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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_3655Follow 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 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 126-8 Harwich BRE.465 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:3655 Main Street Historic Name: George H. & Gertrude Lee House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca 1920 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: indeterminate Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Shed Privy Major Alterations (with dates): Rear and east wings added, mid-20th century Front façade renovated, 2013 Window sash replaced, 2013 Condition:fair Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.38 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 3655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.465 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 small, one-story dwelling with a cross-gable roof originated as a one-room summer cottage with a rock-faced cast concrete block foundation, a storage shed, and a privy. Later concrete block foundations with smooth surfaces visible under an addition on the rear of the cottage and a wing on its east side provide evidence of expansion after the Second World War. In more recent years, the fenestration on the front façade has been renovated and new unpainted shingles added; a deck is located on the rear of the wing. The house is sited close to the highway. The property declines behind the house to the lot line along a bog. A parking area has been established on the west side of the frontage and boulders have been installed in front of the house, probably to protect it from errant automobiles. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: Though town records date the house numbered 3655 Main Street to 1738, its form clearly indicates a twentieth-century construction date. The house stands on land that had belonged to the family of George E. Lee (1850-1910) since the late 1870s, and deeds indicate that Lee’s widow Rachel Annie (1849-1923) transferred title to a half-acre lot and the building on it to her son George H. Lee in June 1921.1 No house appears on this site in any map of East Brewster published between 1858 and 1910. Born in August 1884, George Howard Lee was a grandson of William M. Lee (1813-95), whose homestead was on the south side of Main Street closer to the Orleans town line. George H. Lee was one of the six children of George E. and Rachel A. Long Lee. His father had farmed in East Brewster most of his life, but by 1910 he had moved to Boston to run a lodging house in the Jamaica Plain section. His wife Rachel did housekeeping at the lodging house, which then included eight lodgers and three of the adult Lee children—Ernest, who worked in a “pork market,” Frank, who worked in a butter and egg market, and Clara, a restaurant waitress. George E. Lee died in Boston in May 1910, and by 1920 his widow Rachel had returned to East Brewster to live with her then-unmarried son George H., then a laborer. She died in Brewster in 1923, and her eldest son Maurice N. Lee may have inherited her 3668 Main Street house, then across Main Street from his brother’s. Assessors’ records for 1926 taxed George H. Lee on a house valued at $500, a half-acre homestead lot, another acre of land, a half-acre asparagus lot, and two cranberry bogs, one that he may have inherited from his mother (“R. Lee” is shown next to listing) and one that his brother Maurice sold him in 1924.2 The 1929 Cape Cod directory lists George H. Lee as a married laborer living on Main Street in East Brewster. In 1930 the census described him as a laborer doing odd jobs, and by 1940 he was working on a moth control project; his wife Gertrude at that time cleaned houses. The Lees remained at 3655 Main Street until George’s death in the mid- to late 1960s. The property passed to his brother Maurice’s married daughter, Alice Gertrude Lee Young, the wife of Theodore Allen Young. The couple lived in Orleans and sold the 3655 Main Street property to Walter T. and Mary E. Ollen of Roxbury in 1968.3 The property remained in the Ollen family until 2013, when it sold to Vernon Dyck of Concord.4 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. 1 Rachel A. Lee to George Lee, 4 June 1921, BCD 405:531. 2 Maurice N. and Ethel B. Lee to George H. Lee, 29 November 1924, BCD 392:457. 3 Theodore A. and Alice G. Young, Orleans, to Walter T. and Mary E. Ollen, Roxbury, 2 May 1968, BCD 1402:928. 4 Walter T. Ollen, 3655 Main St, to Walter T. Ollen Jr. and Linda Ollen, Topsham ME, 6 May 2004, BCD 18563:172; Walter T. Ollen Jr. and Linda M. Ollen, Topsham ME, to Walter T. Ollen Jr. and Linda M. Ollen, trustees Walter T. Ollen Jr. Living Trust, 10 March 2007, BCD 21923:307; Walter T. Ollen Jr. and Linda M. Ollen, trustees Walter T. Ollen Jr. Living Trust, to Vernon Dyck, Concord, 29 October 2013, BCD 27800:58. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3655 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.465 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, 2018) View from SE. View of shed and privy from west.