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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_1714Follow 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 NW. Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): April 2019 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 56-64-0 Harwich B, G, I BRE.364 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): Brewster Village Address:1714 Main Street Historic Name: Brewster Garage Uses:Present: commercial Original: automobile repair garage Date of Construction: 1913 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Craftsman Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete pad Wall/Trim: concrete stucco/wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: none Major Alterations (with dates): front vehicle door infilled for standard doors Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.40 Setting: The building is on the edge of Brewster Village, which is largely residential but with religious, civic and commercial properties mixed in and ranging in date from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1714 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 B, G, I BRE.364 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 Brewster Garage, built in 1913, is a large one-story, masonry commercial building with a hipped roof designed in a Craftsman style. Constructed for automobile sales and repairs, the building contains vehicle bays with overhead doors on its two street facades; the door centered on the Main Street front was infilled for the insertion of standard doors when the function of the building changed to non-automotive. This doorway is flanked by two windows with transoms on either side and surmounted by a hipped roof dormer centered in the roof. The building’s form and balanced façade is similar to, although much larger than, summer cottages of the period. The long Long Pond Road facade contains three large overhead doors, a standard door, and two windows positioned close to the front where offices likely were located. The opposing westerly side is composed mostly of windows, to illuminate work areas within, with two standard doors interspersed. The function of a hipped-roof wing in the rear, two bays deep by four bays wide, is unclear, as is the use of a two-story octagonal tower with wood shingle sides and a eight- sided hipped roof in the southwest corner of the building. The building footprint covers most of the small parcel leaving a shallow forecourt on the Main Street front and driveways and parking areas paved on the other three sides. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In January 1913 Abbott N. Baker, who lived just west of the intersection of Main Street and Long Pond Road, sold 60 square rods at the intersection to William S. Tubman (1858-1925).1 Born in Boston, Tubman was the son of William and Mary Shields Tubman (1823-1900), and his Ireland-born mother had lived in Brewster since at least 1855, when she was a domestic servant in the household of merchant Jeremiah Mayo. By 1860 she was in her own house at 45 Long Pond Road, which Mayo’s widow deeded to her in 1869. By 1880 son William was a machinist living in Boston, and in 1881 he married Henrietta Cardinal, a Montreal native who had moved with her family to Boston when she was 19. Tubman was a machinist in 1880 and a mechanical engineer by 1900. He was an elevator engineer and repairman in 1910 and the New England sales agent for Gurney Electric Elevator Company by 1913, the year he moved into his late mother’s home and bought the parcel from Baker. By December 1913 Tubman had built the Brewster Garage on the property, and a March 1914 advertisement in the Yarmouth Register declared that Tubman and his “skilled mechanics” did automobile repairs, machine work, and vulcanizing, recharged car storage batteries, and sold automobiles.2 In November 1915 Tubman also used the garage to host the launch meeting of the Brewster Club, whose aim was “to see what could be done to bring the men of Brewster into an organization which would provide them with rational amusement in their leisure hours; an organization entirely free from sectarian or political bias.”3 By 1920 Tubman’s brother-in-law Hormisdas Joseph Cardinal (1870-1942) was working at Brewster Garage and living with Tubman and his wife; another of his wife’s siblings, Marie J. Cardinal, was also in the household and worked with her sister Henrietta as a confectioner and caterer.4 William S. Tubman died in April 1925,and in 1927 his widow sold the garage and its lot to her sister Marie, who was in the process of buying other properties in the neighborhood.5 Her brother Hormisdas took over Brewster Garage and was sometimes assisted there by his nephew Louis L. Gervais (1878-1962), daughter of another Cardinal sibling, Agathe Philomene Cardinal Gervais. William Tubman’s widow Henriette died in September 1929, and the garage business remained her brother’s until his own death in 1942. 6 It then passed to Louis L. Gervais and remained in his family until 1971.7 The property was still in business 1 Abbott N. Baker to William S. Tubman, 8 January 1913, BD 321:11. 2 Yarmouth Register, 21 March 1914, 7; that the garage was open by 13 December 1913 is indicated in a Register report on that day that Roy W. Nickerson, who had worked at Chatham’s Bearso garage, was “now connected” with Brewster Garage. 3 “Brewster Club,” Yarmouth Register, 13 November 1915, 3. 4 On the Cardinals’ business see Yarmouth Register, 1 May 1915, 5. 5 Henriette Tubman to Marie J. Cardinal, 26 November 1927, BCD 451:270. 6 “Mrs. Henriette C. Tubman,” Yarmouth Register, 7 September 1929, 7, and “Brewster,” ibid., 20 February 1942, 4. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1714 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 B, G, I BRE.364 as Brewster Garage in 1993. It was owned by the family of David and Nancy Maguire from 1971 to 1984. Robert B. Drummond, who owned the building from 1984 to 1998, received an award for his renovation of the garage in 1997 from the Cape Cod Realtors Association. In January 1998 Peter C. and Marsha S. Malone of South Natick acquired the property, which in 2019 was Seaport Shutter and owned by the Malones’ company Sea Watch LLC.8 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. 7 Agathe P. Gervais, Mariette G. Arthur, both Brewster, and Treffle F. Gervais Jr., Yarmouth, to David P. and Nancy J. Maguire, 19 August 1971, BCD 1526:1013; Agathe P. Gervais, Mariette G. Arthur, both Brewster, and Treffle F. Gervais Jr., Yarmouth, to David P. and Nancy J. Maguire, 19 August 1971, BCD 1526:1013. 8 John J. Maguire to Robert B. Drummond, 4 June 1984, BCD 4133:169; Robert B. Drummond to Peter C. and Marsha S. Malone, South Natick, 16 January 1998, BCD 11173:1; Peter C. and Marsha S. Malone, South Natick, to Sea Watch LLC, 1714 Main Street, 30 August 2016, BCD 29902:170. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1714 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 B, G, I BRE.364 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View from north. View from east.