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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_1407Follow 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 SE. Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): May 2019 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 48-59-0 Harwich C, G, I BRE.350 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): North Brewster Address:1407 Main Street Historic Name: William F. & Ellen Cordes Baker House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1922 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Craftsman/cottage Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: garage, late 20th century Major Alterations (with dates): none Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.11 Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the 19th & 20th centuries. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1407 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 C, G, I BRE.350 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 F. and Ellen Cordes Baker House, built in 1922, is a one-story wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof designed in the Craftsman Cottage mode. The narrow front façade contains a central entrance flanked by two wide windows spanned by a full porch with shingled knee walls tucked under the house roof. A hipped-roof dormer with one window is centered on the front at the ridgeline. There are two windows on each side wall. The house occupies the frontage of the tiny parcel set back behind a small yard now paved for parking. A driveway enters the southwest corner of the lot and extends past the house to a wood frame one-car garage with a front gable roof in the rear yard. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In mid-December 1922, weir fisherman William F. Baker (1862-1942) acquired the parcel of cleared land on which 1407 Main Street stands from Christena K. Malonson, who had acquired it from Anthony F. Brier only two weeks earlier. Nothing has yet been learned about Malonson except that she was living in Brewster when she acquired her first tract of land in South Brewster in 1915. No buildings are mentioned in the transfer of the parcel to Baker.1 Born in Truro, William F. Baker was the son of Ambrose and Mary E. Baker, and in 1888 he married Ellen Rich Cordes, daughter of Charles and Martha A. Paine Cordes of the same town. Cordes’s father was a hotel proprietor, and her grandfather Giraud Cordes had emigrated from France and was living in Truro since at least 1817. By 1900 William Baker was still living in Truro and working in the weir fishery, and by 1910 he and his wife had moved to Provincetown; they continued to be mobile even after buying the West Brewster property. The 1929 directory shows Baker as retired and living on King’s Highway in Brewster; but the 1930 census lists him and his wife in Provincetown and living with her brother John A. Cordes, a public school janitor. By 1940 the census lists him on State Road in Brewster and working again as a fisherman; his wife and brother-in-law were still part of the household, and John Cordes was farming and was 85 years old. William F. Baker died in 1942, and his will left his real estate “near the main highway in Brewster” to Eleanor Levine, who had lived in Brewster since 1920. Levine was born at the Tewksbury State Hospital in 1913, and by 1920 she was living in the household of John B. and Clara J. Berry in Brewster; she was still there in 1930. She graduated Brewster High School in 1931 and graduated Hyannis State Teachers’ College in 1936. In 1938 she married Barnstable printer Eric Edward Jusilla, a fact Baker appears not to have known. After this death she and the executor of Baker’s will sold the property to Charles F. Cordes of Plymouth, and on the same day Cordes added the widowed Ellen Cordes Baker to the title.2 Born in 1869, Charles Francis Evans Cordes was another of Ellen Cordes Baker’s brothers. He was a railroad brakeman in Truro in 1900, and in 1907 he married Blanche Allerton Paine, also from Truro. By 1930 he was a railroad baggage master and living in Plymouth with his wife. Two months after acquiring 1407 Main Street, Cordes and Ellen Baker sold the property to Winnifred Foster of Brewster, and in 1954 her son George W. Foster sold the property to Robert F. and Catherine M. Clifford, who were possibly its first long-time owner/occupant even though they at first occupied it seasonally.3 Robert Clifford was born in New Hampshire in 1897 and was a conversation officer for that state; he was also an officer of the Society of Cape Cod 1 Anthony F. Brier to Christena K. Malonson, 30 November 1922, BCD 392:54; Christena K. Malonson to William F. Baker, 16 December 1922, BCD 390:384. 2 Eleanor L. Jussila (fka Eleanor Levine) to Charles F. Cordes, 8 June 1943, BCD 602:368; Henry F. Peirce, executor will William F. Baker, to Charles F. Cordes, Plymouth, 8 June 1943, BCD 602:367; Charles F. Cordes to Ellie R. Baker and Charles F. Cordes, 8 June 1943, BCD 602:370 . 3 Ellie R. Baker and Charles F. Cordes, Plymouth, to Winnifred Foster, 17 August 1943, BCD 605:106; Winnifred Foster to George W. Foster, 2 September 1947, BCD 880:548; George W. Foster to Robert F. and Catherine M. Clifford, 25 June 1954, BCD 949:284. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1407 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 C, G, I BRE.350 Craftsmen in the mid-1960s. He died in 1897, and Catherine M. Clifford sold 1407 Main Street to Jeffrey C. Nutting, who owned it only briefly. Maura T. Corson and Cindy C. McMillan of Orleans bought the property in 2006 and were owners of it in 2019.4 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, 2019) View from south. 4 Catherine M. Clifford, Dover NH, to Jeffrey C. Nutting, 17 November 1999, BCD 12685:111: same, title 949:284; Ruth D. Smith, Waltham, to Maura T. Corson and Cindy C. McMillan, Orleans, 10 November 2006, BCD 21584:235.