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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from NE.
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
26-67-0 Harwich C, G BRE.498-
502
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
West Brewster
Address:618 Main Street
Historic Name: George F. & Alice L. Hall House
Michael’s Cottages
Uses:Present: single-family residence & rental cottages
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1895 (house), 1926-36 (cottages)
Source:deeds, historic atlases, assessors’ records
Style/Form: Colonial Revival/gable block
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: unknown
Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
4 rental cottages (BRE.499-502)
garage
Major Alterations (with dates):
none
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:1.10
Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area
characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes
built in the 20th century.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 618 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
C, G BRE.498-502
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 George F. and Alice L. Hall House is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a one-story wing built in 1895 in a
picturesque Colonial Cape Cod style (#1 in site plan below). It has a side entry plan with a chimney on the opposite end and an
attached wing in the traditional New England manner. The main block is fronted by a three-bay façade with its off-center
entrance distinguished by a Greek Revival trabeated architrave. The front of the wing, recessed one bay behind the main
façade, contains two windows. A one-story cross-gable ell is connected to the rear of the building; dormers have been raised on
both sides of the ell.
By 1936 four rental cottages had been built behind the house. Three of them (#2-5) are nearly identical, each being a one-story
wood frame building with a gable roof, wood clapboard siding, two-bay front facades with a door surmounted by a metal awning
and a window with ornamental slat shutters, and a screened porch engaged to one end. The fourth cottage (#4), which may be
older than the others, is a wood frame building with a gable roof, wood shingle siding, and a narrow three-bay façade with an off-
center entrance recessed in an archway. The plan of this cottage is elongated in depth, with a long sloping roof in the rear,
perhaps by later alterations. A one-car, wood frame garage (#6) with a steep front gable roof and wood shingle siding located
east of the main house appears to be consistent with the early resort-period redevelopment of the property in the 1920s.
The house is situated in the center and near the front of a deep lot set back from the highway by a broad lawn. A planter berm
has been constructed along the road, and a driveway enters the northeast corner of the frontage leading to the garage and then
to the house before winding back among the rental cottages. The rear of the parcel is maintained as a tree-shaded setting for
the small colony.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
Brewster laborer and mason George F Hall (1868-1943) built the house now numbered 618 Main Street in the West Brewster
neighborhood in which he had grown up. Hall was one of the sons of Edmund Francis Hall (1837-1919) and Julia Jarvis Hall
(1842-1928) and a grandson of Edmund Hall (1799-1882), a native of Dennis who had acquired the former Thomas Snow estate
in West Brewster in 1821 (BRE.497). George’s father lived at 427 Main Street, his older brother Samuel S. Hall (ca. 1824-1878)
lived at 509 Main Street, and his nephew Charles E. Hall (1856-1926) had acquired his grandfather’s Edmund’s house between
Quivet Creek and the north side of Main Street in 1883.1
George F. Hall lived in his parents’ household until he married, in 1887, Alice L. Walker of Dennis. He may have remained there
until about 1895, when the couple’s fourth child, Chester Arthur was born; according to Chester’s affidavit of 1950, his father built
618 Main Street about that time on land he had “inherited” from his father (though his father was still alive).2 Chester lived there
until he moved to Falmouth in 1931, though as a teenage boy in 1910 he was boarding in the home of barrel maker Chester R.
Perry and working in Perry’s factory.
The 1900 census lists George F. Hall as a day laborer, and by then he and his wife had six children—Alice F., Hattie M., Myra
S., Chester, Bessie, and Edmund F., born between 1887 and 1897. He is credited with owning property in that census, and the
1905 Brewster map attaches “G. F. Hall” to the house on this site. By 1910 George was still doing day’s work, wife Alice was
doing domestic work in a family, and three of the children—Bessie, Edmund, and Lucinda, born in 1901—remained in their
household. Alice had married Dennis fisherman Charles MacKenzie of Dennis, Myra married Eugene Doane, also a Dennis
fisherman, Chester was boarding with Perry, and Bessie had become a nurse and was working in a small hospital in Plymouth.
1 Henry Sears, Dennis, administrator estate Thomas Snow, Harwick, to Edmund Hall, Dennis, 16 November 1821, Brewster Book 2,
999012:64; Barnstable Patriot, 24 April 1883, 2
2 Affidavit, Chester A. Hall, Falmouth, 31 March 1950, BCD 746:117. Hall stated that his father had inherited the land from his father, Edmund
Francis Hall, “who deceased without his estate being probated. . . . It was common knowledge, and I heard it mentioned many times, that said
property was inherited by my father from my grandfather Edmund F. Hall.”
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 618 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
C, G BRE.498-502
By 1920, at least according to the census, the 618 Main Street house included George and Alice and all seven of their children,
both Alice and Myra are listed in their husbands’ households and very likely were not at 618 Main Street; probably their parents
had simply listed the entire family for the census enumerator. By then Chester was working as a chauffeur, Bessie as a
schoolteacher, and Lucinda as a telephone operator. Hattie, a private-duty nurse, was listed here and may have living in the
house, as the property had been deeded to her by her grandfather in 1913.3 According to Chester Hall’s affidavit, his parents
continued to live in the house when Hattie and, after her death, her brother Edmund owned the property.
In 1920 George F. Hall was doing farm work, the 1929 directory lists him as a mason, and the 1930 census lists him as doing
odd jobs. The household then included wife Alice and youngest son Edmund, who clerked for a coal and grain dealer. Brewster
tax records indicate that the house and one outbuilding—the oldest of the five cottages now on the property—stood on the
parcel by 1926; the house and “outbuildings” were listed from 1936 forward. Hattie Hall may have had the cottages built as
income properties for her parents.
By 1940 618 Main Street housed only George and Alice Hall, both in their seventies. They died about a month apart, in March
and April of 1943.4 By 1946 Hattie Hall, still a nurse in Plymouth, had died and left the property to her brother Edmund, who in
March that year sold the house and part of the land to Helen D. Bartlett of Needham. Bartlett owned it for two years, and from
1950 to 1965 the property was owned by John W. and E. Inez Dunlap of Manchester, New Hampshire. The deed transferring the
property to Norman E. and Shirley M. Lindstrom mentioned the house and “cottages.” The Lindstroms, from Westboro in 1965,
subdivided the property and owned both parcels until 1993. In that year Michael Divito of Philadelphia bought the parcels and
called the cottage colony Michael’s Cottages.5 Divito converted the rental cottages to condominiums in 2007, but in 2011 they
were returned to rentals. In 2019 the entire property was owned by Glounlea Holdings of Dennisport.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.
3 Edmund F. Hall to Hattie M. Hall, Plymouth, 25 December 1913, BCD 331:21. Chester Hall’s affidavit cites a deed from his father George to
his grandfather Edmund of 1902 as 258:594, but it is actually one of several unindexed deeds appearing under BC 258:587. This deed
transfers the same one-acre property with its buildings that Edmund Hall deeded to Hattie Hall in 1913.
4 “Mrs. George F. Hall,” Yarmouth Register, 26 March 1943, 4; “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 30 April 1943, 3.
5 Helen D. Bartlett, Needham, to Lorey F. and Florence A. Midgley, Worcester, 22 January 1948, BCD 686:531; Lorey F. and Florence A.
Midgley to John W. and E. Inez Dunlap, Manchester NH, 4 April 1950, BCD 746:113; John W. and E. Inez Dunlap to Norman E. and Shirley M.
Lindstrom, Westboro, 7 June 1965, BCD 1302:65; Norman E. and Shirley M. Lindstrom to Michael Divito, Philadelphia PA, 9 March 1993, BCD
8473:352.
6 Michael Divito, 618 Main Street, to Michael’s Cottages Condominiums LLC, 618 Main Street, 26 October 2007, BCD 22430:236; Michael’s
Cottages Condominium LLC, 618 Main Street, to MLD Partners, Manchester Center VT, 28 April 2015, BCD 28830:91; MLD Partners,
Manchester Center VT, to Glounlea Holdings Inc, Dennisport, 17 May 2016, BCD 29664:247. The house and cottages are depicted on Parcels
1 and 2 of “Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass., for Norman E. Lindstrom et ux,” 11 October 1977, SCP 318:9. Thanks to Faythe Ellis for checking
assessors’ records in an effort to pinpoint the cottages’ construction dates. Town assessors’ records indicate that the condominiums were
“discontinued for FY 2011.”
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 618 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
C, G BRE.498-502
FIGURES
Site plan with components numbered
1: George F. & Alice L. Hall House, 1895 (BRE.498)
2: Rental Cottage, ca. 1926 (BRE.499)
3: Rental Cottage, ca. 1936 (BRE.500)
4: Rental Cottage, ca. 1936 (BRE.501)
5: Rental Cottage, ca. 1936 (BRE.502)
6: Garage
Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass., Oct. 1977 (SCP 318:9).
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 618 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
C, G BRE.498-502
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019)
View of house from NW.
View of cottages #2, #5 (background) & #3, left to right, as numbered on site plan above, from north.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 618 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 5
C, G BRE.498-502
View of cottages #2, #3 & #4, left to right, as numbered on site plan above, from west.
View of garage (#6 on site plan) from NW.