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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_1425Follow 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 48-60-0 Harwich C, G, I BRE.509 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address: 1425 Main Street Historic Name: Leland F. & Marjorie M. Eldridge Cottage Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1926-28 Source:deeds, historic atlases, newspapers Style/Form: Craftsman/Cottage Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: two-story house, 2009 garage, 20th century Major Alterations (with dates): new house added in front, 2009 Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.80 Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the 19th and 20th centuries. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1425 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 C, G, I BRE.509 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 Leland F. and Marjorie M. Eldridge Cottage, built ca. 1926, 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 pairs of windows spanned by a full porch with shingled knee walls tucked under the house roof. There are four windows on the east wall and three windows, including a pair, on the west wall. The cottage occupies the center of a deep lot sited on an elevated terrace above the highway. A contemporaneous wood-frame, one-car garage is located behind the cottage approached by a driveway that enters the southeast corner of the frontage and passes below the house before climbing the site in the rear. A large two-story wood frame house with a gable roof was built on the front edge of the terrace between the cottage and the highway in 2009. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house at 1425 Main Street is one of several built in the 1920s on land formerly owned by Anthony F. Brier (1850-1924), an Azorean immigrant farmer who had lived in Brewster since the 1870s. In June 1922 Brier sold a 153x212 square-foot lot to Curtis C. Eldridge, who sold it undeveloped about four years later to another branch of the family in Brewster, Leland F. Eldridge. By June 1928, one newspaper account documents, this Eldridge had built a “cottage” on the property.1 Born in Brewster in 1895, Leland Foster Eldridge was the son of James Emery Eldridge and his wife Carrie S. Foster. His great- uncle, William Emery Eldridge, lived opposite this house at 1424 Main Street (BRE.352). By 1918, when he was 23 years old, he was working as a chauffeur for Augustus L. Thorndike, a Boston attorney, realtor, and banking commissioner who had married Cora Nickerson in 1885. She was the granddaughter of Brewster native Frederick Nickerson (1809-70), and she and her husband had owned property in Brewster since 1890; Boston directories show A. L. and Cora Thorndike on Commonwealth Avenue and in Brewster from 1912 until Thorndike died in 1922. Leland Eldridge served as a private in Company B of the 66th Engineers during World War I and returned to chauffeuring afterward, though whether he continued to work for the Thorndikes is unknown. The 1920 census lists him as a chauffeur for a private family living in his parents’ Brewster household, though by 1925 he was living and working in Newton. In that year he married Marjorie Mercer, who had come to the United States from her native Newfoundland in 1921. Leland and Marjorie Eldridge appear to have rented the West Brewster cottage to others often and sometimes stayed with his parents when they visited Brewster. By 1930 Eldridge was a chauffeur for and living on the property of Fanny Reed Douwse, the widow of West Newton attorney and industrialist William B. H. Douwse, and he remained in her employ through at least 1949. Leland and Marjorie Eldridge sold 1425 Main Street in 1956 to the sisters Evelyn F. Plummer (1896-1983) and Mabelle L. Plummer (1893-1974).2 The Plummers were both secretaries for New England Mutual Life Insurance Company in Boston and lived in Dorchester with their mother Carrie Carcher Plummer Regan, who had married Irish immigrant motorman Daniel Regan in 1904 after her husband Francis Plummer died in 1900. In May 1983 Evelyn Plummer sold 1425 Main Street to Earl and Marjorie Burgess and reserved a life estate for herself; she died in October of the same year. The Burgess family owned the property until 2005. The owner in 2019, Joseph M. Mashrick, acquired 1425 Main Street in 2008.3 1 Anthony F. Brier to Curtis C. Eldridge, 21 June 1922, BCD 395:411; Curtis C. Eldridge to Leland F. Eldridge, 20 March 1926, BCD 395:412 “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 9 June 1928, 2. Brier sold the lot on which 1407 Main Street (BRE.350) was built in 1922 as well. 2 Leland F. and Marjorie M. Eldridge to Evelyn F. Plummer and Mabelle L. Plummer, 15 October 1956, BCD 956:327. 3 Evelyn F. Plummer to Earl and Marjorie Burgess, May 1983, BCD 3768:310; Francis J. Burgess, 1425 Main Street, to Thomas and Natalie Gennett, Denver CO, 20 February 2005, BCD 19560:309; Thomas and Natalie Gennett, Denver CO, to Joseph M. Mashrick, 1425 Main Street, 4 August 2008, BCD 23105:81; Joseph M. Mashrick and Amy B. Maloney to Joseph M. Mashrick, 1425 Main Street, 11 August 2017, BCD 30734:. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1425 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 C, G, I BRE.509 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 east. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1425 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 C, G, I BRE.509 View of cottage on right and new house on left from SE. View of cottage on left and new house on right from SW. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1425 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 C, G, I BRE.509 View of garage from east.