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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from west.
Locus Map (north at top)
Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer.
Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson
Organization: Brewster Historical Commission
Date (month / year): December 2018
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
65-1-0
65-2-0
Harwich D BRE.483
- 487
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
South Brewster
Address:235-255 Long Pond Road
Historic Name: Hellyer-Seeburger Estate
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1909-10
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Shingle / gambrel block
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles
Roof:wood & asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
2: garage & tower, ca. 1910 (BRE.484)
3: guest cottage, ca. 1910 (BRE.485)
4: lodge, 2015 (BRE.486)
5: recreation center, tennis courts, swimming pool
6: Indoor swimming pool
7: bridge
8: stables, 2012 (235 Long Pond Rd.) (BRE.487)
9: office
10: stables & paddock
stone walls along road and drives
Major Alterations (with dates):
Window sash replaced (house)
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:12.42 (#235) +38.27 (#255) = 50.69
Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area
characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes
built in the mid-20th century.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
D BRE.483-487
Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
The Hellyer-Seeburger Estate house was built ca. 1910 in a Shingle Style with the second story contained in the gambrel roof.
The entrance is contained in a small hipped-roof wing attached to the east end of the house and tucked under a trussed porch. A
deep hipped-roof veranda spans the entire west side of the L-shaped plan. Fenestration on the south street-facing façade is
irregular and without a doorway; three pedimented dormers are evenly spaced in the roof. A large stone chimney is engaged to
the east wall of a gabled wing on the rear. The house is situated at the southerly end of a large, deep parcel amid lawns,
driveways, and stone retaining walls appearing to be of recent construction. A low wall constructed of large stones runs along
the road frontage with squat posts for various driveway openings.
There are numerous outbuildings, the most conspicuous being a square, hipped-roof garage near the road with a two-story
tower of unknown function (perhaps a water tower). What appear to be two guest lodges are located behind the house, and,
farther into the property, there is a large complex of recreational buildings and outdoor tennis courts and a swimming pool. A
paddock and two small stables occupy a clearing in the woods in the southeast corner of the property. A huge Shingle Style
stable has been recently erected on a parcel adjoining on the west (#235) with paddocks on the east and north sides. The two
parcels are linked by a driveway bridging a small waterway. A 2018 aerial view shows a foundation of a past or future barn in a
clearing in the woods that cover the northern half of the parcel.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In August 1909, Rebecca A. Snow of Cohasset sold 45 acres of land with a house and barn on the property to Georgiana
Hellyer of Riverside, Illinois.1 That house and barn apparently were demolished so that Georgiana Hellyer and her husband
Frederick Hellyer, an affluent Chicago tea merchant, could build the extant house and begin to develop the picturesque estate
landscape that now characterizes the property. The architect and builder are not known, but the Sandwich Observer reported
that A. E. Newcomb of Barnstable was working with his father, Brewster house painter David A. Newcomb, on “the Hellyer
place” in March 1910 and that the Hellyers had arrived at their summer home in South Brewster in early May that year.2
Born in England in 1849, Frederick Hellyer was living in Boston in 1874 when he married Boston native Georgianna Tirrell. By
the mid-1870s he and his younger brother Thomas Waterman Hellyer had begun a tea business, later known as Hellyer and
Company. They both lived in Japan, and Frederick and his wife had their first two children there, Marion, in Nagasaki in 1876,
and Arthur Tirrell, in Kobe in 1879. Son Walter was born in 1880 in Boston. The couple’s last two children were born in Japan,
Edith Georgianna in 1882 and Harold Jesse in 1885. By 1888 the brothers had established Hellyer and Company in Chicago,
and while Thomas W. was living in Japan Frederick was the firm’s “resident partner.” The 1900 census lists the family as living
in the Chicago suburb of Riverside with their children Arthur T., by then 21 years old and also a tea merchant; Walter, a bank
clerk; Edith, Harold, and a Swedish immigrant cook.
While they summered in Brewster, the Hellyers were active in the Barnstable Fair; Georgianna Hellyer won first place for her cut
roses, and sons Arthur and Fred both also won premiums for cut flowers. But they enjoyed few summers in the town.
Georgianna Hellyer died in April 1914, Frederick in April 1915. Frederick Hellyer’s will, written in 1905, left most of his property in
trust to his wife and sons Arthur and Walter, and with the death of his wife the property reverted to the sons. In October 1915
they and other Hellyer heirs deeded the Long Pond Road property and four other Brewster parcels to their sister Edith, who had
married George Morrill Silverthorne in Riverside, Illinois, in 1903 (son Arthur and his family spent summers at Centerville by the
1 Rebecca A Snow, Cohasset, to Georgianna Hellyer, 20 August 1909, BCD 298:382.
2 “Brewster,” Sandwich Observer, 22 March 1910, 3, and 10 May 1910, 3. It is possible that the original house on the property was occupied by
domestic help; the 24 May 1910 Sandwich Observer reported that Charles Briggs had succeeded Charles G. Phinney on the Hellyer farm and
had moved his family “to the house owned by Mr. Hellyer.”
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
D BRE.483-487
1920s).3 Silverthorne, born in Illinois in 1877, was a felt manufacturer and by 1920 vice president of the Chicago firm Western
Felt.
Edith Silverthorne owned the property for less than two years. In December 1916 she and her husband sold it to Gertrude
Bradley Seeburger of Chicago and her married daughter, Dorothea S. Cist of Cincinnati.4 Seeburger was the wife of Chicago
realtor Louis Augustus Seeberger, and Dorothea, born in 1886, was the second of their three children. Dorothea married Ohio-
born attorney Charles Franklin “Frank” Cist in 1916 and in 1920 lived with their young son Frank and her parents in Chicago.
Like Georgianna Hellyer, Gertrude Seeberger was an avid gardener who won premiums at the Barnstable Fair in the 1910s and
1920s.
In 1931 Louis A. Seeberger transferred title to his wife and daughter, and the property remained in the Seeberger-Cist families
until 2007. Louis Seeberger’s date of death has not yet been found, but his wife died in 1943 in Trenton, New Jersey, where she
and her husband were spending the winter.5 Dorothea Cist died in 1980, and the property passed to her son John D. Cist in
1986. John David Cist (1920-2010) was a 1942 graduate of Princeton University, later earned a degree in electrical engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and worked as an electrical engineer for DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware.6 In
2007 Cist transferred the property to Brewster Cannon Hill, a company he owned, and the next year that entity sold the property
to Thomas R. and Patricia W. Kennedy of Orleans. The Kennedys placed the 255 Long Pond Road property in trust in 2011.7
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
American Ancestors.org. Massachusetts vital, tax, and probate records.
Ancestry.com. Federal and state censuses, vital records, historic maps, and “Valuation List of the Town of Brewster 1890.”
Barnstable Patriot Digital Newspaper Archive. Sturgis Library website,
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/Sturgis/default.aspx#panel=home.
Brewster Assessors’ Records, Brewster Town Clerk Archives and 1926 Town Report.
Deyo, Simeon L. History of Barnstable County, Mass. New York: H. W. Blake Co., 1890.
Freeman, Frederick. The History of Cape Cod: The Annals of Barnstable County. Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1858-62.
Otis, Amos. Genealogical Notes on Barnstable Families. 2 vols. Barnstable, MA: Patriot Press, 1888.
Sears, Henry J. Brewster Ship Masters. Yarmouthport, MA: C. W. Swift, 1906.
Simpkins, John. “Topographical Description of Brewster.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 10 (1809): 72-79.
MAPS
Walling. Henry Francis. Map of the Counties of Barnstable, Dukes & Nantucket, Massachusetts. Boston: 1858.
Atlas of Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Boston: George H. Walker & Co., 1880.
Atlas of Barnstable County Massachusetts. Boston: Walker Lithograph & Publishing Co., 1910.
3 Arthur T. and Kate Hellyer; Water and Bessie Hellyer; Harold J. and Dorothy Hellyer, all Riverside IL; Marian [Hellyer] and John Liddell,
Shanghai China, to Edith Silverthorne, 15 October 1915, BCD 347:282. See also Indenture, Arthur T. Hellyer and Walter Hellyer, executors
and trustees under will Frederick Hellyer, Riverside IL, to Edith Silverthorne, Riverside IL, 15 October 1915, BCD 342:282; Commonwealth of
Massachusetts Land Court Decree No 5907 in re petition Edith Silverthorne, Riverside IL, 4 October 1916, Certificate of Title 245; and “Plan 0f
Land in Brewster,” March 1916, PLAN 5907-A filed with Certificate of Title 245.
4 Edith and George M. Silverthorne, Riverside IL, to Gertrude B. Seeburger, Chicago, and Dorothea S. Cist, Cincinnati, 18 December 1916,
BCD 354:126. See also “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 20 May 1918, 4: “Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Seeberger of Chicago have arrived at their summer
home in South Brewster.”
5 “Mrs. L. A. Seeberger,” Trenton Evening Times, 8 April 1943, 16.
6 Cist’s 2010 obituary appears in Princeton Alumni Weekly, https://paw.princeton.edu/memorial/john-david-cist-%E2%80%9942.
7 Louis A. Seeberger, Chicago IL, to Gertrude B. Seeberger, Chicago IL and Dorothea S. Cist, Brewster, 1 November 1931, Certificate of Title
2788; Commonwealth of Massachusetts Land Court in re: petition John David Cist, case 5907-S, 27 February 1986, Certificate of Title 105480;
John David Cist, Wilmington DE, to Brewster Cannon Hill, Wilmington DE, 27 September 2007, Certificate of Title 184403; Brewster Cannon
Hill LLC, Wilmington DE, to Thomas R. and Patricia W. Kennedy, 27 September 2007, Certificate of Title 184443; Thomas R. and Patricia W.
Kennedy to Patricia W. Kennedy, trustee 255 Long pond Road Nominee Trust, 25 October 2011, Certificate of Title 195861. See also
“Subdivision Plan of Land in Brewster: Subdivision of Part of Lot A-2 Shown on Plan 5907-B Field with Cert. of Title No. 415,” 6 August 2007,
Land Court Plan 5907-H.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
D BRE.483-487
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View of house from SE.
View looking NE along road, house on left, garage and tower on right; note stone wall.s
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
D BRE.483-487
View of garage and tower from SW.
View of garage & tower from SE.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 5
D BRE.483-487
View of guest cottage from south.
View of lodge from SW.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 6
D BRE.483-487
View of stables from east.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 235-255 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 7
D BRE.483-487
[Delete this page if no Criteria Statement is prepared]
National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form
Check all that apply:
Individually eligible Eligible only in a historic district
Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district
Criteria: A B C D
Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G
Statement of Significance by_____Neil Larson___________________________________
The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here.
The Hellyer – Seeburger Estate, with its house and some outbuildings erected in ca. 1910, appears to be eligible
for the National Register under Criteria A and C at a local level of significance. The property is a distinctive
example of a high-style summer retreat with a substantial Shingle Style residence and associated buildings for
guests and recreation. More research is needed to identify an architect and document the distinguishing
characteristics of the house’s design. Once known for its gardens, the house landscape has been altered in
recent years with the creation of sweeping lawns with mature specimen trees, driveways and stone wall borders.
A formal garden is extant behind the house. The recreation complex has been expanded and horse raising has
become a part of the property’s function with paddocks spread around the property; a large stable was built in
2012 in the southwest corner of the estate. The northern half of the estate likely had an agricultural function in the
early 20th century; it has been reclaimed as forest. The house and grounds appear to retain sufficient historic
integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling and association, but further documentation
will be required to make a clear determination of significance.