The Seth Adams House is a historic house at 72 Jewett Street, in the
Newton Corner village of
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located roughly west of Downtown Boston, and comprises a patchwork of thirteen villages. The city borders Boston to the northeast and southeast (via the neighborhoods of ...
. Probably built in the mid-1850s, it is a well-preserved example of
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century ...
. During the 1870s it was home to Seth Adams, one of Newton's wealthiest residents. The house was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1986.
Description and history
The Seth Adams House stands in a residential area on the northwest side of Newton Corner, at the northeast corner of Pearl and Jewett Streets, on a small lot with a low stone retaining wall on the street-facing sides. It is a -story wood-frame structure, with a gabled roof and clapboarded exterior. It is oriented facing south toward
Pearl Street, but its main facade is largely obscured by mature plantings. The eaves and gables are adorned with evenly spaced Italianate brackets, and the front windows have bracketed sills and lintels. The main facade is three bays wide on the first floor and four on the second, with entrance at the center, framed by sidelight and transom windows. A single-story porch extends across the front, supported by latticed square posts.
The house was probably built in the 1850s, when the Newton Corner area was dotted with country estates of wealthy Boston businessmen. In 1874 it was home to Seth Adams, one of Newton's wealthiest residents. He was a major benefactor of the
Adams-Nervine Asylum
The Adams-Nervine Asylum was incorporated in 1877 and opened in 1880 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. The estate provided an attractive, picturesque setting, as it was situated on Centre Street, in the neighborhood of Bussey Park and the Arnold A ...
in
Jamaica Plain
Jamaica Plain is a Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood of in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Settled by Puritans seeking farmland to the south, it was originally part of Roxbury, Massachusetts, Roxbury. The community seceded from Roxbur ...
.
[ The house is now a ]condominium
A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...
consisting of 3 apartments.City of Newton real property database
See also
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Seth, House
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Newton, Massachusetts
Italianate architecture in Massachusetts
Houses completed in 1860