Loading...
HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_2635 2655Follow 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 SW Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): June 2019 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 89-18-0 Harwich BRE.514 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address: 2635-2655 Main Street Historic Name: Foster Square Uses:Present: shopping center Original: shopping center Date of Construction: Edgar C. & Mertis Foster Cottage, ca. 1905 Foster Square Strip Mall, ca. 1980 Cumberland Farms Store, ca. 2018 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Shingle/cottage (house) Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: brick (house) Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood (house) Roof:asphalt shingles (house) Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: none Major Alterations (with dates): cottage moved, wings removed & repurposed, ca.1980 Condition:fair Moved: no yes Date: ca. 1980 Acreage:2.04 Setting: The house is situated in a mixed-use area characterized by commercial buildings, summer cottages, and retirement homes built in the 20th century. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.514 Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Foster Square developed in a number of stages around the story-and-a-half wood-shingled cottage built ca. 1905. The building has been shorn of its wings, apparently a cross wing containing the entrance, and relocated to its current position engaged to the front of a strip mall in ca. 1980. The house is significant locally for an unusual box soffit with an arched interior surviving on the front façade, as the sole surviving feature of an earlier commercial development known as Foster Square. The original buildings—a gas station, post office, package store, and general store—were arranged in a connected row along the Main Street frontage. A second string of stores, built in ca. 1980, was oriented perpendicular to the street with the cottage at the front. The design reflected the local taste with wood shingle siding, gable roofs, dormers, and a Colonial cupola. Recently the westerly parking lot façade of this complex was refreshed with clapboard siding and contemporary doors and windows. Still more recently (2018), a large Cumberland Farms gas station convenience store was built on the westerly side of the frontage and parking lot. It replaced an earlier Cumberland Farms convenience store built ca. 2000, which replaced the original buildings of Foster Square. The new building follows the enduring local Colonial Revival tradition with a gable roof, columned porch, roof-edge balustrade and cupola. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In June 1892, the heirs of master mariner Godfrey Hopkins (1805-71) sold 30 acres stretching from Main Street to Cape Cod Bay to George Thacher Foster (1860-1930) for $1700.1 The map of East Brewster in the 1880 Barnstable County Atlas depicts the house and barn of “Mrs. G. Hopkins” (Reliance Mayo Hopkins) just northwest of the intersection of Main Street and what became Thad Ellis Road and undeveloped land ranging east to the homestead of Warren Nickerson. Her will and newspaper accounts make plain that she remained in this house at least seasonally until she died in 1898, so presumable she was granted life tenancy.2 This house appears to have been located west of what is now Seaway Lane and by the time a new atlas was published in 1905, it is no longer. Instead, Foster’s property east of the Hopkins house lot contains two dwellings and outbuildings, evidently built after 1892. George T. Foster was the son of Thacher Foster (1819-1901) and Susan Emery Foster, active in local politics, and a prominent builder in Brewster.3 In July 1906 the Yarmouth Register noted that Foster and his wife, Winnifred Phinney Foster, had just begun to occupy “their new home but recently completed,” probably one of the dwellings depicted on this parcel. In December 1913, Foster deeded a parcel of unspecified size to his wife, and in 1920 Winnifred deeded that parcel to Mertis L. Foster.4 Mertis L. Foster was born in June 1889 to mariner Ezra Baker, a native of Dennisport, and his wife Susan A. Clark Baker, the daughter of Darius and Amelia Clark of Brewster, who married in 1881. She was one of seven children. Her father died in 1902, and by 1910 her mother was doing domestic work and living with three of her daughters. Susie, then 26 years old, and Mertis, then 20, were both domestics, while 24-year-old Amelia was a milliner with her own shop. In June 1914 Mertis married Edgar C. Foster, a distant relation of George T. Foster.5 Edgar Foster was born in 1887 in Brewster and was the son of Herbert Frank Foster (1859-1928) and his wife Florence Cahoon (1861-1959). His father had lived and worked for a time in the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain, but by 1900 the family was back 1 Godfrey Hopkins, Malissa H. Crosby, and Reliance Hopkins, Brewster; and Louise O. Knowles, Chicago IL, to George T. Foster, 22 June 1892, BCD 202:331. 2 See, for example, “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 29 October 1889, 5; 9 May 1893; 26 April 1897, 3; 26 July 1900, 3. 3 Foster built cottages for Daniel Mullen of Boston and Gilbert E. Ellis, among others; see “East Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 14 July 1906, 4; 30 March 1907, 5; 27 July 1912, 1; 4 April 1914, 4; 4 December 1915, 4; 19 February 1916, 7; 27 May 1916, 1. 4 George T. Foster to Winnifred Foster, 11 December 1913, BCD 330:158; Winnifred Foster to George T. Foster, 16 February 1915, BCD 337:433 (correcting lot dimensions); Winnifred Foster to Mertie L. Foster, 16 February 1920, BCD 372:243. 5 Edgar’s great-great grandfather Samuel Foster (1775-1824) and George T. Foster’s grandfather Isaac Foster (1770-1855) were either brothers or half-brothers, sons of Captain Isaac Foster (1739-1824). INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.514 in Brewster, and a May 1903 issue of the Barnstable Patriot noted that Foster “had made a beginning in the grocery business. He drives a new order wagon.” In 1905 he converted the former District No. 4 schoolhouse into a grocery store on land he owned at 3447 Main Street just east of Crosby Lane (BRE.464) and out of which he operated the East Brewster post office. Son Edgar worked in his father’s store from a young age and was shown as a clerk in the store in the 1910 census, and in 1915 his father built an annex on his store to house an ice cream parlor that Mertis was to manage.6 By 1919, Edgar Foster had built a stand near Sea Pines School to sell ice cream and soda during the summer, and in January 1920 the Register reported that he had moved the store and post office “across the street to the land of Mr George Foster.”7 The next month Winnifred Foster sold the parcel to Mertis L. Foster, who had been appointed East Brewster’s postmaster in March 1919. By May 1920 Edgar had enlarged the store building to include an ice cream parlor, and he and Mertis moved into a cottage located behind the store.8 In 1921 Edgar began a grocery route, as his father Frank had run from his store further east, and just as it had been his mother Florence’s job to run the grocery most of the time, it was probably Mertis Foster’s job to run the store on this site as well as the post office.9 In late March 1922, Mertis Foster opened a millinery parlor in Brewster, possibly in the store/post office building, and in April the Register noted that her husband was remodeling the interior of the building in part by building a partition between the ice cream parlor and the post office.10 Tax records for 1926 credit Edgar Foster with a house valued at $2500, a store at $350, two gasoline tanks at $1000, a one-acre homestead lot, a half-acre cranberry bog, and $400 in personal estate including stock in trade. A postcard view of the store shows two gasoline pumps, possibly with the circular Gulf Oil logo on top, in front of the store/post office building; the style of the pumps suggests the image dates from the 1920s. The 1929 Brewster directory lists Edgar C. Foster as a grocer on Main Street in East Brewster and living in a house nearby; wife Mertis is listed as the postmaster. By 1930, though, Edgar Foster had become a riding stable worker, and for much of the 1930s he was living during the winter months in Melrose, where he worked for Benjamin Crocker’s riding academy in that town, and he traveled with Crocker’s horses back and forth between Melrose and Brewster.11 In 1930 Edgar and Mertis Foster shared their house with three boarders, one of them Arthur E. Coakley, a salesman at the store and ultimately her adopted son.12 In 1940 the census listed Edgar Foster as a general laborer, Mertis as postmaster, and Arthur Coakley as assistant postmaster. 6 “Thirty-first Anniversary,” Yarmouth Register, 4 December 1915, 4, noted of Frank Foster that “in his fourteenth year he managed successfully a herd of six cows and ran a milk route for a farmer in Brighton. At this early age he bought and sold cattle at the Brighton market. Since then he has been engaged in commercial life and several years ago established a grocery store in his native East Brewster.” See also ibid., 19 March 1910, 7: “We regret to note that some of our young men have been on the sick list. Edgar Foster has had a severe attach of grippe, and we miss him in the store, where he is chief assistant to his father, H. F. Foster, 2d.” His father was called “2d” because another man with the same man, a house painter, lived in Brewster in these years. On the annex see Barnstable Patriot, 27 July 1915, 2. 7 “East Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 8 November 1919, 5, and 17 January 1920, 8. The second article stated the editor’s opinion that “we would be better pleased to see him move it further to the east. It would be nearer East Brewster.” 8 “East Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 15 May 1920, 3, which also reported—curiously, three months after the date of the deed—““Rumor has it that Mr Edgar Foster has bought the residence formerly owned by Mrs George Foster.” 9 Interview with Florence Catherine Foster, East Brewster, Cape Codder, 1 December 1950; thanks to Faythe Ellis for providing a transcript of this article. 10 “East Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 27 March 1922; “East Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 22 April 1922, 8. 11 See, for example, Yarmouth Register, 23 April 1932, 2, and 6 January 1934, 8. This Benjamin Crocker is obscure. He was born about 1893 and had a sister, Julia Olive, born about 1908; their mother, Josephine, married Melrose riding school instructor Myron A. Kimball by 1930. He was the owner of Melrose Riding School, and by 1932 stepson Benjamin Crocker was running the school. See “Myron A. Kimball Dies at His Home in Melrose,” Boston Globe, 12 January 1932, 15. 12 Born in Sherborn, Arthur Edison Coakley was with Mertis Foster in two automobile accidents in the 1930s. In 1930 Foster and Coakley were passengers in her car, driven by Raymond Brown, another of Foster’s employees; Brown hit a tree when he tried to recover a cigar he had dropped. In 1937 Coakley was driving Foster’s car when they collided with a car driven by Edwin V. B. Parke of Winchester, a summer resident of Bass River, who was ultimately charged with drunk driving and “leaving the scene after causing property damage and personal injury.” Foster’s car rolled over on its side and caught fire as gas spilled from it, and one account states that Coakley rescued Foster from the car. She was injured in both accidents. See “Car Hits Tree,” Yarmouth Register, 12 April 1930, 8; “Hyannis Firemen Out to Auto Crash,” Hyannis Patriot, 17 June 1937, 2; and “Automobile Accidents on the Cape,” Yarmouth Register, 18 June 1937, 1. Coakley enlisted in the Army in 1942 and was stationed at a military post office in Charleston, SC; he visited Foster often when on furlough. He later served as a postal clerk on a Red Cross ship during the War, and he married in Brewster in 1946. On Coakley see Ellis Morris, “From the Morris Chair,” The Register, 25 September 1980, 12. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.514 By 1934 Mertis Foster was licensed to sell liquor in the Foster Square store, and in 1939 a telegraph office opened at the East Brewster post office. In the same year she acquired three lots of a planned subdivision ranging along both sides of Seaway Drive nearly to the shore from Warren E. Burgess of Brewster and Walter L. Conwell of Hull.13 These lots were just west of her own property at the intersection of Main Street and Seaway Drive, and a corporate-style Gulf gas station, embellished with a pedimented frontispiece and cupola on top of an otherwise Moderne block, was erected there on land leased to the oil company.14 A threat to close the East Brewster post office in 1942 might have motivated Foster to create new quarters for it.15 In 1943 she bought three additional lots from Burgess and Conwell that ranged north from the first three along Seaway Drive. Three years later, the Register announced that Foster “is about ready to have her new post office building moved up from the old Radar grounds” to her Main Street address. According to one local historian, the radar grounds were built during World War II on Cape Cod Bay several hundred feet from the landing off Crosby Lane and were abandoned afterwards.16 In its new location is was repurposed and given a new façade with a pedimented central bay distinguishing the post office flanked by storefronts much in the same manner as the gas station. One of those commercial spaces contained Mertis Foster’s liquor store. And in 1948, George W. Foster, the son of George T., built a 30x50-foot store on the east end of the post office building that replaced the Edgar and Mertis’s old store. Manny and Bernice Packett ran a grocery store in this space in the 1950s, and it later housed Mertis Foster’s antique shop.17 The development was named Foster Square; the Foster’s cottage remained in the background. In 1948 Mertis Foster gained media attention when she celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of air mail. She arranged for Arthur Coakley to fly a rented Piper Cub from the Brewster Golf Club to Hyannis Airport with two sacks of mail; in them were almost 2,000 letters that she had cancelled with an anniversary stamp and that Coakley had rubber-stamped with his name as pilot and messenger for the sender. Foster carried the mail sacks through the assembled crowed to the airplane, and Coakley delivered them to Hyannis with little fanfare other than his Brewster sendoff. Mertis Foster retired as postmaster in 1958 and was replaced by Coakley, who served in that role until the East Brewster post office closed in 1972. Foster had Dennis auctioneer R. C. Eldred auction the “commemorative medal,” Coakley’s stamp, and the post office window, cage section, and Brewster Historical Society acquired them; they are now in the Cobb House Museum.18 Edgar C. Foster died in 1963, and Mertis L. Baker Foster died in 1978. Five years later the First National Bank of Cape Cod, administrator of Mertis Foster’s estate, sold the entire property to John P. and Susan M. McMullen of Oak Harbor, Washington. It was at this time that a small Colonial-style strip mall center was built on the east side of the property, perpendicular to the street. The Town of Brewster required the developer to preserve the cottage with its distinctive shingled arched façade, and it was moved forward on the site, pared of its wings and engaged to the front of the new building. In 1994 the commercial property was sold to Mardin Realty Trust, and in 1999 the west side of the parcel containing the gas station and post office building was leased to Cumberland Farms, which demolished these remaining Foster Square buildings. Brewster’s Paul Daley removed the building’s cupola and donated it to Brewster Historical Society. In 2012 Mardin Realty transferred the property to Brewster Main Street Realty LLC of Boston.19 Cumberland Farms completed a full redevelopment of the property in 2018. 13 Walter L. Conwell, Hull, and Warren E. Burgess to Mertis L. Foster, 13 June 1939, Certificate of Title 5078. See also “Sub-division of Land Shown on Plan 12014A,” August 1927, Land Court Plan 12014-B. Burgess and Conwell called the subdivision “Pineland Park,” and its first iteration included 92 lots; another seven were platted in plans registered in 1948 and 2004. The developers had named the roads running to the east of and parallel to Seaway Drive (originally called Midway Avenue) Bayberry and Glen Roads, but by 2004 these names were changed to Skipper’s Way and Anchor’s Aweigh Road, the names they now bear. 14 No leases between Foster and Gulf Oil have been recorded at the Barnstable County Registry before May 1950. The rent Gulf Oil paid for the space rose from $150 a month in 1950-55, to $225 in 1961-63, to $250 in 1963-70, and to $350 from 1973 5o 1980. See BCD 756:549, 118:218. 15 “Residents Protest Post Office Closing,” Yarmouth Register, 27 November 1942, 1; in “East Brewster Postoffice Remains Open,” ibid., 4 December 1942, 1, Mertis Foster stated that she would keep the post office open until the Post Office Department told her otherwise, which did not happen; she was confirmed again as East Brewster’s postmaster in June 1943. See ibid., 11 June 1943. 16 Warren E. Burgess and Walter L. Conwell to Mertis L. Foster, 23 October 1943, Certificate of Title 6691; Lauren Cowen (b 1928), interview with Faythe Ellis, in e-mail to Kathryn Grover, 14 February 2019. 17 “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 12 April 1946, 3: “East Brewster Center is getting to be a very busy place. Mrs Mertis Foster is about ready to have her new postoffice building moved up from the old Radar grounds.” “Brewster,” ibid., 2 April 1948, 3, documents the construction of the store. Thanks to Faythe Ellis for information on the grocery and antiques businesses. 18 Morris, “From the Morris Chair.” 19 First National Bank of Cape Cod, administrator estate Mertis L. Foster, to John P. and Susan M. McMullen, Oak Harbor WA, 2 January 1983, Certificate of Title 80541; John P. and Susan M. McMullen to Mardin Realty Trust, 20 September 1994, Certificate of Title 135416; John P. and Susan M. McMullen to Mardin Realty Trust, 20 September 1994, Certificate of Title 135416; Mardin Realty LLC, Malden, to Brewster INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 BRE.514 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. Main Street Realty LLC, Boston, 27 December 2012, Certificate of Title 199243. See also Lease, Kenneth A. Anderson, trustee Mardin Realty Trust, lessor, and Cumberland Farms Inc., DE, 30 August 1999, Doc 779626-1 and exhibit A attached to this document. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 5 BRE.514 FIGURES Fig.1: Detail of map of East Brewster from 1880 Barnstable County Atlas. Property of Mrs G. Hopkins at crossroads. Adjoing vacant lot on right would later contain Foster Square. Fig.2: Detail of map of East Brewster from 1905 Barnstable County Atlas showing property of G.T. Foster at crossroads. Adjoining lot on left was by then vacant. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 6 BRE.514 Fig. 3: Foster’s Store, postcard view looking northwest, probably about 1920-25. Uncle Sam figures right of center note that the post office is inside. Note the two gasoline pumps. Fig.4A: Land Court Plan 12014-A, December 1926. FIG.4B: Land Court Plan 12014-B, August 1927, shows the shows the undeveloped tract bordering Mertis subdivision; Foster’s store is partially shown at lower Foster’s property. right, and Mertis Foster acquired lots 1-6A in 1939 and 1943. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 7 BRE.514 Fig.5: Photograph, 1940-1948. Showing gas station built ca. 1940 with Foster’s store at far right. Edgar and Mertis Foster’s cottage in partial view behind store. Fig.6: Foster Square after 1948. Gas station, Post Office and package store, and grocery store, left to right. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 8 BRE.514 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from south. Foster cottage on left. View of ca. 1980 strip mall from SW. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2635-2655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 9 BRE.514 View rear of strip mall from NE. View of Cumberland Farms store from SE.