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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_2680Follow 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 north 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 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 89-24 Harwich BRE.462 BRE.463 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:2680 Main Street Historic Name: Gilbert Jr. & Faythe A. Ellis House & Barn Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1914 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Colonial Revival Architect/Builder: George T. Foster, probable builder Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn Major Alterations (with dates): Wing added east side, late 20th century Porch enclosed, late 20th century Window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.86 acre Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the mid-20th century. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2680 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.462 BRE.463 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 story-and-a-half wood frame house has a cross-gable roof and a one-story wing added to the northeast side. The front facades of the gable section and wing are in line with each other with an entrance is positioned near the center in the front-gable section near where the two wings abut. The entrance and first-story windows are hidden within an enclosed porch that covers the front-gable section and wraps around on the northeast side of the house. Two windows are contained in the front gable, and any window surviving in the cross wing is currently covered with a signboard. The front of the added wing contains two windows of unequal size. A barn located close behind the house is a rare agricultural building with an aisle plan and gabled façade; two small wings are engaged to the northeast side; one with a concrete kneewall appears to be a milk house. The house has been isolated from its rural setting on a narrow, deep lot, set back from Main Street behind a large lawn with mature trees. What looks to be a large yard on the northwest side is part of the entry corridor into a large residential development recently built on farmland once associated with the house. The portion of the parcel behind the barn is wooded. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: Based on family history and newspaper accounts, the house at 2680 Main Street was probably built in 1914 by East Brewster carpenter George Thatcher Foster for Gilbert Everett Ellis (1867-1944). At least one Ellis family member recalls being told that the house was built for a worker, and the 6 April 1914 issue of the Barnstable Patriot reported that Foster was building a house “for one of Mr. Ellis’s hired men.”1 Ellis ran a weir fishery on Cape Cod Bay, and in March 1914 Brewster’s selectmen granted him a permit to build and maintain six fish weirs along the Brewster flats. Ellis employed three men in that business in 1919 and seven men in 1920, and he also hired workers for his various building projects in Brewster, Orleans, and Eastham.2 Who occupied the house initially has not yet been determined, but by the early 1920s Ellis’s only son Gilbert Everett Ellis Jr. (1888-1952), called Everett, returned to his native place and took up residence there. Everett Ellis had graduated from Tufts College in Medford in 1912 and married Faythe Akers, who had graduated from Simmons College in Boston in the same year. They moved to Orange, New Jersey, where Ellis worked as a civil engineer and draftsman, but by 1920 the couple and their four children Catherine McGinnis, Robert Everett, Theodore Brooks, and Richard Akers had moved to East Brewster. They are listed in that year’s federal census in a rented house near the 2696 Main Street home of his father, and they were very likely at 2680 Main Street at that time. Everett was working as a weir fisherman, probably with his father. By 1929, according to that year’s Cape Cod directory, Everett was an electrician living on Main Street in East Brewster, while his father is shown as a realtor. Everett and Faythe Ellis divorced in the late 1920s, and Faythe and her four children remained in the 2680 Main Street house. In February 1938 Everett deeded the property to his father, and in a codicil to his will dated 15 March 1938 Gilbert Ellis Sr. left the house and land on Main Street to Faythe Akers Ellis; it is there described as “the same house in which she has lived for many years.”3 When Faythe Ellis died in 1962, the property passed to her eldest child Catherine M., who had been born in Edison, New Jersey, in 1914, and was then the wife of Richard Hart. In 1996 Catherine M. Hart placed the property in trust and sold it to Scott Stettner of Old Kings Highway Nominee Trust, the developers of Ocean Edge Resort; the 2680 Main Street house is now part of that development.4 1 Faythe Ellis, e-mail to Kathryn Grover, 5 April 2018; Barnstable Patriot, 6 April 1914, 5. 2 Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Harbor and Land Commissioners For the Year 1914 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1915), 100; “Returns from the Shore Net and Pound Fisheries for the Year 1920,” Fifty-fourth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries and Game for the Year Ending November 30, 1919 (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1920), 204-10, and “Returns from the Shore Net and Pound Fisheries for the Year 1920,” Annual Report of the Division of Fisheries and Game for the Year Ending November 30, 1920 (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1921), 151-58. Ellis was at that time one of three shore net and pound fishermen in Brewster and one of 55 in the commonwealth. 3 Gilbert Ellis Jr. to Gilbert Ellis, 1 February 1938, BCD 536:216; Faythe Ellis of the Brewster Historical Commission provided a photocopy of the Gilbert Ellis will. 4 Catherine M. Hart, trustee Catherine M. Hart Revocable Trust, 2680 Main St, to Scott Stettner, trustee Old Kings Highway Nominee Trust, 12 April 1996, BCD 10147:333. The 2680 Main house and garage are shown on “Plan of Land in Brewster as Surveyed and Prepared for Catherine M. Hart and Richard E Hart,” 28 January 1982, BCP 364:22 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2680 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.462 BRE.463 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. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2680 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.462 BRE.463 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View of house from NE. View of barn from north.