond (also known as Sandy Pond) flows through this Area, creating a natural valley.The brook passes under Peirce Hill Road, which was laid out in the eighteenth century over a mill dam—the brook drops to alower elevation on the south side of the roadway, while a mill pond that once filled the area north of the road is no longer present(its former presence is reflected by a depression in the landscape there). A drumlin-hill situated immediately to the northeast ofthe Area is the second-highest hill in Lincoln. The land within the northeast portion of the Area slopes down from that hill to thebrook below. Southwest of the brook and west of Lincoln Road, the land again rises—forming a raised perspective for housesites within that part of the Area (see Austin-Hodges and Ellen L. Campbell houses). Situated to the south of this Area, alongboth sides of Tower Road, are wetlands, much of which historically would have been meadowlands; the presence of thosewetlands influenced the development of the southernmost section of the Area (see Delahanty-Kelliher and Patrick J. Lennonhouses). The central part of the Area had originally been the central portion of a farmstead dating back to the eighteenth century(see Green-Brown-Peirce House), with these farmlands primarily having been subdivided in the early twentieth century. Whilehistorical photographs document that formerly open farm land is now more treed house lots, the farming roots of the Area arepreserved through an open field on the west side of Tower Road that is protected by conservation restrictions.

The c. 1731 Green-Brown-Peirce House (LIN.25, 30 Tower Road) with which the greater part of the Area’s land was historicallyassociated is one of the seven oldest houses in Lincoln, with the eighteenth-century mill along Peirce Hill Road having beenowned by the owner of that house. As with most Lincoln farmsteads, the farm continued from the mid-eighteenth century to themid-nineteenth century without further subdivision for houses. Accordingly, the next houses in the Area are from the 1850s—onebuilt for a family member of the owner of the Green-Brown-Peirce House and another on a lot adjoining that farm (see Green-Pierce and Austin-Hodges houses). Both were built on small lots for well-to-do individuals, and both were among the highestassessed homes in Lincoln at that time—through them, this Area between the village and depot contains some of Lincoln’s mostsubstantial mid-nineteenth-century homes outside of the Lincoln Center Historic District. Later in the nineteenth century, landsouth of the Green-Brown-Peirce farm on Tower Road—much of it wetlands—was developed for the first time as smallfarmsteads, owned by immigrants from Ireland who worked as farmers and laborers and built simpler homes, including theDelahanty-Kelliher and Patrick J. Lennon houses. Meanwhile, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century the Green-Brown-Peircefarmstead was owned by William L. G. Peirce, with his son later taking over the farm. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentiethcenturies that farm would have one of Lincoln’s larger market-garden greenhouse operations, with remnants of some of thosegreenhouses still present on the landscape. One of the most distinctive aspects, however, is that in addition to the Green-Brown-Peirce House there are four other associated houses that were built on that farm and within the Area for relatives of William L. G.Peirce (see Green-Pierce, William C. Peirce, Peirce-Pike, and Pike-Donaldson houses). With the Peirce family discontinuingtheir operation of the farm in the 1920s, there was additional subdividing of the farmstead for houses, including one of the firsttwo Modernist houses built in Lincoln, here on a lot purchased in 1936 from a member of the Peirce family. Collectively, though,the Area reflects the gradual development of this land over time, as houses from the1850s to 1940 joined the Colonial farmhouseto create an Area that reflects a broad range of architectural styles from the periods represented.




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The Area’s earliest house is the architecturally highly significant c. 1731 Green-Brown-Peirce House. In its development, it wastypical of many eighteenth-century houses in Lincoln and elsewhere, beginning as one-over-one room construction but enlargedduring the eighteenth century to two-over-two, later being expanded into an extended Colonial home. Besides being an importanthouse in Lincoln’s architectural development, at the time of construction this section of Lincoln was part of Concord, so that thishouse is also contextually part of the study of Concord’s architecture. Comparison can also be made to an earlier First PeriodLincoln house, the c. 1703 Benjamin Brown House (LIN.45. 15 Conant Road), which also began as a one-over-one constructionthat was expanded to two-over-two at an early date, with various later additions. While that First Period house retains anasymmetrical front façade, the Green-Brown-Peirce House was enlarged in the Georgian period and reflects the formalism ofthat period in its typical center-chimney, symmetrical Colonial design, but with a later Federal entryway. Inside, however, theGreen-Brown-Peirce House is an important case study, with First Period paneling in its earlier west rooms and Georgian panelingin the east rooms that have been included in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS; see interior details in HABSdrawings and Lower East Room photograph).

The earliest one-over-one construction (west rooms) of the Green-Brown-Peirce House retain First Period features, with the westchamber fireplace wall having wide-board vertical paneling extending from the beam casing down to the floor; a distinctivefeature within Lincoln’s extant stock of early houses. The First Period paneling of the west rooms and the Georgian paneling ofthe east rooms are both among the finest Lincoln examples of their periods, with their significance further enhanced by thecombination of having these two important Lincoln period representations surviving within a single house, making it an especiallynoteworthy case study. The farmhouse’s Georgian treatment can be compared and contrasted with the high-style Georgianpaneling that has survived in the southeast room of the nearby c. 1735-41 Russell-Codman House (LIN.11, 39 Codman Road;National Register, district), Concord/Lincoln’s most fashionable Georgian home (later Federalized).

The Green-Brown-Peirce House is also directly related to the nearby bef. 1754 Brown-Russell-Chapin House (LIN.28, 37 LincolnRoad; National Register, district). That house was built initially for Nathan Brown, Sr., who turned the Green-Brown-Peirce Houseover to his son. While records do not document with certainty whether the father or the son added the east rooms to the Green-Brown-Peirce House, given the financial position of the father it is reasonably likely that he was the one who did so; in eitherevent, these two houses have a historical family connection that encourages insights from construction comparisons. Alsodirectly related to this house historically are: the 1854-55 Colonial Revival Green-Pierce House (LIN.297, 3 Peirce Hill Road), builton the farmstead for the aunts, uncle, and grandmother of the farm’s owner; the Queen Anne 1895 William C. Peirce House(LIN.287; 27 Tower Road), whose original owner grew up in the Green-Brown-Peirce House and subsequently operated itsfarmstead; the c. 1921-22 Colonial Revival Richard and Helen H. Pike House (LIN.291, 44 Tower Road), built near the farm’sformer greenhouse and poultry house facilities as a residence for William C. Peirce’s son; and the c. 1925 PikeDonaldsonHouse (LIN.288, 33 Tower Road), built near the former William L. G. Peirce Barn as a residence for one of William C. Peirce’sdaughters. These related family homes and other surrounding houses in the Area reflect the subdivision of the farmsteadformerly associated with the Green-Brown-Peirce House while forming—and relating it to—its modern setting.

The main part of the Green-Brown-Peirce House is rectangular in form with an attached ell extending to the east off of the backof the house and a newer three-bay garage attached to it; between the back ell and the main house and between the back ell andthe garage are separate single-story extensions. The house was built before the road was laid out, and it sits at an angle to theroad. When the house was enlarged to the back from its mid-eighteenth-century two-over-two layout, the gabled roofline of theoriginal section was not raised to integrate the back addition, as was more commonly done. Accordingly, the front two-and-a-half-story house retains a one-room-deep side-gable running west to east, with the central chimney still centered at the gable’s ridge.Behind this gable, a shed-style roof extends to the north, covering the one-room deep, two-story back addition. Joined alongseven feet at the east end of its north wall is a two-story ell with a gabled roof running west to east. A three-bay garage ofModernist influence has an asymmetrical low-pitched gable, its ridge offset back from center, with the roof terminating inextended eaves. The symmetrical front of the main part of the clapboarded house has five sash windows above and fourwindows below (each six-panes-over-nine). Four-pane side lights over recessed wood panels flank the paneled door of theprominent Federal central entryway, within corner pilasters supporting a flat entablature.

Built in 1852 on a terraced site atop a knoll that then directly adjoined and overlooked the Green-Brown-Pierce farmstead, theAustin-Hodges House (LIN.299, 83 Lincoln Road) was the first stone house built in Lincoln and distinctive in the community bothin materials and as an architectural interpretation containing elements drawn from the Gable-front Italianate styling. In its use ofstonework, the most notable comparative house is the 1850-51 Gothic Revival granite stone Cyrus Pierce House in Concord(CON.306, 23 Lexington Road; National Register, district), with Pierce family tradition having been that stonemason Cyrus Piercedid the stonework on both houses, and that these two were the only stone houses built by him.




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The 2 ½-story front-gabled Austin-Hodges House has a 2-story stone side-gabled wing off of its north side, with a 1½-storyclapboard ell off of the back of that ell which appears from records to have been added in 1860, originally as a wood shed andcarriage shed. Below the wide eaves on all sides of the slate roof are decorative exposed rafters and purlins. The walls haverough-cut rubble stones of various sizes set in irregular courses, framed by cut-granite corner quoins. Windows are set withincut-granite framing. The windows typically have extended lintels supported by posts consisting of three granite stones (varianttreatments are found within the gables and on a side wing), with the center stone of these posts wider than the stones above andbelow it. Centered within the front and back gables are double-hung windows set within a segmental stone arch. On the frontfaçade, there are two windows on the second story with the one on the right elongated to open onto the roof of the entry porchbelow it. The first story has a pair of four-pane-over-four windows on the left, with the porched entryway on the right. The door isalso set within granite cut-stone framing. Accessible from the elongated second-story window, the roof of the entry porch issurrounded by a balustrade with its corner posts ending in turned finials. Below, structural and decorative brackets are usedwhere the wide porch roof joins the four shave-edged square posts that support it. The south facade has three windows acrossthe second story. A porch runs the length of the side, duplicating the use of structural and decorative brackets where the porchroof joins the shave-edged square posts that support it. The porch is open along the easternmost 25 feet and has been enclosedwith glass windows along the westernmost 13 feet. It is fronted by an elliptical stone patio with steps down through a formalgarden.

The Edward F. Hodges Barn (LIN.300), also built in stone, is on the Austin-Hodges property with access off of Mackintosh Lane.Historical records suggest that it was probably constructed in 1860, rather than at the time the house was built, and its stoneworktreatment differs significantly from that of the house. Topped by a cupola, the 1½-story gambrel barn has slate shingles both onthe roof and surfacing the second-story façades, with the ridge of the gambrel running from south to north. A barn door iscentered in the north gable-end of the barn with a window centered above it. On each side of the barn, there are three hip-roofeddormers containing double-hung windows, with two six-over-six windows on the main story below. The land falls away to form abasement level at grade on the south end, where there is a lower-level barn entrance set within a rough segmental archway. Thedistinctive rustic barn has uncut rubble stonework set with no course construction. Larger, roughly cut stones form an irregularsupporting quoin treatment at the corners of the barn and outside both of the barn doorways.

The c. 1857-60 Austin-Hodges-Wheeler Cottage (LIN.301, 15 Mackintosh Lane) built behind the barn began as a cottage for theAustin-Hodges property’s farmer/gardener. It has been expanded significantly, and it is now a multi-layered Contemporary instyle, although the nineteenth-century two-story section is still definable in the foreground, towards Mackintosh Lane. This sectionhas a flat-topped roof with gently-sloped side gables and a wide overhang. The front façade now has two pairs of single-panewindows symmetrically placed on both the second and first stories. Set half way back to its right is a 2½-story front-gabledaddition with the gable partly extending over the roof of the front section of the house. A tri-level window treatment is integratedwithin a structural frame topped by a segmental arch. Behind the original section of the house, a two-bay single-story garagerepeats the use of a flat-topped roof with gently-sloped side gables and a wide overhang. A 1½-story hipped roof section joins thegarage to the back of the 2½-story gable roofed section of the house. Lincoln architects Henry B. Hoover of Hoover and Hill andPeter C. Sugar as well as Thomas Buckborough & Associates are among those represented through the various additions to thehouse.

The 1854-55 Colonial Revival (with Victorian Eclectic treatments) Green-Pierce House (LIN.297, 3 Peirce Hill Road) wasconstructed for relatives of the owner of the Green-Brown-Peirce farmstead on a lot surveyed for the farm’s owner by HenryDavid Thoreau. It is approached over a single terrace with granite steps up to the house. The 2½-story clapboard house isrectangular with an ell on the back and a wraparound porch extending along portions of the front and side. The side-gabledhouse has three gabled dormers across the front, each containing a one-over-one sash window. Beneath the two outer dormersof the north (front) façade are one-over-one sash windows with raised entablatures on the second story. Below them are widerone-over-one sash windows on the first story. A wraparound porch with classical columns and balustrade runs across thewesternmost two-thirds of the front façade, forming a curve as it extends around the corner of the house. The end of the porchroof is hipped above the center entryway. Steps lead up to the center entrance, with a pair of classical columns to either side ofthe entry. Visible from the front is a distinctive decorative feature on the east gabled end of the house: an extended two-storyoriel-window unit that contains windows on two stories. Behind the house is a front-gable clapboard barn with cupola and an ellextension off of the east façade.

The 1870 Delahanty-Kelliher House (LIN.293, 48 Tower Road) was built on a lot that immediately adjoined the Green-Brown-Peirce farmstead. It is part of a neighborhood of homes along Tower Road built for Irish immigrant/owners that complement each




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other, all related in period and in their original simple construction. Other Irish families who also established small farms and builthomes along this section of Tower Road of comparative interest are represented in the neighboring Patrick J. Lennon House at54 Tower Road (Assessors’ lot 85 24 0), the Kelley-Lunt House at 65 Tower Road (Assessors’ lot 94 13 1), and the PatrickCraven House at 80 Tower Road (Assessors’ lot 105 11 0). With construction dating to 1870 but with alterations and additionsin the 1920s and 1993, the 2½-story clapboard Delahanty-Kelliher House reflects a home that has evolved over time fromrelatively simple beginnings. The house has side-gabled roofs running north to south at the front and at the back, joined togetherby a center section with a gabled roof running from west to east; the treatment at the back consists of distinct gabled roofs withdiffering peaks that extend out to either side of the intersecting center-section ridge, with both sides of the back wider in extentthan the front part of the house The west (front) façade facing Tower Road has three six-over-six sash windows on the secondstory, with matching windows on the first floor placed directly under the two outer windows. While the windows are symmetricallyplaced, the center door is offset slightly, breaking the symmetry of the façade. A hipped-roof porch supported by classicalcolumns with a balustrade runs across the full width of the front of the house. A separate front-gabled two-story garage hastransom lights over its two front garage bays and an extended shed dormer on one side.

Built on a lot that initially adjoined the Delahanty-Kelliher lot, the 1886 Patrick J. Lennon House (LIN.295, 54 Tower Road) was amoderately sized house built for an Irish immigrant by a known builder, John C. McDonald, using a simple Victorian-eravernacular translation of the traditional New England Colonial form. Other comparative houses in the community identified ashaving been built by McDonald include the 1876 Charles P. Farnsworth House at 203 Lincoln Road (Assessors’ lot 102 11 0)and the 1878 Francis Smith House at 71 Sandy Pond Road (Assessors’ lot 54 1 0). The two-story side-gabled, clapboardLennon house has a two-story wing extending to the back and an added wraparound porch across part of the front and southside. The porch roof is supported by square posts, with cross-hatched strapwork fronting the underside of the porch. Sashwindows are two panes over two, with the front façade having two windows on the second story and two windows directly belowthem on the first floor, centered by a paneled door with inset window. Prominently placed to the south of the house, with a similarsetback from the road, is a small 1½-story barn/stable, the 1893 Patrick J. Lennon Barn (LIN.292). The clapboarded side-gabledbarn is set at a slight angle to the house, but it runs parallel to the section of the road that it fronts. Fenestration differs from thehouse, using six-over-six double-casement windows, with single casements within the gables. The entrance for the main floor ison the north side. It sits on a stone foundation, with stone retaining walls extend out from the south side of the barn to provideaccess to this lower level through double barn-doors.

The 1895 Queen Anne-style William C. Peirce House (LIN.287, 27 Tower Road) was built on the Green-Brown-Peirce farmsteadfor the son of the owner of that farm in the year the son was married. It was the first house in Lincoln built by building contractorRobert Douglas “R. D.” Donaldson, who went on to become Lincoln’s most prolific and significant builder from 1895 to thebeginning of the 1930s. With changing styles, much of Donaldson’s subsequent work would be in the Colonial Revival and otherearly-twentieth century forms, making the William C. Peirce House the outstanding Queen Anne example of his work, and unlikehis later work, one where he probably did much of the carpentry work himself. Near the William C. Peirce House, Donaldsonwould build the 1898 Flint-Sherman-Sawtell House (LIN.282, 4 Tower Road) and the c. 1899-1900 Ann E. Cousins House(LIN.283, 3 Tower Road). Within this Area he also built the Colonial Revival 1921 Peirce-Pike House (LIN.291, 44 Tower Road)initially for one of William C. Peirce’s sons and the Bungalow/Cape-style 1925 Pike-Donaldson House (LIN.288, 33 Tower Road)for one of William C. Peirce’s daughters, and near them the 1920 Bungalow-style Matthew and Elizabeth Doherty House(LIN.294, 49 Tower Road)—creating a concentration of Donaldson’s work along this section of Tower Road.

The Queen Anne style, characterized here by the William C. Peirce House, has limited representation within Lincoln’s overallhousing stock, the most notable and visible example being the 1892 Flint-Mossman-Norton House (LIN.95, 19 Trapelo Road;National Register, district). Peirce’s clapboarded home had a traditional side-gable framing rather than a gable to the road, whilethe house was built with one-over-one double-hung windows typical of the period. A horizontal stringcourse is set directly abovethe first-story windows on the original part of the house. A dominant feature of the asymmetrical front façade of the house is atwo-story tower set into its southeast corner, surmounted by an octagonal, steeply-pitched roof that splays out at the bottom. Thetower’s entablature has decorative modillions running under the cornice, with a band of dentilation dividing a freeze andarchitrave. In the three front bay walls of the tower there are two double-hung windows and one single-sash window, each withdouble-hung windows on the first story below. Excepting the tower, the front façade of the house features a roof that extendsdown to the first-floor level, incorporating a front porch. Over the porch, the roof has a gentle concave splay, harmonizing with theoutward splay of the tower. The roof is broken on the second story by a polygonal dormer with a four-sided hipped roof that againsplays out at the bottom; a dentil band runs along the fascia below the crown molding of the dormer, while below that is a band ofdecorative modillions under the cornice—complementing the treatment of the tower while reversing the position of the dentil bandrelative to the modillion band. At the base of the main roof is a wide gable over the entrance to the front screened porch. The




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tympanum within the gable is divided by a central vertical slat splayed at the top, with pairs of slats equally place to either side ofit that slant outward, creating a visual flow to the space; smaller vertical slats are set within these stickwork elements of thetympanum. Posts for the porch are also splayed at the top. The house sits on a decoratively laid stone and mortar foundation.A1998 addition at the back of the house reflects the work of the Boston architectural firm Albert, Righter & Tittman, Architects.

The 1920 Bungalow-style Matthew and Elizabeth Doherty House (LIN.294, 49 Tower Road) was also built by Lincoln contractorR. D. Donaldson. The rectangular, 2-story Bungalow has a side-gabled roof with exposed rafters supporting its wide overhang.On the back, the roof extends half way down the second story, with a full shed dormer in the center, while on the front the roofextends down to the base of the second story to incorporate a front screened porch that runs the full width of the house.Centered within the front roof is a shed dormer with exposed end-rafters. The house features double-hung six-panes-over-onewindows, with the front shed dormer containing three windows. Within the first-story porch, the center door is flanked by windows,with three windows grouped to either side. Centered sets of three windows are repeated on the first and second stories of theside façades. A 1½-story, two-bay, side-gabled 1925 garage is located behind the house.

The 1921 Peirce-Pike House (LIN.291, 44 Tower Road) was built at the south end of the Green-Brown-Peirce farmstead, nearthe Delahanty-Kelliher and Doherty houses. It was constructed for William C. Peirce’s son the same year the son was married,but later it was used by one of William’s daughters and her husband. Built for the family by contractor R. D. Donaldson, theColonial Revival 2 ½-story side-gabled house has 2-story wings to either side, while a 1½-story back ell extends back to a two-bay garage added in 1946, with a large deck extending around the back side of the house. The center section of the clapboardedhouse is symmetrical, excepting that a single brick chimney is set to the south of center. On the west (front) façade, sashwindows on this central section have six panes over six, with five windows on the second story and four on the first story,centered by a pedimented entryway. Six-pane side lights flank either side of the paneled door, set within pilasters supporting aclassical entablature with dentilation running below both the raking cornice and the horizontal cornice of the triangular pediment.The door is fronted by a wood platform set on a stone foundation, approached by four steps. A two-story south wing is set backfrom the front of the house, topped by a relatively flat roof. Typical in form to Donaldson’s sleeping porch designs foundthroughout the town, the porches have been closed in with the front façade having no windows on the second story and a set ofmulti-paned casement windows below. The two-story end-gabled north wing is also set back from the front of the house.Windows on this wing match those on the central section of the house, with asymmetrical fenestration on the front façade, withtwo windows on each story. A stone chimney extends up the exterior of the gabled north end of the wing.

The family again turned to contractor R. D. Donaldson for the 1925 Bungalow/Cape Pike-Donaldson House (LIN.288, 33 TowerRoad), initially built for a daughter of William C. Peirce and her husband when they were married in 1925. The rectangular side-gabled house with rear ell has an asymmetrical front façade divided into three components: a two-story section in the center, withlower sections to its north and south, both fronted by open porches. The center section of the house has a shed dormer, offset sothat the north wall of the dormer is flush with the outer wall below. Within the dormer, a set of three sash windows is positioned tothe right, with matching windows on the first floor below; a single window is set to the left within the dormer, with a pair ofwindows offset below. The north section of the house to its right has a continuous roof extending down to incorporate an openbalustered porch, which projects forward from the center of the house; within the porch are a doorway and window. The southsection to the left has an offset second-story shed dormer containing a pair of windows, while the first story has a set of threewindows fronted by an open porch with an arbor extending over the porch. The current layout reflects later alterations, includingwork designed by Lincoln architect Richard Puffer.

The 1929-30 Colonial Revival Powers-Murphy House (LIN.296, 8 Tower Road) was built by its contractor-owner, James Powers,on a lot purchased from the widow of William C. Peirce. Other comparative houses built by him have not as yet beendocumented, but he appears to have previously worked as a carpenter for building contractor R. D. Donaldson—perhaps as anon-site supervisor for some of Donaldson’s projects, such as the neighboring 1925 Pike-Donaldson House, which also hasprominent extended shed dormers. The wood-shingled house is currently primarily divided into four sections, each with side-gabled roofs. At left—projecting closest to the road—is a two-bay 1½-story side-gabled garage. Set back to its right is a 2-storysection with prominent shed dormers on both the south and north façades that begin at the peak of the roof and extend acrossnearly the full width of the gabled roof, creating a visual effect similar to a gambrel design. Below each of the two six-over-sixsash windows on the second story is a distinguishing visual feature of the house—its use of squared-off cutbacks in the roof tocreate an open pocket for the window, enabling greater depth for the dormer windows. The first floor of this section has a singledoor and a set of three fifteen-pane door-length units open onto a patio. Set forward to its right is the original 2-story section ofthe house, which again has prominent shed dormers on both the south and north façades that begin at the peak of the roof andextend across nearly the full width of the gabled roof. Again, below each of the two sash windows on the second story are




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squared-off cutbacks in the roof, creating an open pocket for the window. The first floor has a unit of three sash windows as wellas a recessed porch fronting a door and window. Set furthest to the right is a single-story screened porch located towards therear, and fronted by a deck with extended wrap-around steps.

The 1936-37 Modernist Cyrus and Persis Murphy House (LIN.252, 32 Tower Road), designed by owner-architect Cyrus WinthropMurphy, was one of the first Modernist houses built in Lincoln. The Cyrus Murphys came to Lincoln from Belmont after hisbrother, Ethan Murphy, moved into the neighboring Powers-Murphy House. Located on a wooded hillside lot approached by afarm lane that extends back from in front of the Green-Brown-Peirce House, the house was built on a lot purchased from one ofthe Peirce daughters. The flat-roofed 2-story house has the second story set back in the front to create a partly-covered deck,with double banding running below part of the roof of the second story. The asymmetrically designed, rectilinear house is clad inflush, wide vertical boards, with wide horizontal boards (the original treatment on the house) retained on part of the second story.There is extensive use of large single-pane windows commonly running down to the floor, along with casement windows. Fromthe front a single-story extension extends to the right. It is fronted by a unit of four components that run from floor-to-ceiling,alternating between two-windows and three-windows with frosted glass that visually form a geometric fretwork pattern, softenedby a single floor-to-ceiling window set to their left. The side-facing door is set back behind them, with a covered 1975-76 walkextending from the entrance to the separate flat-roofed two-bay garage/carport fronted by an openwork carport treatment,visually uniting the components into a whole. The house currently reflects alterations made by Modernist architects Henry B.Hoover of Lincoln in 1975-76 and Gary Wolf in 2004-05. Reflective of Modernism’s integration of house and setting, it alsointegrates with both the surrounding natural environment and adaptations to that environment planned by landscape architectJonathan Keep.

The 1939 Jones-Mukhitarian-Levy House (LIN.289, 38 Tower Road) is part of the gradual historical evolution of the Green-Brown-Peirce farmstead into a rural suburban neighborhood, with its lot set off from the lot associated with the 1921 Peirce-PikeHouse. Originally a brick 1½-story end-gable house, its current Gambrel Colonial Revival design reflects changes made in 1994-95 under architect Richard Wills of Royal Barry Wills Associates, transforming it into a house that reflects the distinctive styling ofthat firm. The whitewashed brick Jones-Mukhitarian-Levy House has two narrow gabled dormers on the front façade that haveclapboard siding and six-pane-over-nine sash windows, while on the back of the house there is an extended shed dormer. On thefront first story, a single window is on the left, with a three-window unit on the right. On the south side there is an exterior-wallchimney, with a 6-foot-wide gambrel-roofed extension behind it containing a single window on the front façade. The second storyof this extension has clapboarding within the end-gambrel with brickwork on the first story and a garage bay underneath.

The 1940 Buell-Rodiman-Hyde House (LIN.289, 36 Tower Road) also reflects the gradual evolution of the farm into a ruralsuburban neighborhood, with its lot created by the subdividing of the earlier 1921 Peirce-Pike House lot. The c. 1731 Green-Brown-Peirce House is immediately to the north of this house, and the 1851 William L. G. Peirce Barn (no longer standing) wasstill standing across the road when this house was built. Part of the Colonial Revival movement, with its low-pitched hipped roof itis more distinctly Federal Revival in character. The two-story house has a two-bay garage wing on the north side covered by aside-gabled roof, and there is a gabled single-story back ell. The main hipped roof extends over a two-story set-back wing on thesouth side of the house. While Federal-era homes of this form more often had five second-story windows over four first-storywindows surrounding a central doorway, this house has a fenestration of three windows over two surrounding a central doorway.These windows are extra wide, with eight-over-eight-pane sashes. Elsewhere on the house, including the two-bay wing off of thesouth side, the house features windows with six-over-six sashes. The central doorway is recessed within an oversized doorsurround that balances the wider windows. Above the recessed doorway, a broken elliptical pediment surrounds an applieddecorative urn on a shelf, with the urn set against flush vertical boards. The pediment is supported by wide, fluted pilasters, withapplied elliptical medallions centered within the capital. The recessed entryway is fronted by an open railed entry porch withsteps.

Separate from these properties developed on the Green-Brown-Peirce farmstead had been the L-shaped Colonial-Revival-style1913 Storrow-Ciraso House (lot 75 2 0; 19 Mackintosh Lane), constructed next to the Austin-Hodges-Wheeler House as a two-family house at what was the southeast corner of a farmstead owned by Boston financier James J. Storrow. The MackintoshLane house had been constructed by Lincoln building contractor R. D. Donaldson to house Storrow-estate workers. A side-gabled saltbox on the ends, it has an extended shed-roof on the front and back. On the front façade, all but a short section ateither end of the house rises to a full two stories, with the extended shed-roof functionally the main roof of the house. Theasymmetrical design of the front façade of the clapboard house uses six-pane-over-six double-hung windows. On the secondstory, pairs of windows are situated to either side of the center of the initially two-family house, with a single window set to their




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left. The first story has three single windows in the left half of the house; the right half has a centered screened porch with hippedroof leading to a doorway, and single windows to either side of the porch.

Farmers’ stone walls extend through much of the Area, particularly lining much of the east side of Tower Road and portions ofPeirce Hill Road. Retaining stone walls run along the Austin-Hodges properties on Lincoln Road and Mackintosh Lane. The Areaalso includes structures associated with its farming past, including a discontinued stone culvert below Peirce Hill Roadassociated with the former mill pond, while archaeological elements associated with that mill could include some of the visiblestones within the brook south of the road. Stonework associated with the 1851 William L. G. Peirce Barn site and its settingremains visible near the Pike-Donaldson House, as does foundation work associated with the site of Peirce greenhouses,situated near the Cyrus and Persis Murphy House. A survey map also documents the sites of poultry houses and anothergreenhouse that had stood behind the Peirce-Pike House.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVEExplain historical development of the area. Discuss how this relates to the historical development of the community.

The Peirce Hill Road Area contains houses that represent many of the major themes in the development of the Town of Lincoln.Much of the land within this Area had been part of the farmstead of an important eighteenth-century farmhouse, with that housecontaining some of the town’s most significant early paneling treatments. That house also had an associated eighteenth-centurymill complex site situated within the Area. A group of substantial nineteenth-century houses within the Area had been built onsmaller lots rather than farms, and they represent some of the early transformation of the town away from a local farming orfarming-craftsman economy to one that would also include a number of estate properties not supported by working the land.Likewise, there are associated homes built on estate properties for workers’ residences as well as homes built in the latter part ofthe nineteenth century for Irish immigrants (then representing the largest immigrant group in Lincoln) who built homes andworked their own land while also often working for others in the community. Ultimately, the original eighteenth-century farmsteadhere would be subdivided. Unusually, though, four houses in the Area are closely connected to the original farmhouse, being builton that farm for the owner’s relatives. As the family ultimately discontinued farming in the twentieth century, additional house lotswere created, with many of the homes constructed on the former farmstead in the Colonial Revival and Bungalow styles, but alsoincluding one of the first examples of Modernism in Lincoln, a town that would become noted for its examples of the Internationalstyle and Modernism.

A brook extending through this Area comes out of Flint’s Pond and passes under Peirce Hill Road, where a sawmill had beenbuilt in the eighteenth century. Still earlier, in the seventeenth century, this Area was settled as part of the Town of Concord, andthis brook served as the division line between the two largest land grants given out by the proprietors of Concord. The land on thenortheast side of the brook and north of the nearby Beaver Pond became the 750-acre Flint grant, recognizing the contributionsof immigrant Thomas Flint in the forming of that town. Similarly, Concord’s minister, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, received 750 acres tothe southwest of the brook, with much of that land eventually being associated with the c. 1735-41 Russell-Codman House(LIN.11; 39 Codman Road; National Register, district) and estate. Many of the Native American residents of Concord—afteradopting customs and beliefs of the English—had also expressed in the winter of 1646-47 that, “They desire they may be atowne, and either dwell on this side of Beaver swamp [near this Area] or at the East side of Mr. Flint’s Pond,” but that “towne” wasnot created (Flint and Willard Deposition, January 1646[/7], in MacLean, Rich Harvest, p. 7) Ultimately the brook dividing the Flintand Bulkeley grants would have an important role in the Europeans’ settlement and the construction of houses in what wouldbecome Lincoln, with the brook itself supporting the eighteenth-century sawmill situated where Peirce Hill Road crosses over thebrook.

The oldest house within the Area is the c. 1731 Green-Brown-Peirce House (LIN.25, 30 Tower Road; also known as the NathanBrown House and Nathan Brown, Jr., House), with much of the land of the Area having been part of the farmstead associatedwith this house. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the history of this Area revolved around that farmhouse and its associatedfarmstead, including the eighteenth-century mill site and extant farmer’s stone walls. Other houses within the Area document thegradual development and division of that farmstead and of neighboring lands into house lots, a process that began in the mid-nineteenth century. In turn, the Green-Brown-Peirce House and its farm had been part of the eighteenth-century breakup of the750-acre Flint-farm grant into a number of smaller farmsteads, with owners of this house subsequently taking an active role in thecommunity development efforts to create a new town. This resulted in the formation of the Town of Lincoln in 1754, significantly




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altering the nature of that farm and this Area—changing in character from outlying land near the eastern bounds of Concord toland near the Meeting House and center of the new town.

In the seventeenth century the Flint farm grant here was initially rented out to tenants, probably becoming the first functional farmin what is now Lincoln, while the Bulkeley farm south of the brook was likewise initially operated by tenants. The Flint family itselfwas living in another part of Concord, but in time Ephraim Flint (1641/2-1723) inherited and settled upon the farm. Then in a1708/9 deed he sold to his nephew, Edward Flint, 90 acres of land partly bounded by Sandy Pond (Flint’s Pond) and by thenortherly portion of the brook leading out of the pond. In that deed, Ephraim referred to his “now dwelling house” (LIN.59; 28Lexington Road; National Register, individual listing); this is the earliest documentation for that house. In that same deed he alsoreferred to an “old house” that would have been further south on the farmstead (potentially even being within this Area) but theexact location has not been determined. Edward built a house on his 90 acres in what is now the Sandy Pond Road area (seeFlint Farm Development, #8). In 1715 he also acquired about two acres adjoining the south side of the brook, which likely relatedto his construction of a sawmill along the brook in this Area.

Ephraim Flint did not have any children, and in his will he divided the farmstead between a number of relations, with a provisionthat they could only sell to each other. Ephraim’s nephew, Edward Flint, inherited the area where the Green-Brown-Peirce Housestands. In addition Ephraim’s heirs jointly received Sandy Pond (Flint’s Pond), but Edward was given the liberty to draw water forhis mill for a period of 20 years. Edward Flint (1685-1754) would play a central role in developing the southern half of the Flintgrant, selling off a number of farm lots, including bringing housewright Timothy Wesson to the area, with Timothy no doubtbuilding many of the nearby eighteenth-century houses that were being constructed—using wood from the sawmill located in thisArea. In so doing Edward brought to the area neighbors who joined with him in taking an active role in efforts to create the Townof Lincoln (see Flint Farm Development).

In compliance with the terms of his uncle’s will, in1730 Edward sold this land to his brother, Thomas Flint, including Edward’sliberty to draw water for a mill or mills—but while this likely included the site of Edward’s earlier sawmill, no mention was made ofa mill or other buildings in the deeds. Thomas would then sell the lot here to Joshua Green of Stoneham, including “my wholeinterest in a stream running out of sandy pond for the use of a mill or mills” (Mid. Deeds, 35:350). Joshua Green (1708-1745)appears to have been the original owner of the Green-Brown-Peirce House (LIN.25, 30 Tower Road), with the house starting as aone-room-over-one but expanding in the eighteenth century to two-rooms-over-two. Joshua was still in his early twenties andsingle when he came to Concord from Stoneham and built this house, but in 1732 he married. In 1734 Joshua joined with someof his neighbors in petitioning to have a new town formed. That petition initiated what would be a twenty-year process thatultimately led to the formation of the Town of Lincoln in 1754, nine years after Joshua’s death (see February 1733/4 Petition).Likewise, it was in 1734 that Joshua Green sold most of his property through two deeds to his younger brother, Jonathan Green“together with my Dwelling house and saw Mill and my whole interest in the stream that said mill standeth upon” (Mid. Deeds,37:265).

Within the next few years Jonathan sold the property to Concord-native Nathan Brown, Sr. (1704-1781), who continued the farmand sawmill. Brown became active in efforts to form a new town, and later he was an early leader in the Town of Lincoln,including serving as Treasurer and Selectman. Relatively prosperous, he seems likely to have enlarged the house to two roomsover two within a short period after acquiring the property—with his brother-in-law, housewright Timothy Wesson, no doubt doingthe work. The west rooms of the house are the original construction, which appear to date to Joshua Green’s occupancy, ca.1731. The west room chamber (see HABS drawings, West Rooms, Room 6) has vertical paneling on the fireplace wall extendingfrom the beam casing down to the floor that is indicative of the First Period. The fireplace and bake oven in the west kitchenwould have been reworked at a later date, with the HABS drawing noting that, “charred edge of lintel suggests larger fireplace”originally (HABS drawings, West Rooms, Room 3). The more fashionable Georgian-era inset paneling on the fireplace walls ofthe east rooms would likely reflect an addition by Nathan Brown (HABS drawings, East Rooms, rooms 2 and 5; Federal mantel inroom 2 added later). Representing two different periods, these rooms contain some of the best eighteenth-century farmhousepaneling in Lincoln. A 1764 probate inventory identifies that the house then had four main rooms: the “Kitchen” and “westChamber” (containing two beds and a trundle bed); the “Best lower room” (furnishings including a bed), and the “Best Chamber”(with furnishings also including one bed); along with a garret and cellar (Inventory of Nathan Brown, Jr., Mid. Probate, first series#3144).

The Green-Brown-Peirce House had predated any roads in this area, with residents taking trodden paths that passed througheach others’ land. In a 1702 deed for a lot on the former Bulkeley grant south of the brook, bounds went along “a brook whichcomes from Beaver Pond and Sandy Pond [Flint’s Pond] the brooke to be the Northerly bounds until it comes near a foot path




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across sd brooke to Mr. Flints Hill” (Prout to Parks, Mid. Deeds, 13:512). That early “foot path” may have been the predecessorof Tower Road. Still, it was not until 1749—after the Second Precinct of Concord, Lexington, and Weston was established(precursor of the Town of Lincoln)—that Concord Town Meeting voted to approve a “bridle path” going from Nathan Brown’shouse south (Tower Road south of Green-Brown-Peirce House) and a two-rod-wide roadway from Nathan Brown’s house northto Edward Flint’s house near the Precinct Meeting House location (north sections of Tower Road and Lincoln Road). After theTown of Lincoln was established in 1754, residents sought to lay out more roads to the Meeting House. In 1756 the Lincoln TownMeeting voted to make the Tower Road bridle path a road, while part of Lincoln Road as well as Peirce Hill Road were laid out.Under that vote, the road went from a “walnut tree at wly end of Nathan Brown’s dam, thence over sd. Dam as is now trod to SEcorner of sd Brown’s corn hse to end of wall at Nathan Brown Jr’s hse on Ely side of sd way” (Lincoln Town Meeting Records,March 31, 1756).

As reflected here, by the mid-1750s Nathan Brown, Sr., had turned the Green-Brown-Peirce House over to his son NathanBrown, Jr. (1724/5-1764), while Nathan Sr. had constructed a new house for his own use (Brown-Russell-Chapin House, LIN.28,37 Lincoln Road; National Register, district). Nathan Brown, Jr., had married Rebecca Adams in 1747; she also came from aprominent family within what became the Town of Lincoln. The younger Nathan would also begin to become involved in townaffairs, serving in the minor public offices of surveyor of highways and fence viewer.

With the death of Nathan Brown, Jr., in 1764, his widow, Rebecca (Adams) Brown (1728-1811) was left to raise their children,many of whom eventually settled in the community. Son Nathan Brown, III, fought in the American Revolution on April 19, 1775,and at Dorchester and Saratoga. His brother also served on April 19th and at Dorchester and Saratoga, but he was later “absent”and reportedly died in the West Indies. The history of the house and farm thereby reflects the role of the Brown brothers in theRevolutionary War period, and the divisions which were sometimes brought about by that war. Nathan Brown, III, inherited theGreen-Brown-Peirce House and became a prominent figure who was a captain in the local militia and identified as a “gentleman.”Following the American Revolution, however, his life and the history of the house would also reflect the postwar financialdifficulties that many families experienced in Massachusetts, as exemplified in the events of Shays’ Rebellion. Nathan mortgagedthe property to Charles Russell and ultimately became a debtor who lost its ownership. Another extant Lincoln house, the JohnBilling House (LIN.9, 9 Baker Farm Road) was similarly lost by its owner to debts during the economic difficulties of the postwarperiod.

In addition to its thematic local associations with the Revolutionary War and the postwar economy and unrest, the house also hadearly associations with slavery. In the 1764 inventory of Nathan Brown, Jr., he is listed as owning two slaves, “one Negero mannamed Nereo,” valued at 42 pounds, and “one Negero woman named Vilets,” valued at 22 pounds. (Mid. Probate, first series,#3144). At the time of the 1790 census, Nathan Brown, III, was living in the Green-Brown-Peirce House; at that time one of sixfree African-Americans still living in Lincoln was also living in the house. The lives of these African-Americans—living here bothas slaves and as free people—are an important part of the history and significance of the property during the eighteenth century.

In 1792 Chambers Russell’s executors sold 130 acres with buildings to William Lawrence, Jr. (c. 1752-1804), a brother-in-law ofNathan Brown, III, and a son of Lincoln’s first minister. The property later went through various owners, with John Leary and after1813 owner Isaac Goodenough, Jr. (1757-1836; name also given as Goodenow) living here. Struggling financially to care for hisfather and invalid wife, with “the expenses of my family have been so great and my own health so poor” (Isaac Goodenow,Revolutionary War pension application, pp. 44, 45), that Revolutionary War veteran had earlier been the farmer for the Codmanestate (the former estate of Chambers Russell). With the financial travails of Nathan Brown, III, following the Revolutionary War,and the personal struggles of Isaac Goodenough’s family, the history of the house had become one of misfortune. At the sametime, the sale to Russell and the Goodenough connection brought strong ties between this property and the Russell-Codmanestate.

In 1826 Goodenough sold the house and farm to neighbor Amos Bemis. Amos Bemis (1760-1830) had earlier acquired afarmhouse and the northern end of the Russell-Codman estate, where he was living (LIN.20, 22 Mackintosh Lane). The Green-Brown-Peirce House was likely enlarged under the early Bemis ownership, and it ultimately became a place for one of hischildren. Son George F. Bemis (1809-1890) lived here for a short time before leaving Lincoln and going into the newspaperbusiness; years later he amassed a substantial fortune and donated land to the Town of Lincoln for a cemetery and left bequeststo the town to build a new Town Hall (now Bemis Hall, LIN.42; National Register, district) and for the town’s Bemis LectureSeries. With George going off to become a printer, younger brother Francis Sumner Bemis (1812-1893) took over this house andits associated farm.




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By the mid-nineteenth century, the history of the house and farm here had undergone a number of changes. It had gone from theyoung, single, entrepreneurial Joshua Green building the house and operating a sawmill, to the prosperous Nathan Brown, Sr.,improving the property only to have his grandson serve in the Revolutionary War but lose ownership of this farm amid thepostwar economically difficult times that led to Shays’ Rebellion. Difficulties continued under the hardships faced by farmer IsaacGoodenough and his family, while some improvements were likely made to the house under the early Bemis ownership. Then in1844 the railroad came to Lincoln. It ultimately connected the town to Boston, gradually contributing to a change in the communityfrom a farming town to a mixture of farms and country estates—and eventually a rural commuting suburb that has valued itsagricultural heritage and sought to conserve its land. Situated between the new depot and the historic town center, this Area wasone of the earliest neighborhoods of Lincoln to reflect these changes. In 1904, Charles Francis Adams described thedevelopment of Lincoln Road along this section, writing, “What is now the great intersecting artery of the town, the road fromLincoln village to the railroad station…was, until after 1850, a mere country cross-road, comparatively little used. It wasstraightened out and rebuilt in 1894. Prior to that time it connected with the Tower Road…over what had been the dam of a waterpower, on the brook from Sandy to Beaver Pond” (Adams, “Milestone Planted,” p. 130). The development of homes along thissection and the individuals who would settle here following the coming of the railroad in 1844 would reflect the increasedsignificance of this neighborhood—which now connected the historic central village with the new depot.

In 1847 Francis Sumner Bemis sold the Green-Brown-Peirce House and farm to Maria A. Parker, then living in Lincoln. Singleand independently wealthy, Maria Parker would again associate this house with the Russell-Codman House: she was the sisterof Susan (Parker) Minns, and the Minns family owned the Russell-Codman estate at this time. In 1849 Parker was in Bostonwhen she sold the property to Rev. Luther Hamilton (1796-1853), then listed as a gentleman of Lincoln. A staunch Unitarian anda political reformer, Hamilton had discontinued his ministry and in 1836 he received a political appointment as Inspector ofCustoms and then Weigher and Gauger of Customs in the Boston Custom House. Like Parker before him, Hamilton would makea substantial profit on his brief investment in this property. Parker had purchased the house and 75-acre farm in 1847 fromBemis for $2150, selling two years later to Hamilton for $3800; Hamilton, in turn, added seven additional acres, selling theproperty a year later for $5400. To the extent that those dramatic increases in prices were a reflection of the influence of “outsidemoney,” they partly foretold a later evolution for the town—when families from Boston and elsewhere would purchase Lincolnfarms for country estates, in the process increasing local real estate values and bringing economic pressures on the survival ofmany traditional family farms.

Widow Jane W. Peirce of Boston purchased the farm in 1850 from Hamilton, and three years later she formally transferred theproperty to her young son, William L. G. Peirce (1830-1901), then listed as a gentleman of Lincoln. The property was evidentlyfirst purchased for William with funds left to him, while the motive for leaving the city of Boston for a rural lifestyle on a Lincolnfarm likely came from William’s interests and desires. It was later written of him, “In him the love of the beautiful was highlydeveloped. Nature and art alike ministered to his delight. He was a man of broad and generous sympathies which foundexpression in his generosity toward men and his kindness toward animal life” (Eliot, ed., Biographical History of Massachusetts,vol. 8). This young country gentleman worked as an apothecary while he also farmed the land, adding a large barn in c. 1851 thatis no longer standing, but stonework relating to the barn and its setting is still in evidence.

The Lincoln farm became the home to an extended Green-Peirce family, as two sisters, a brother, and the mother of Jane(Green) Peirce would also all come out to Lincoln from Boston and spend their remaining years in this country town. Williamwould soon set aside a house lot on the south side of Peirce Hill Road—adjoining the old mill brook—for his Green relations.Henry David Thoreau was hired in 1854 to survey this “Plan of a House Lot in Lincoln Mass. Belonging to Miss Maria Green”(survey in Concord Free Public Library, Special Collections; see link in Bibliography). Thoreau wrote in his Journal on August 31,1854, “P.M.—To Lincoln./ Surveying for William Peirce,” then describing his discussions with Peirce before Peirce drove Thoreauhome in his wagon (Thoreau, Journal, VI, 490).

On September 6, 1854, William L. G. Peirce sold the lot surveyed by Thoreau to his aunt, Maria Green, for $10.00, and the 1854-55 Green-Pierce House, or “Hillbrook” (LIN.297, 3 Peirce Hill Road) was built here, with the extant barn behind the houseprobably added in 1860. The 1855 state census showed that Maria Green (c. 1793-1886), her sister Mary Ann Green (c. 1815-1905), their brother Elijah Lewis Green (1805-1883), as well as their mother Mary W. (Barnard) Green (c. 1772-1863) were livingtogether in the new house. With an assessed value of $1750, the house then had one of the highest assessments In Lincoln, andit was one of the few houses outside of the central village that was not situated on a farm, but on a small house lot.




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Maria later sold the house to her sister, Mary Ann, who married and sold it with her husband to Sarah H. Pierce in 1864. Sarah(Hartwell) Pierce (1788-1871) was the widow of Abijah Hoar Pierce (1782-1860), and both were natives of Lincoln, but Abijahbecame a merchant in Cambridge and later in Boston, dealing in West India goods and making a sizable income before retiringback to Lincoln. Similarly, a Lincoln neighbor (George Bemis), Abijah’s nephew (George Grosvenor Tarbell), and ultimatelyAbijah and Sarah’s own son (John H. Pierce) also left the town to build fortunes, returning in their latter years and becomingimportant benefactors of the town. Ogden Codman, Sr., had not grown up in Lincoln, but he also settled in Lincoln in the 1860s,reacquiring the home of his ancestors. While these individuals were attracted to return to Lincoln because of their family ties tothe community, the wealthy Pierce, Tarbell, and Codman families also served as precursors to a coming transformative changefor Lincoln, as money from employment and investments outside of Lincoln—rather than income from local farming—wouldincreasingly influence the town’s development and character in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Green-Pierce House remained in the Pierce family until 1892, when it was sold to a cousin, Elizabeth B. Swift, who sold it toher nephew, stockbroker C. Lee Todd (1874-1946), in 1909. Swift and Todd both grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, but they weredescendants of Lincoln’s Tarbell, Hoar, and Pierce families, and were returning—as Ogden Codman had done earlier—to thecommunity of their ancestral roots.

The construction of the 1854-55 Green-Pierce House had been preceded by the nearby 1852 Austin-Hodges House (LIN.299, 83Lincoln Road), built as a country residence for Loring Henry Austin (1819-1892) along with his wife, author Jane Goodwin Austin(1831-1894). Picturesque in its setback knolled site with rural vistas across the William L. G. Peirce farmstead, it was Lincoln’sfirst stone house, and a rare stone house in the region. Just as the Green-Pierce House sits on a site surveyed by Thoreau, theAustins’ house found a spot in the literary history of the world through the pen of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in his Journalin 1860:

I hear this account of Austin:-

An acquaintance who had bought him[self] a place in Lincoln took him out one day to see it, and Austin was so smittenwith the quiet and retirement and other rural charms that he at once sold his house in Concord [actually in Cambridge],bought a small piece of rocky pasture in an out-of-the-way part of this out-of-the-way town, and with the funds raised bythe sale of his old house built him a costly stone house upon it. Now he finds that this retirement (or country life) is thevery thing which he does not want, but, his property being chiefly invested in the house, he is caught in a trap, as it were,for he cannot sell it, though he advertises it every year. As for society, he has none; his neighbors are few and farbetween, and he never visits them nor they him. They can do without him, being old settlers, adscripti glebae. He foundone man in the next town who got his living by sporting and fishing, and he has built him a little hut and got him to live onhis place for society and helpfulness. He cannot get help either for the outdoor or indoor work. There are nonethereabouts who work by the day or job, and servant-girls decline to come so far into the country. Surrounded by grain-fields, he sends to Cambridge for his oats, and, as for milk, he can scarcely get any at all, for the farmers all send it toBoston, but he has persuaded one to leave some for him at the depot half a mile off. (Thoreau. Journal. XIII [February28, 1860], p. 168).

Thoreau’s comments in part reflect his own ideas on simplicity. His account also provides useful clues: the “little hut” thatThoreau says Austin built on the place appearing to be the original section of the c. 1857-60 Austin-Hodges-Wheeler Cottage(LIN.301, 15 Mackintosh Lane, later altered), with farmer Asahel Wheeler (1813-1888) a likely candidate as the sporting-fishingworker to whom Thoreau referred. Wheeler moved from neighboring Wayland to Lincoln in about 1857 and evidently worked forAustin and then for the Edward Hodges family that later owned the Austin-Hodges property. That cottage continued to beassociated with the Austin-Hodges House until the mid-1940s, when it became a separate property. Subsequently expandedthrough a number of additions, it is now Contemporary in style.

To move to “the quiet and retirement and other rural charms” of Lincoln, 32-year-old Loring H. Austin sold the elegant home ofhis parents that he had inherited, leaving the family home and Cambridge world he had known most of his life, looking to replacethem with a distinctive country home and lifestyle. He was listed as a gentleman of Lincoln in June 1852 when he acquired for$625 the Lincoln lot of 5 acres and 25 rods where he built his new home, which had earlier been part of the farm of Amos Bemis.From tradition in the family of stonemason Cyrus Pierce of Concord, Cyrus was the stonemason who built Austin’s Gable-frontItalianate stone house. Cyrus had recently built his own granite-block Gothic Revival Concord house, the 1850-51 Cyrus PierceHouse (CON.306, 23 Lexington Road; National Register, district). In 1853 Austin’s lot was given an assessed value of $100 andhis house $2500, documenting the construction of the house; in 1854 the house assessment had increased to $3200, potentially




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reflecting added work but probably a general town-wide reassessment that was made that year. In 1860 Austin was alsoassessed for another “building,” with subsequent records suggesting that this related to what began as a wooden “wood andcarriage shed” ell attached at the northwest side of the house, with that wing likely added in the late 1850s. Assessments suggestthat the stone barn also on the property was most probably built in 1860.

Following its construction, the stone Austin-Hodges House had one of the two highest assessments in Lincoln. In 1854 StrongBenton Thompson owned two houses on Page Road jointly assessed at $4000 (c. 1851-54 Strong Benton Thompson House,LIN.49; and 1852-53 Thompson-Page Cottage, LIN.286), with his main house likely having the highest assessment in the town.Thompson was a native of Vermont who had married a Boston heiress; working in Boston, Thompson was developing a countryestate that was evidently initially used in the summer, but later became a full-time residence. The third highest house assessmentwas $2000 for the eighteenth-century home then occupied by widow Frances Ann Minns (Codman House, LIN.11). The nearby1854 Green-Pierce House and the coeval 1854-56 Greek Revival-style Asa White House (LIN.75, 29 Sandy Pond Road; NationalRegister, district) would soon join these three as the Lincoln houses with the highest assessments.

Austin would sell the house in 1860 to Ann Frances Hodges (Mid. Deeds, 842:401), the wife of Boston lawyer Edward F. Hodges(1816-1883). The Hodges family had also been one of the first to come out from Boston and acquire a property in Lincoln, earlieracquiring a farm on Page Road in 1851, across the road from Thompson’s country property. At times using the Austin-HodgesHouse as a seasonal home and at other times as a year-round home, the family continued to own it until 1932, with thesubsequent owner writing that they, “developed [it] into a beautifully landscaped Victorian country estate. There was a garden onthe side hill, a ‘Palm Leaf’ area behind the house, planted with a tulip tree, hawthorne, a fringe tree, ‘red bud’, and otherornamental plants. It is said that two gardeners were employed to keep the place up” (Snider, “Country Life in Lincoln,” pp.1- 2).The associated Austin-Hodges-Wheeler Cottage provided a home for a laborer who would work on the estate, with Michael Rileyliving there in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as the foreman for the Hodges, overseeing the care of theproperty and its gardens. Thompson, Austin, and Hodges were among the first to develop nineteenth-century country estates inLincoln, but they were only the beginning of a major thematic change in the town’s history.

Added to the 1850’s Austin-Hodges and Green-Pierce houses would be the 1890 Colonial Revival-style Ellen L. Campbell House(LIN.298, 81 Lincoln Road), initially constructed on an acre lot, with the 1895 Ellen L. Campbell Barn added behind it after anadditional 6.5 acres had been added that year. Both lots were purchased from William L. G. Peirce. Widow Ellen Louisa (Swift)Campbell (1833-1915) was a sister of Elizabeth B. Campbell and an aunt of C. Lee Todd, both of whom had lived at times inCampbell’s house. Like them, she had grown up in Lexington, Kentucky, moving to Lincoln by 1880 as the first of the family toreturn to Lincoln—the native town of her mother. Through family connections, the Ellen L. Campbell House was associated with anumber of other homes owned and often built by members of the extended Hoar-Pierce-Tarbell/Swift-Campbell-Todd family—including the neighboring Green-Pierce House. Living on family money, Campbell built a substantial home here, with the locationnot unlikely at least partly selected because of its proximity to the Green-Pierce House. Ellen and her two single daughterscontinued in this house until the last died in 1961.

The grouping within the Area of the Green-Pierce, Austin-Hodges, and Ellen L. Campbell houses near the intersection of LincolnRoad and Peirce Hill Road represents substantial nineteenth-century country homes that had been constructed on smaller lotsrather than on farms—although each would soon also have a related barn or stable, and Austin-Hodges also had a cottage for anestate worker. Individually and collectively, they represent the transformation of Lincoln away from its farming roots. Built in the1850s the first two served as important precursors of the transformation of the farming town to one that attracted people fromBoston and elsewhere who wished to establish country properties in Lincoln—sometimes as summer homes and in otherinstances as year-round residences. Taken out of the farmstead of William L. G. Peirce, the Green and Campbell homes werealso precursors of a later subdividing of that farm.

To the south of the farmstead of William L. G. Peirce on Tower Road, much of the land on both sides of the road opens up toform a large expanse of wetlands around the brook coming out of Flint’s Pond and a brook extending out from Beaver Pond(pond located to the east of the William L. G. Peirce farm). While much of this area had likely been used as meadowlands goingback to colonial times, it had not been an area of early settlement, and land values here should have been relatively low forLincoln. During the latter decades of the nineteenth century, this section of Tower Road as well as Old Winter Street and OldCounty Road in East Lincoln became areas within Lincoln where some Irish families purchased land and built homes,establishing small farms. In the 1870 census, Lincoln’s population of 781 residents included 98 natives of Ireland—about one inevery eight residents. While the majority were farm laborers and domestic servants working for others in the community, a




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number of Irish immigrants had already established their own farms in the town. Patrick Conway and Matthew Dougherty in EastLincoln (both houses with assessed values of only $100 in 1870, among the smallest assessments in the town) and WilliamHosea, Jr., in North Lincoln had been the first natives of Ireland to establish farms and build their own homes in Lincoln in theearly 1860. Tower Road would also have an important settlement of Irish families, with the 1870 Delahanty-Kelliher House(LIN.293, 48 Tower Road) the northernmost of these homes and the 1886 Patrick J. Lennon House (LIN.295—with 1893 barn[LIN.292], 54 Tower Road) just to its south.

The Delahanty-Kelliher House was built in 1870 on a small lot of about six acres that original owner Richard Delahanty (1833-1910) farmed while he also primarily worked in the community as a laborer. A barn or stable was added to the property in about1877. Delahanty had purchased the land from Joseph Underwood, who lived further to the south on Tower Road (LIN.24, 125Tower Road). Underwood and his father before him had been operating an ice business using ice from Beaver Pond, and theirland here had served as an access way to the pond and their ice operation. In 1912 the property was acquired by John J. “Jerry”Kelliher (1879-1955), who had also been born in Ireland, but he had immigrated as a child to the United States in 1883. He was along-term, highly regarded Constable who became the first Police Chief in Lincoln. He was also the Tree Warden/Gypsy MothSuperintendant—long overseeing the Town’s only conservation activities—and he also took on a great number of other jobs forthe Town. Kelliher enlarged the house, and he also later acquired additional acres and developed much of the twentieth-centuryBeaver Pond Road subdivision. The house remained in his family until 1993.

South of Delahanty’s house, another house had stood in the 1870s and into the 1880s where Michael Kennedy had lived. An1875 map suggests that Kennedy’s house may have been at or near where Patrick J. Lennon would build his 1886 house,constructed by Lincoln housewright John C. McDonald. Other comparative houses in the community identified as having beenbuilt by McDonald include the 1876 Charles P. Farnsworth House at 203 Lincoln Road (Assessors’ lot 102 11 0) and the 1878Francis Smith House at 71 Sandy Pond Road (Assessors’ lot 54 1 0). Those examples of McDonald’s Lincoln oeuvre are bothmuch larger than the Patrick J. Lennon House, yet like many Lincoln houses of the period they were relatively understatedVictorian homes, relatively traditional in form.

After immigrating to Massachusetts, Patrick J. Lennon (1855-1937) soon met and in 1873 married Jane (Mountain) Lennon(1850-1927), also an immigrant from Ireland who had been working for the John H. Pierce family in Lincoln (then living at 23Bedford Road, see LIN.92). Prior to building his Tower Road house, Lennon did some work as a farm laborer and also workedfor the railroad, and he continued with the railroad for a period of time after building on his 17 acres here. As with Delahanty yearsearlier, he had purchased the land from Joseph Underwood, who had reserved the right to use a path along the north side of thelot to get back to Beaver Pond and the ice business. Lennon added the Patrick J. Lennon Barn or stable to the property in 1893.The house and barn remain in his family to the present day (2010).

The Colonial Revival 1913 Storrow-Ciraso House (lot 75 2 0; 19 Mackintosh Lane), was constructed to the west of the Austin-Hodges-Wheeler House at what was the southeast corner of a farmstead owned by Boston financier James Jackson Storrow(1864-1926), with a lane through that property extending from Mackintosh Lane to Baker Bridge Road. One of many housesowned by Storrow, the original section of the Mackintosh Lane house was constructed as a two-family by Lincoln buildingcontractor R. D. Donaldson. It appears to have been constructed in 1913, first appearing in the Assessors’ records for April 1914as “House near Warner,” owned by Storrow, with an assessed value of $1000. Storrow’s own 1904-05 hilltop mansion off ofBaker Bridge Road was then the largest of Lincoln’s estate properties, and Storrow was one of the wealthiest men in America.He was a partner in the Boston investment firm of Lee, Higginson and Co., while beginning in 1910 he had also served briefly asPresident of General Motors and for five years as its Chairman. The Storrows initially had their primary residence in Boston, butafter his death his widow, Helen Osborne Storrow (1864-1944), made Lincoln her primary residence. In the 1920 census, Michael“Mike” Ciraso and Frank Marganella (Marganelli in census; Marganella in local records) and their families appear to have bothbeen living here. Both were immigrants from Italy, and they are actually listed twice in that census, enumerated on different daysby different census takers, both being listed in one instance as “Laborer,” “General Farm,” and then both as “Farmer” for a“Private Estate” (Storrow). Ciraso was listed as a gardener here in the 1930 census and as a laborer in later Lincoln records. TheCirasos acquired the house in 1950; it remains in the family (2010).

Just as in the 1850s William L. G. Peirce had set aside a lot from his farm for his aunts and uncle, with the Green-Pierce Housebuilt on that lot, he later provided land for, and likely financed the construction of, a house for his son: the 1895 Queen Anne-styleWilliam C. Peirce House (LIN.287, 27 Tower Road). A generation later, William C. Peirce would provide for his son, building the1921 Colonial Revival-style Peirce-Pike House, with that son and later one of William’s daughters living there. Following the




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death of William C. Peirce, another of his daughters would build the 1925 Pike-Donaldson House on the farm. These threehomes were all built for the family by the same contractor, Robert D. “R. D.” Donaldson, who was the most significant buildingcontractor in Lincoln’s history. In all, five houses within the Area are closely interconnected as having been owned or built on thisfamily farm for members of the extended Peirce-Green-Pike family. In addition, there is surviving evidence of the site of the 1851William L. G. Peirce Barn and evidence of the Peirce greenhouses built beginning in 1892 on the farmstead; the greenhouse sitecontains evidence for further documentation of this important element of the farm’s history, and it is the best preserved site forinvestigation from Lincoln’s late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries’ greenhouses, a significant component of a number ofLincoln’s market farms of that period.

William Carret Peirce (1857-1925) married Harriet M. Titcomb on November 6, 1895. It was likely in anticipation of their pendingmarriage that William had his Queen Anne house built earlier that year; perhaps the house was built as a wedding present fromhis father. In the May 24, 1895, edition of the Waltham Daily Free Press, it was reported, “William Pierce’s new house isprogressing finely. Robert Donaldson is the contractor and builder.” This contract was significant locally as this was the firsthouse in Lincoln built by R. D. Donaldson (1870-1964). A recent immigrant from Nova Scotia who had initially settled inSomerville, Donaldson was only 23 when he built this house. He would subsequently settle in Lincoln and help to shape Lincoln’sdevelopment during the first half of the twentieth century in many ways, becoming Lincoln’s most prominent and prolific buildingcontractor as well as a most influential community leader, including serving for many years as a town Selectman. Son Malcolm L.Donaldson later recalled, “During all this time he became a large builder. He did a lot of work in Lincoln, Concord, Lexington,Cambridge, and in several towns in this area. He built many houses in Lincoln and remodeled several others. He built the CenterSchool [LIN.114], for instance, and the [Massachusetts] Audubon buildings….[His wife] kept all records, kept all the books foryears. And finally the business got to be so big—and the family was coming on—that she got others to help her. Harriet Peirceused to come in for two days a week...” (Donaldson, in Ragan, Voiceprints of Lincoln, pp. 72-73).

Although at first he only had eight acres of the farmstead, William C. Peirce already had taken over much of the operation of hisfather’s farm by the time he built this house. He was assessed for 250 chickens in 1895, and indeed he would particularly focuson poultry as well as market garden/greenhouse operations. William C. Peirce operated the poultry business under the name ofChestnut Hill Poultry Yards. Some of the poultry houses had been located behind the later Peirce-Pike House. He also operatedthree greenhouses, with a greenhouse first built under his father in 1892-93. Greenhouses were located up the farm lane to theeast of the Green-Brown-Peirce House and behind the future Peirce-Pike House near the poultry houses. William C. Peirce“raised cucumbers, tomatoes, and radishes all through the winter, making vegetable growing a year-round occupation.” (Ragan,Voiceprints of Lincoln, p. 44). William’s daughter, Isabel T. Peirce, later recalled of the farm’s operation:

We had apples from the earliest ones clear up through the Baldwins. And we had strawberries, beans—shell beans—and tomatoes.

He used to drive in [to the Boston market] with a horse and wagon. Leave early evening and he wouldn’t get back untilalmost noontime the next day. He didn’t go every day. [Peirce, in Ragan, Voiceprints of Lincoln, p. 44].

Other Lincoln farms that had important greenhouse operations had been: the Kidder Farm connected with the Edwards-KidderHouse (LIN.47, 66 Weston Road), which specialized in flowers; and the Flint Farm connected with the Flint Homestead (LIN.59,29 Lexington Road), with both market garden and flower operations.

William C. and Harriet (Titcomb) Peirce had four children: Isabella “Isabel” Titcomb born in 1897; William Carret born in 1898;Anna Harriet born in 1900; and Helen Hart born in 1902. They were all still living in the house at the time of the 1920 census. In1921 Lincoln building contractor R. D. Donaldson was again hired to build a house on a knoll at the south end of the farm, nearthe family’s poultry and greenhouse operations and near the neighboring Delahanty-Kelliher property.This Colonial Revival-stylePeirce- Pike House (LIN.291, 44 Tower Road) was where son William would live; sadly, however, William, Jr., died at age 23 onJanuary 15, 1922, just five weeks after his marriage. In 1925 daughter Helen Hart Peirce married Richard Grant Pike and theymoved into the Peirce-Pike House, initially continuing to maintain the poultry and perhaps the greenhouse operations. In 1925another house would be built by R. D. Donaldson—the Pike-Donaldson House (LIN.288, 33 Tower Road) —constructed next tothe 1851 barn and used by daughter Anna Harriet and her husband, Carroll Henry Pike—the Peirce sisters having both marriedPike brothers in 1925. With the original Green-Brown-Peirce House still owned by a member of the Peirce family, this created aninterrelated family complex of four houses on the original farmstead that were then still held by family members (see 1925Survey). The William C. Peirce House remained in the family until 1988, but the Peirce-Pike House was sold out of the family in1932 and the PikeDonaldson House was sold in 1927 to a member of R. D. Donaldson’s family; while it had been rented for




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many years, it continues to be owned by a member of the extended Donaldson family (2010), and the land initially associatedwith this house is protected through conservation restrictions, retained as an open field.

Following William C. Peirce’s death in 1925, the family had divided the farmland between the heirs. While they continued to farmbriefly, with the two Pike daughters leaving town to settle in Cabot, Vermont, where their husbands grew up, farming of this landwas near an end. Already divided between the various heirs, additional house lots would be sold off, and this Area would take ona more suburban aspect, but within a setting that retained ties to its agricultural past.

In 1919, prior to building the Peirce-Pike House nearby, William C. Peirce had sold a house lot that was approximately acrossfrom the Delahanty-Kelliher House to Lincoln-native Matthew H. Doherty (1875-1963), and the 1920 Bungalow-style Matthew andElizabeth Doherty House (LIN.294, 49 Tower Road) was built there by contractor R. D. Donaldson. With Doherty as seniorpartner, Matthew Doherty was working with Martin Corrigan, with their firm of Doherty & Corrigan having started in 1905 as alivery and taxi service. As transportation moved from horses and carriages to motor vehicles, they would continue to offer taxiand delivery services while also establishing a garage and school busing services. Doherty was the principal party engaged in theoperation of the garage, taking over full operation of the businesses in about 1937. The partners acquired property on LewisStreet in 1915 and in 1919 built a new brick facility there (LIN.281, 10 Lewis Street), hiring Lincoln contractor R. D. Donaldson asthe building contractor. From the beginning, Doherty’s Garage also essentially served as a town fire station and Doherty becamethe Fire Chief while his Tower Road neighbor, Jerry Kelliher, was the Police Chief. The Doherty’s son, William “Bill” Doherty latertook over the garage and school bus businesses while he also lived in this house. Doherty’s is today the oldest Lincoln businessstill in operation, and the Dohertys’ Bungalow-style house remains in the family (2010).

William C. Peirce had transferred ownership of his 1895 house and the surrounding lot bordered by Lincoln, Peirce Hill, andTower roads to his wife, and in 1929 she divided her land and sold off land along Peirce Hill Road as a separate house lot.Purchased by Georgia Munroe Powers, wife of James Finlay Powers, they would build the 1929-30 Colonial Revival-stylePowers-Murphy House (LIN.296, 8 Peirce Hill Road). They were both natives of Canada, with James having been born inTatamagouche, Nova Scotia, in 1894. That was the same town where Lincoln building contractor R. D. Donaldson had grown up,and the Powers had been living in Lincoln for a number of years with James a carpenter who had likely worked for R. D.Donaldson. It is not unlikely that he had served as the site manager for a number of the houses Donaldson built. In the 1930census, when he was living here in the Powers-Murphy House, James Powers was identified as a House Contractor, rather thanjust as a carpenter. It is a reasonable assumption that he had been serving as the contractor for the construction of his own1929-30 house, likely doing much of the carpentry work himself. With the Depression starting, however, it was a difficult periodfor Powers to be engaged as a building contractor, and they would sell the Lincoln house in 1935 to Mina Dorothea (Hunt)“Dottie” Murphy, who lived here until 1985. She was the wife of Ethan Allen Murphy (1906-1972), a teacher/researchassistant/instructor who worked in the first U. S. modern meteorology program at MIT, listed also as having been assigned to MITby the U. S. Weather Bureau, Climatological Services.

Ethan A. Murphy was the brother of architect Cyrus Winthrop Murphy (1908-1971), and Cyrus and his wife would follow Ethan toLincoln. In a deed recorded June 4, 1936, the year after Ethan and his wife moved here, Isabel Peirce (a daughter of William C.Peirce) sold a nearby lot that she had inherited from her father to Persis Murphy, the wife of Cyrus Murphy. The wooded lot wasset back from Tower Road, up a private farm lane that now passes in front of the Green-Brown-Peirce House, on the lowerslopes of the hill. There, Cyrus designed one of the first two Lincoln Modernist houses, the 1936-37 Cyrus and Persis MurphyHouse (LIN.252, 32 Tower Road, date usually given as 1937). Both design work and construction on this originally cubical houseand the1936-37 Modernist Henry B. Hoover House (LIN.234, 154 Trapelo Road, date usually given as 1937) began in 1936, withboth houses completed the following year. Assessors’ records representing conditions on January 1, 1937, listed for Murphy“Unfinished house” assessed at $1750 and for Hoover “Unfinished house (brick)” assessed at $2000. The smaller Murphy housewhen completed had an assessed value of $2250 with Hoover assessed at $4500 when completed, suggesting that the Cyrusand Persis Murphy House was completed first, although construction may have started on both at around the same time in 1936.Later additions and alterations to the Cyrus and Persis Murphy House would be made by Modernist architects Henry B. Hoover ofLincoln in 1974-75 and Gary Wolf in 2004-05. The Hoover alterations included changes to the fenestration, adding the single-story addition at the front of the house with a spiral staircase inside and deck above, a screened porch at the back, and alteringmuch of the exterior surface treatment to vertical flush boards from horizontal. The Wolf alterations included adding the single-story extension on the carport side of the house, including the current entrance and its treatment.

Two additional house lots on Tower Road were created in 1939 and 1940, likely as a consequence of the Great Depression. Withthe purchaser of the Peirce-Pike House having financial difficulties, their 6.5-acre lot where Peirce’s greenhouses and poultry




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houses also had been located was subdivided into three lots. First, the family sold off a lot in 1939 where the brick GambrelColonial Revival-style Jones-Mukhitarian-Levy House was built that year (LIN.289, 38 Tower Road). Owners Walter and MarionJones only remained here for five years, selling in1944 to Samuel and Stephanie Mukhitarian. Electrical linesman SamuelMukhitarian (c. 1905-1980) was the son of an Armenian immigrant from Marach, Turkey, and while there were many Armenianfamilies in Massachusetts, including nearby Watertown, the Mukhitarians would have been among the first Armenian families tosettle in Lincoln. The brick-ranch house remained in the family until 1994, with the house subsequently modified into a gambrelbrick Colonial Revival design by Richard Wills of Royal Barry Wills Associates.

In 1940 another lot was created, and there the 1940 Federal-influenced Colonial Revival Buell-Rodiman-Hyde House (LIN.289,36 Tower Road) was constructed between the new Jones-Makhitarian-Levy House and the original 1731 Green-Brown-PeirceHouse. These1939-1940 transactions and buildings completed the suburbanization of this highly visual 6.5-acre section of thehistoric Green-Brown-Peirce House farmstead, with the new houses visually documenting Lincoln’s transformation from afarming and market-garden economy into a rural suburb of Boston while also contributing to a neighborhood of variedarchitectural representations.

Lincoln had 286 houses at the beginning of 1921—the year when the Peirce-Pike House was constructed—but with the growingchange from a farm population to a suburban commuting population, that number had increased significantly to 458 houseswhen assessments were made in1939. Houses had commonly been constructed off of the established through-roads, such asTower Road, but subdivisions were also coming to town by the time Jones and Buell built their houses in 1939 and 1940. Aprivate road, Hilliard Road, had been developed in 1926—Lincoln’s first subdivision road. Near Tower Road, Upland Field Roadwas laid out; the Juniper Ridge Road subdivision of 1936 brought some Colonial Revival/Cape Cod construction with design workby architect Royal Barry Wills; and a subdivision creating Blueberry, Grasshopper, and Old Farm roads was laid out in a woodlot.On the Storrow estate, Woods End Road in 1938-39 featured a group of Modernist/International-style houses, including theresidences of architects Marcel Breuer (LIN.123) and Walter Bogner (LIN.125), along with the nearby home of architect WalterGropius (LIN.14, 68 Baker Bridge Road), each built within a few years after the Cyrus and Persis Murphy and Henry B. Hooverhouses introduced Modernism to the Lincoln landscape.

Construction was increasing and the look of the town was changing, with 8 permits for new homes granted in 1938, 18 permits in1939, and 22 permits in 1940. Recognizing how Lincoln’s character and landscape were facing forces for change—and seekingto implement limits on how the town would develop—Lincoln had recently established a Planning Board, and in 1936 the townhad changed its zoning requirements for house lots, increasing the minimum lot size from 10,000 sq. ft. (adopted in 1929) to40,000 sq. ft. While annual development in the postwar period would be much greater and the town would establish morerestrictive bylaws with a minimum lot size of 80,000 sq. ft., these houses were part of the significant changes during the pre-warperiod that had motivated and would continue to motivate the town to control its future growth.

Consideration can also be given to including in the Area the c. 1913 Bungalow-style John B. Lennon House (58 Tower Road, lot85 24 0), built on a lot set off from the Patrick J. Lennon House for Patrick’s son; the house is currently not visible from the roaddue to the setback of the house, terrain, and current wooded nature of the lot. Consideration can also be given to including in the

House), which is set well back from the road and also is not visible from the roadway, while it could be considered individually asa potential National Register property. Likewise, consideration can also be given to including within the Area the 1948Modernist(Contemporary) Orton-Kingsbury House (LIN.217, 12 Mackintosh Lane; also incorrectly listed as Russell HaydenHouse—Haden never owned the property), with the original designer unknown, with additions for R. Sherman Kingsbury in 1953and in 1963, the latter butterfly-roofed addition based upon 1962 Henry B. Hoover plans; its original 1948 construction relates intime to the first Contemporary alterations to the Austin-Hodges-Wheeler House (the house actually owned by Russell L. Haden),with the Modernist design of the Orton-Kingsbury House accommodating to its subsequent expansions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES

Adams, Charles Francis. “A Milestone Planted,” in An Account of the Celebration by The Town of Lincoln, Masstts, April 23rd,1904, of the 150th Anniversary of its Incorporation, 1754-1904. Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1905.

Babson, John J., A History of the Town of Gloucester, Cape Ann. Gloucester, MA: 1860. (see on Luther Hamilton, pp. 495-96).Boston Street Directories, various years

Area the eighteenth-century Dakin-Russell-Warner House (LIN.20, 22 Mackintosh Lane; also listed as Charles Russell Codman




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Concord Historic Districts Commission and Carol Kowalski. “Historic Districts Guidelines.” (2002).Concord Town Records (Concord Free Public Library)Dee, Helena (Lennon). “Just Rambling ’Round….” [1966], copy in Lincoln Archives Collection.Directory of Wayland, Weston & Lincoln, 1893.…(Boston, 1893).Donaldson, Malcolm L. “Houses by R. D. Donaldson, 1895-1930” (private collection).Eliot, Samuel Atkins, ed. Biographical History of Massachusetts: Biographies and Autobiographies of the Leading Men in the

State. Vol. 8. Boston: 1917. See “Amos Hagar Peirce” article (n.d.).Farrar, Edward R. and Samuel Farrar. “Houses in Lincoln 100 Years Old and Over With Some of Their Owners,” 1935.Fenn, Mary R. Old Houses of Concord. Concord, Massachusetts: 1974.Glass, Kerry. The Nathan Brown Farm. Lincoln, Massachusetts: 1977.Hatheway, Conrad P. Photograph Album (private collection).“Lincoln,” Waltham Daily Free Press (May 24, 1895).Lincoln Assessors’ RecordsLincoln Historical Society. Images of America: Lincoln. (Charleston, South Carolina: 2003).Lincoln Town Meeting Records (Lincoln Public Library)Lincoln Town Reports, various yearsLincoln Vital RecordsLincoln’s Way. Lincoln, Massachusetts: [1976].Little, Elizabeth A. “Lincoln History Walk #3—Flint’s Mill” (Lincoln Historical Society, 1971).MacLean, John C. A Rich Harvest: The History, Buildings, and People of Lincoln, Massachusetts. Lincoln, Massachusetts: 1988.Martin, Margaret Mutchler. The Chambers-Russell-Codman House and Family. Lincoln, Massachusetts: 1996.Massachusetts state census records, 1855 and 1865Massachusetts Vital RecordsMiddlesex County Probate Records (Mid. Probate, docket cited)Middlesex County Registry of Deeds, South District (Mid. Deeds, volume:page cited).Peirce, Isabelle, Collection. Lincoln Public Library.Ragan, Ruth Moulton. Voiceprints of Lincoln: Memories of an Old Massachusetts Town and Its Unique Response to Industrial

America. Lincoln, Massachusetts: 1991.Roster of Commissioned Weather Bureau Personnel, November 1, 1938 (Washington, D.C.: 1938).Shattuck, Lemuel. “The Minot Family,” New England Historic Genealogical Register (April and July 1847).Snider, Greta Wood. “Country Life in Lincoln,” (1967), Lincoln Archives Collection, 2003.057.1.1.Thoreau, Henry David. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, XVI, December 1, 1853 - August 31, 1854. Bradford

Torrey, ed. Boston: 1906.United States census records, various yearsWaltham Suburban Directory, various years (include Lincoln)Weston Vital Records

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/45.htm (Henry David Thoreau, “Plan of a House Lot in Lincoln Mass.Belonging to Miss Maria Green,” Aug. 31, 1854).




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(above) Aerial view looking north, with Mackintosh Lane and Lincoln Road at left and Austin-Hodges and Campbell house aboveit, on Peirce Hill Road the Green-Pierce House south of the road and Powers-Murphy on north, while brook can be seen to theirwest; Tower Road has (from north to south) the William C. Peirce and Pike-Donaldson houses to west of road and Green-Brown-Peirce, Buell-Rodiman-Hyde, Jones-Mukhitarian-Levy, and Peirce-Pike houses to the east; (below) aerial view looking west, withhouses on east side of Tower Road from left to right: Patrick J. Lennon, Delahanty-Kelliher, Pierce-Pike, Jones-Mukhitarian-Levy,Buell-Rodiman-Hyde, and Green-Brown-Peirce houses, while west side of road from right to left are the William C. Peirce, Pike-Donaldson, and Matthew and Elizabeth Doherty Houses; Green-Pierce House visible on south side of Peirce Hill Road, whilemuch of the field in center of picture is under conservation restrictions (both © 2010 Microsoft Corp.).




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(above) Assessors’ Wetlands Map shows the wetlands that open up to the south of the Area and helped to define the history ofthe land and its development; (below) Assessors’ Topographical Map showing the same region around the Area, with thedrumlin-hill to the northeast of the Green-Brown-Peirce House (lot 74 27 0) with the land within the Area sloping down to thebrook that runs under Peirce Hill Road, and then rising to the west of the brook to the knoll where the Austin-Hodges House (lot84 8 0) stands.




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(above) Flint Farm Development, showing the Green-Brown-Peirce House (#13) and associated eighteenth-century sawmill site(#15), as well as the associated brown-Russell-Chapin House (#12, LIN.28) as well as other houses constructed on the original750-acre Flint grant between 1700 and 1754. With the mill and the Green-Brown-Peirce House, this Area was an integral part ofthe development of that large grant, a process of development that helped to create conditions and a population to support theformation of the Town of Lincoln (© 1988, John C. MacLean, from A Rich Harvest, published by Lincoln Historical Society).(below) Aerial View looking east of the c. 1731 Green-Brown-Peirce House, with the eighteenth-century section at the bottom leftwith end-gabled roof and center chimney (© 2010 Microsoft Corp.).




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Included in the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1962, the Green-Brown-Peirce House has some of Lincoln’s most notablepaneling with both First Period and Georgian paneling in the same house; (above) West Rooms, First Period paneled fireplacewalls of earliest rooms of the Green-Brown-Peirce House; (below) East Rooms, Georgian-paneled fireplace walls on added“best” rooms of the house.




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A brook extending through the west end of the Powers-Murphy lot had in the 18th century been the site of a mill pond on the lot,with Peirce Hill Road built across the mill dam; (above left) an 1875 Map shows that part of that former mill pond was still inexistence, with the pond shown at the top of this detail from the map (north of Peirce Hill Road, the pond appears to haveextended across a part of current-day Lincoln Road which had then not been built); (above right) seen at bottom is the currentrun of the brook as it goes under Peirce Hill Road, while above and to the right is an earlier culvert; (below) closer view of theimportant earlier culvert on the north side of Peirce Hill Road, marking a historic run of the brook when there had been a dam.Stone of the stones within the brook on the south side of the road may have been part of the construction of the mill.




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1925 Survey of part of the farm of William C. Peirce, as it was being divided between his children. Represented are the 1921Peirce-Pike House (house at left), the 1925 Pike-Donaldson House (marked “bungalow”) next to the c. 1851 William L. G.PeirceBarn, and the c. 1731 Green-Brown-Peirce House at far right. The William C. Peirce House (previously transferred to William’swife) is not shown.




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(above) Historical Photograph of c. 1851 William L. G. Peirce Barn (no longer standing) that stood across Tower Road fromthe Buell-Rodiman-Hyde House, with the Green-Brown-Peirce House at left and the drumlin hill to its northeast (below left)Enhanced Detail of Greenhouse and Chimney as shown in the above photograph, looking across the then open Buell-Rodiman-Hyde lot to the distant greenhouse at the back of the lot and hill beyond—the 1936-37 Cyrus and Persis Murphy Housewas later built on the hill just behind these buildings (c. 1916-20 photograph by Conrad Hathaway). (below top right) stone andcement foundation of building seen to left of chimney (2010 view); (below bottom right) brick and cement foundation ofgreenhouse seen to right of chimney (2010 view).

Chimney




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1940 Survey for the division of the Peirce-Pike House property, laid out on two pages. (left) The lot sold to Buell in 1940 is shownhere as “Lot B” (earlier greenhouses were near the northeast bounds of this lot, below the “Farm Road”—the 1936-37 Cyrus andPersis Murphy House is located on this Farm Road); also shown is the lot sold to Walter and Marion Jones in 1939 and theJones-Mukhitarian-Levy House built there; (right) The division of the Peirce-Pike House lot, with the section shown here on “LotB” remaining with the house. The Peirce-Pike House is at right, with hen houses and a small greenhouse still extant in 1940represented behind it in the center of the lot. Stone walls along Tower Road and an ell off of the William L. G. Peirce Barn on thewest side of Tower Road are also shown, as well as outbuildings of the Green-Brown-Peirce House (Mid. Deeds, 6413:337—1940 plan 654).




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(top, left) 1852 Austin-Hodges House(top, right) c. 1860 Edward F. Hodges Barn

(middle, left) 1854-55 Green-Pierce House(middle, right) 1890 Ellen L. Campbell House

(bottom, left) c. 1860 Hagar-Pierce Barnbehind Green-Pierce House (© 2010 MicrosoftCorp.)(bottom, right) 1895 Ellen L. Campbell Barn




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(top, left) 1870 Delahanty-Kelliher House and 1877 barn(top, right) 1886 Patrick J. Lennon House and 1893 Patrick J.Lennon Barn

(middle, left) 1895 William C. Peirce House(middle, right) 1921 Peirce-Pike House, fronted by stone wallalong Tower Road

(left) 1925 Pike-Donaldson House (originally located next to the1851 William L. G. Peirce Barn, with stonework from that barn stillon the site)




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(top, left) 1920 Matthew and Elizabeth Doherty House and 1925garage(top, right) 1929-30 Powers-Murphy House

(middle, left) 1936-37 Cyrus and Persis Murphy House(middle, right) 1939 Jones-Makhitarian-Levy House

(left) 1940 Buell-Rodiman-Hyde House




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(top, left) 1913 Storrow-Ciraso House(top, right) retaining stone wall, north side of Mackintosh Lane looking west from Lincoln Road

(bottom, left) stone wall, north side of Peirce Hill Road looking west from Tower Road(bottom, right) retaining stone wall, William L. G. Peirce Barn site, looking southeast towards Buell-Rodiman-Hyde House

Peirce Hill Road Historic Area, Lincoln, Massachusetts

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