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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_427Follow 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 SE. 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 16-11-0 Harwich BRE.494- 496 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address: 427 Main Street Historic Name: Edmund F. & Julia Hall House, Barn & Shop Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: singlefamily residence Date of Construction: ca.1863-ca.1910 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Gothic Revival Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn, ca. 1863 (BRE.495) workshop, early 20th century (BRE.496) Major Alterations (with dates): dormer added to front, 20th century Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:1.474 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 427 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.494-496 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 Edmund F. and Julia Hall House, Barn and Shop is a distinctive complex of domestic, agricultural, and commercial buildings in the town. The story-and-a-half wood frame dwelling, built ca. 1863, has a four-bay front façade containing only windows; the entrance is located in the front of a story-and-a-half wing recessed on the east end. A space in the center between the windows and a center chimney indicate a two-room plan within the main section. The east wing provides an entry space; a kitchen ell is attached to the west end of the rear wall of the main section. Other appendages have been added over the years. It is possible that front porches have been removed. Behind the house is an unusual wood frame, wood-shingled aisle barn, possibly built as early as the house, that has only one side aisle on the west side as indicated by an uneven front gable roof and a wagon door at the east side wall. It appears that there is a basement accessible at grade on the north end. A long, low wood frame shop building, likely built in the early 20th century, is located on the road frontage east of the house. It has a vehicle entrance with a hanging track door on the west end and seven windows on the street façade, two windows on the west end, and a standard door and three windows on the east end. The house and outbuildings are located in a clearing at the street frontage of a forested acre-and-a-half parcel. A number of house lots have been subdivided, which has reduced the area of the historic property. The house is set back form the street and west boundary by a lawn. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house now numbered 427 Main Street was one of several in West Brewster owned by Edmund Hall (1799-1882) and his descendants. The son of Edmund and Thankful Crosby Hall of Dennis, Hall had acquired the real estate of his father-in-law Thomas Snow of West Brewster at auction in 1821, and he, his wife Sukey Snow Hall, and their children were living in a house shown north of Main Street and close to Quivett Creek on the 1858 and 1880 Brewster maps. Censuses record them as Brewster residents from 1830 forward. The Halls had three children—Samuel S., Susan, and Edmund Francis—between 1824 and 1837. They probably lived in the Thomas and Jedidah Snow house (not extant) until they died, Sukey Snow Hall in 1878 and Edmund in 1882.1 The 427 Main Street house was occupied by the Halls’ youngest son, Edmund F., and was probably built by and for him after his 1863 married to Julia M. Jarvis.2 By 1865 the census lists Edmund F. Hall as a carpenter living in his own house with his wife between the households of his father and his older brother Samuel at 440 Main Street. In 1870 Edmund F. Hall was working as a laborer, and by then there were two children—George F. and Arthur—in the household. The 1880 Brewster map attaches the name “F. Hall” to the property because he was called Frank, as newspapers document, while his father Edmund was still living. The census of the same year lists him as a salt maker, though he was also an agent for cranberry dealer Eben Howes and Company by 1878, and a later newspaper account states that “for a number of years he spent the most of his time making barrels,” no doubt for cranberry growers.3 Another child, Emily, had been born in 1877. Tax records for 1890 credit Edmund F. Hall with $500 in cash and securities, a horse, cow, a house valued at $350, a barn and shop assessed at $300, a quarter of another house, his two-acre homestead lot, and twelve other parcels, ten of them cranberry bogs or swamps ranging from a quarter to two acres. In 1893 he built a windmill on his property for “raising water.”4 By 1900 Frank and Julia Hall lived alone at 427 Main Street, daughter Emma having moved to Boston, where she worked as a bookkeeper and secretary, and sons George and Arthur married and in their own households. Frank died in 1919, and in 1920 1 See Henry Sears, Dennis, administrator estate Thomas Snow, Harwich, to Edmund Hall, Dennis, 16 November 1821, Brewster Book 2, 999012:64: In 1883, after the deaths of Sukey and Edmund Hall, their grandson Charles E. Hall (1856-1926), son of elder son Samuel, acquired their house; see Barnstable Patriot, 24 April 1883, 2. 2 No deed documents the sale of property to Edmund F. Hall until 1873, when he bought 1.5 acres of cleared land from Sears heirs (BCD 424:91). It seems likely that the house stood on his father’s property, land that was not deeded to him until 1880. 3 “West Brewster: Death of Mr. Frank Hall,” Yarmouth Register, 26 July 1919, 2. 4 “West Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 17 June 1893, 5: “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 20 June 1893, 5: INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 427 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.494-496 his widow Julia lived in the house with son Arthur, whose wife Sarah Nickerson Hall had died in 1910, and a housekeeper. Julia Jarvis Hall died in 1928, and in 1930 Arthur lived in the house with one boarder. In 1931 Arthur took out a $3000 mortgage with his sister Emma on all of the property he had inherited from his parents, and after he died in 1940 she sold the 427 Main Street property to Winfred C. and Bessie E. Ellis.5 Bessie was her niece, the daughter of brother George F. Hall. She married Dennis carpenter Winfred Chesterly Ellis is 1922 in Barnstable and lived in Dennis in 1940. The 427 Main Street property remained in their family until 2006. Winfred Ellis, born in 1892, was the son of Frank P. and Mercy Walker Ellis, and he and Bessie Hall Ellis had one son, Alden, who inherited the house after his father died in 1971 and his mother in 1977. In October 2006, after Alden Ellis’s death, his son Colin subdivided the property and sold 427 Main Street on a 1.474-acre lot to Josiah H. Canning and Kimery Holl-Canning of Dennis. Josiah H. Canning was the owner in 2019.6 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. 5 Arthur S. Hall to Emma J. Hall, 5 September 1931, BCD 483:506; Emma J. Hall, Boston, to Winfred E. and Bessie E. Ellis, 11 June 1940, BCD 567:325. 6 Colin D. Ellis, East Dennis, to Josiah H. Canning and Kimery Holl-Canning, Dennis, 13 October 2006, 21435:324; Josiah H. and Joeth Pelerkin Canning and Kimery Holl-Canning to Josiah H. Canning, 427 Main, 16 January 2012, BCD 26129:119. The 427 Main Street property is depicted as Lot 1 on “Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass. Prepared for Alden Ellis,” 16 November 1987 rev. 2 February 1988, BCP 499:66. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 427 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.494-496 FIGURES “Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass. Prepared for Alden Ellis,” 16 November 1987 rev. 2 February 1988, BCP 499:66.The subject property is located on Lot 1. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 427 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 BRE.494-496 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View of house, barn and shop from SW View of shop from SE. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 427 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 5 BRE.494-496 [Delete this page if no Criteria Statement is prepared] National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in a historic district Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by_____Neil Larson___________________________________ The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. The Edmund F. & Julia Hall House, Barn & Shop is a distinctive complex of domestic, agricultural and commercial buildings in the town. The story-and-a-half wood frame dwelling, built ca. 1863, presents an unconventional façade to the street with four windows and an entrance in a recessed wing on the east end. The accompanying barn behind the house, may date as early as the house and may have had a function in Frank Hall’s cranberry business. The shop building is a rare example if its type and may have functioned in the making of barrels. Later generations used it in their carpentry trade, in which it still functions today. The house and outbuildings are significant as an intact complex of domestic and commercial buildings associated with local agricultural and trade occupations. They retain integrity of location, setting, design, material, workmanship, feeling and association and appear to meet the criteria for listing on the National Register.