The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My Public Portal AboutLongPondRd_870Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.4/11 FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph View from east. 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 86-3-0 Harwich D BRE.491 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): South Brewster Address:870 Long Pond Road Historic Name: William G. & Annie S. Rodd House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1925 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Craftsman / cottage Architect/Builder: possibly William G. Rood Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles / wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: garage Major Alterations (with dates): Wing added on north Window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.31 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 870 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 D BRE.491 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 William G. and Annie S. Rodd House, built ca. 1925, is a one-story, wood frame single dwelling of the Craftsman Cottage type, an affordable house form and style widely published in builders’ journals and manufactured as catalog kit houses by firms such as Sears, Roebuck and Co. and others. It is distinguished by its low walls, flattened front-gable roof, deep eaves, and a simple front façade with a central entrance flanked by windows. Wood shingle siding was an exterior material appropriate for the Cape Cod context. Later in the 20th century, a cross-gable wing was added to increase the floor area of the small plan. Triangular transoms above double windows on the north gable end provided a modernist element from the Post-WWII period. The house is situated in the back corner of a small lot at a low elevation below the highway. A driveway winds down a wooded embankment that screens the house from the public way opening up into a small yard. A one-car garage appearing to be of age consistent with the house is located behind the house. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The houses at both 870 and 888-92 Long Pond Road (BRE.220) stand on land that was once part of the Simeon Small farm. The house numbered 870 does not appear on any map up to 1910, and judging by its style and by an intimation from deeds it was probably built about 1925, when the Rev. Herman E. Brady sold part of his larger tract to William G. Rodd of Milton; the deed does not cite the presence of any buildings on the lot.1 Brady and Rodd knew each other in Milton, according to one of Brady’s grandsons, Kenneth E. Pettengill: “My grandfather had a friend named Mr. Rodd who was a water commissioner of Milton and he and his wife were good friends and they had a place, they’d bought a little piece of land from my grandpa.”2 Rodd was a carpenter, and it is possible that he built the cottage himself. Born on Prince Edward Island in Canada about 1873, William George Rodd was living and working in Boston in 1893 when he married Annie L. Hansalpaker, a native of Fredericton, New Brunswick (one record has her birthplace as Newfoundland). By 1910 Rodd was a builder in Milton, and he and his wife had three children—Gladys L., Ernest E., and Doris M.—between 1896 and 1907. By 1930 Rodd and his son Ernest were both building contractors, and Ernest continued to live with his parents in 1940. The family is always recorded in Milton censuses and no doubt used the 870 Long Pond Road house as a summer place or for rental income. In 1939 Rodd sold 870 Long Pond Road to Caroline P. Richenburg of Boston, whose husband Paul J. Richenburg was a president and treasurer of Roslindale Coal and Ice Company; Rodd died in 1944.3 Richbenburg had been a manufacturer of glass shades in 1910 when he married Caroline P. Chatto, a native of Freeport, Maine. The 1940 Boston census lists the couple in a Roslindale household with their 16-year-old daughter Roberta; their 18-year-old married daughter Virginia, her husband John Burchill, a factory clerk, and their infant son William; and 26-year-old son Paul, who worked as a bookkeeper for his father’s business and lived there with his wife, Opal, and young son. Caroline Richenburg continued to own and use the property until she died, by mid-April 1963. Her executor sold 870 Long Pond Road to her daughter Virginia Burchill and her husband.4 In 1989 the executor of Virginia Burchill’s will sold the property to John Fishman and Jean Pettengill of Newtown, Pennsylvania, whose great-grandfather Herman Edgar Brady had owned 888-92 Long Pond Road since 1902. Fishman and Pettengill owned 870 Long Pond Road until 2005. The owners of record in 2018, Martin T. Rochette and Laura L. Lodge, acquired 870 Long Pond Road in 2015.5 1 Herman E. Brady, Milton, to William G. Rodd, Milton, 22 June 1925, BCD 416:27. 2 Ken Pettengill, interview with John Rice, 1 May 2001, Brewster Ladies’ Library Oral History Collection. 3 William G. Rodd, Milton, to Caroline P. Richenburg, Boston, 26 September 1939, BCD 558:86. 4 George Richenburg, Roslindale, executor will Caroline P. Richenburg, to John J. and Virginia G. Burchill, 19 April 1963, BCD 1198:494. 5 Virginia Ruggiero, Stoughton, executor will Virginia G. Burchill, to John Fishman and Jean Pettengill, Newtown PA, 8 September 1989, BCD 6874:17; John Fishman and Jean Pettengill, Cranston RI, to Cathy Mangione Schaeffer, Chatham, 17 November 2005, BCD 20482:79; Cathy Mangione Schauffer, 870 Long Pond Road, to Martin T. Rochette and Laura L. Lodge, Durham CT, 16 January 2015, BCD 28636:216. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 870 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 D BRE.491 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. PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from north.