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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_1960Follow 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 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 67-97-0 Harwich B, G, I BRE.373 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): Brewster Village Address:1960 Main Street Historic Name: Dawes Memorial Hall Uses:Present: thrift shop Original: parish house Date of Construction: 1908 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: none Major Alterations (with dates): window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.63 Setting: The building is in the midst 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 1960 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 B, G, I BRE.373 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 Dawes Memorial Hall, built 1908, is a one-story wood frame institutional building with a hipped roof designed in the Craftsman Style. In form and style, it resembles many summer cottages built in the period. The front façade contains a central entrance flanked by windows and protected by an overhanging eave; the doorway is surmounted by a plaque with the building’s name and 1908 construction date. The easterly side wall contains four windows with a wide gap between the two nearest the front filled with an engaged brick chimney for an interior fireplace. The westerly side contains three windows combined in a group. All windows have their original louvered blinds. A door has been added midway along the wall for accessibility and is linked to the front by a wood ramp running along the wall. Behind this added doorway is a bumpout that contains a bathroom, an original feature. The rear wall contains a central doorway flanked by windows. The hall is situated in the center of its frontage close to the street but set back at the base of an embankment probably resulting from years of highway improvements. The sides of the triangular lot taper to a point in the rear, and the areas on the sides and rear of the building are devoted to driveways and parking. At the point, the property is wooded and adjacent to a small waterway where a nature trail originates. There are three sheds on the property. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: Cape Cod newspapers document that Dawes Hall, named for longtime Brewster Unitarian minister Thomas Dawes (1818-1904), was built between November 1908 and early January 1909. No deeds have been found transferring the land on which it is located, which suggests that it was built on land the First Parish Church Society already owned. The funds to build the hall came in part from Dawes’s heirs. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Thomas Dawes was the grandson of Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dawes (1758-1825) and great grandson of Thomas Dawes (1731-1809), famed Revolutionary War militia colonel, early state official, and architect. Dawes’s father, also Thomas, was a merchant in Baltimore for many years and later a ship broker in Boston. His son Thomas, Unitarian pastor in Brewster from 1872, graduated Harvard Divinity School in 1842 and served pastorates in Fairhaven (1844-53), South Boston (1853-60), Walpole, New Hampshire (1860-63), and Nantucket before coming to Brewster. He and his wife, Fairhaven native Lydia Ames Sawin (1823-92), remained in town for the rest of their lives. Thomas Dawes died in November 1904, one month after he resigned his Brewster pastorate.1 Newspapers state that his “valuable library” was given to the Brewster Ladies’ Library in May 1905, and in March 1906 the Unitarian parish “received quite a large sum of money for the purpose of building a small parish house for church purposes. It will soon be erected near the church and will be known as the Dawes Memorial. Some of the money was given by the heirs of the late Rev. Thomas Dawes.”2 On 9 November 1908 the Hyannis Patriot reported, “The foundation for the Dawes Memorial building is being laid and the work will be pushed right along with the expectation of dedicating it by Jan. 1, 1909.” The first service was held in the not-yet-finished hall on the evening of 27 December 1908, and on New Year’s Eve members of the parish and its Sunday school had a “social time” in the building at which Brewster native Joseph Crosby Lincoln, who had by then published at least six of his 49 novels, read from his works, physician Louis A. Crocker sang, and each child was given a bag of candy and a “remembrance.” By 9 January 1909 the building was completed.3 Dawes Memorial Hall was used for all sorts of church-related activities. The Ladies’ (or Woman’s) Alliance and the First Parish Boys Club regularly offered suppers, either for meetings or to raise funds; adults played whist and children had tables of games and puzzles at numerous “sociables”; the annual parish meetings and summer sales of the Unitarian Society took place here; 1 “Death of Rev. Thomas Dawes,” Barnstable Patriot, 28 November 1904; “Rev. Thomas Dawes,” Yarmouth Register, 3 December 1904, 2; Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston: Graves and Steinbarger, 1901), 413. 2 “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 27 May 1905, 4, and 31 March 1906, 4. 3 “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 9 November 1908, 3; “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 9 January 1909, 4. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1960 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 B, G, I BRE.373 local women met regularly here during World War I to make surgical dressings; a community song service took place in the hall in January 1926. In 1928 “prominent men” from Brewster and other Cape towns met in the building to discuss the possibility of forming a cooperative bank; in the same year Lucy Wheelock of Boston’s Wheelock School spoke here “about the great work done by the kindergarten schools.” Newspapers recount numerous Halloween parties, chowder suppers, meat pie suppers, and card parties at Dawes Memorial. In 1940 residents met to organize a new golf course association in Brewster in the hall. In January 1943 the church held its services at Dawes Memorial to save on fuel oil, and in June 1945 the building was opened to ““teen-agers of the town every Tuesday and Saturday evening for ping-pong, games and dancing.”4 Dawes Memorial is now the church-run Brewster Thrift Store. 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. 4 See, for example, Yarmouth Register, 23 January 1909, 4; 16 October 1909, 5; 24 June 1916, 1; 14 June 1924, 8; 18 October 1924, 1; 16 June 1928, 5; 22 September 1928, 5. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1960 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 B, G, I BRE.373 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View from NE. View from south. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1960 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 B, G, I BRE.373 View of shed south of hall from NW. Wooded section of parcel in background. View of sheds along SW lot line from east.