FORM B - BUILDING |
Assessor's number |
USGS Quad |
|
Form Number |
|
5B-32 |
Hudson |
|
287 |
Photo
Town |
Bolton |
Place (neighborhood or village) |
|
Address |
16 Nourse Road |
Historic Name |
Brooks House |
Uses: Present |
dwelling |
Uses: Original |
dwelling |
Date of Construction |
ca. 1870's |
Source |
maps; visual evidence |
Style/Form |
no style |
Architect/Builder |
unknown |
Exterior Material: |
Foundation |
brick; rubble on ell |
Wall/Trim |
wood clapboard |
Roof |
asphalt shingle |
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures |
early-20th-C. shed |
Major Alterations (with dates) |
20th C: porch enclosed; some window replacement; deck built |
Condition |
good |
Moved [X] no [ ] yes |
Date - N/A |
Acreage |
1.46 acres |
Setting |
Side to road in area of modern houses on large lots. Stonewall-lined driveway; woods and fields to west. |
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION
Like several other nineteenth-century houses on the side streets near Bolton center, the Brooks house started out as a tiny cottage of only a few rooms. It appears to have been a side-gabled, 1 1/2-story building with a three-bay facade; its narrow center ridge chimney probably occupies the original chimney position. A one-story ell off-set at the southwest corner appears to have been added in about 1900. The enclosed hip-roofed entry porch in the angle of the house and ell may originally have been an open porch or shorter entry bay of about the same date. Its ca. 1900 door, with a large light over horizontal panels, may have been relocated from another position. Most of the house windows are 6-over-6-sash in unadorned surorunds; those on the porch are modern replacements. The rear (north) side of the house has a three-part picture
window; a modern deck abuts the rear of the ell. The house trim is extremely simple, consisting of an unboxed cornice and narrow cornerboards. An early-twentieth-century clapboarded shed with exposed rafter-ends at the roofline stands west of the house.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
Little is known about this house, which appeared here on the north side of the brook in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It appears on the map of 1898 as belonging to the heirs of "Dr. Brooks." Like the houses on the west side of lower Harvard Road, it appears to have been one of several small dwellings built on the side streets near the Great Road during the second half of the nineteenth century, as residential development gradually spread outward from the center of town.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Maps and atlases: 1898 (Dr. Brooks' heirs).
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