Residential Buildings

The 2 1/2-story, five-bay center-chimney house was the dominant house form in the eastern part of Worcester County during the second half of the eighteenth century, continuing in diminished numbers through the early 1800's. The Bolton Center District has two well-preserved houses of the type, as well as at least two more where the chimney configuration was changed. The most intact center-chimney house, the 1798 Gen. Stephen Gardner House at 642 Main Street (Map #10), displays an elegantly-proportioned late Georgian entry with the tapered pilasters and triangular-pedimented entablature that is typical of designs in eighteenth-century builder's guides. 704 Main Street, the Dr. Amos Parker House (Map #35), is a larger, two-room-deep house with 6-over-9-sash windows. Built about 1800, it retains its center chimney, and has the district's only example of an enclosed pedimented, projecting entry "porch".

The Joseph Sawyer House at 698 Main Street (Map #32), which was standing by 1760, is another house of the same proportions that formerly had a center chimney. The chimney was removed in about 1870 to accommodate a new center hall, and the present paired ridge chimneys were installed. The doorway of the Sawyer House is another typical design of the late eighteenth century--with a four-pane transom and tapered, unfluted pilasters supporting a horizontal entablature. The interior of this house displays wall paintings attributed to muralist Rufus Porter. A double-house, the Jacob and Levi Houghton House at 8 Wataquadoc Road (Map #41), which has a pair of shallow rear side wings, also has a center chimney, though reduced in size. 674 Main Street (Map #23), which was apparently moved from the north side of the street in 1792 and radically changed to a side-hall-entry Greek Revival house ca. 1840, also displays the remains of its center chimney on the interior.

One late Georaian house, the ca. 1785 house of Bolton's third minister, the Rev. Phineas Wright at 763 Main Street (Map #60), was built as a large gable-roofed "double-pile" 2 112-story, gable-roofed, double-ridge-chimney house. In excellent condition, it has 12-over-12-sash windows and an entry with a high Georgian surround with a transom and fluted pilasters with bolection capitals. Another double-ridge-chimney house, the Holman Annex at 746 Main Street (Map #57), is a later example of this general house-type, probably built in the 1830's. Although it is 2 1/2 stories, it may have started out as a 1 1/2-story Cape Cod cottage. Its paneled comer pilasters and the tripartite surround of its four-paneled gable-end door are characteristic of early Greek Revival houses.

By the end of the eighteenth century, buildings with interior end chimneys were appearing in Bolton. The district has several examples-- all of them two stones, five bays wide-- with hipped roofs and a single pair of massive chimneys. The Samuel Blood House of ca. 1793 at 579 Main Street (Map #4) is the, largest. It is a high-style Federal building, with comer pilasters and a pilastered entry with an elliptical fanlight and double-leaf, four-paneled door that is obscured somewhat by an early-twentieth--century Tuscan-columned portico. While the Blood House has 6-over-6-sash windows, many of the others of this type were built with 12-over-12-sash.

The most lavish is the Goss/Holman House at 752 Main Street (Map #59), the home of Bolton's first ' minister. Its original section was built in 1741 as a typical 2 1/2-story five-bay house, which faced south toward the first meetinghouse. It was updated, probably about 1803, to a high-style, hip-roofed Federal house with 12-over-12-sash windows, with a new facade oriented north toward the Great Road (Main Street). It, too, has comer pilasters, along with a dentilated entablature. Its main, center entry has a six-paneled door, and a pilastered surround with a pediment, also embellished with dentils. As at the Blood House, an early twentieth-century porch adds to its elegance. This one is a side porch, supported on four massive, unfluted Doric columns. 702 Main Street (Map #33), a hybrid building that brought the pre-1810 store and house of Joseph Sawyer. Jr. under one wide hipped roof sometime after 1870, nonetheless conforms to this general building type-. Here the windows are 6-over-9-sash, and the 6-paneled entry door is surrounded by bead-molded boards instead of classical pilasters. The fourth building of -the type is one of the district's few brick buildings, the store originally built ca. 1820 by Woodbury & Holman at 718 Main Street (Map #43), called for generations the "Old Brick Store". (See Commercial Buildings)

The form of the latest hip-roofed building in the district, the William Chaplin House at 707 Main Street (Map #36), built between 1817 and 1822, is different from the other four. One room deep, with a long rear wing, it was apparently built with a pair of rear-wall chimneys, of which one remains. Although altered by synthetic siding, and by door and window replacement, it retains its general Federal-period appearance. There are two other paired-rear-chimney houses of the Federal period in the district, both with side-gabled roofs-- 694 and 714 Main Street. The former, the house of Joseph and Nathan Sawyer (Map #30), probably built during the 1820s, has 6-over-6-sash windows in the typical projecting surrounds of the Federal period. Its entry, which displays four-pane sidelights, has paneled-board pilasters. The entry of 714 Main Street, the Phineas Fairbanks House of ca. 1826 (Map #40), also has four--pane sidelights; the aprons under these have recessed, beaded panels. Inside the Fairbanks House are stencils attributed to either Moses Eaton or his son, Moses Eaton, Jr.

One Federal-period building, 676 Main Street (Map #24), has an unusual form and configuration, due to its origin as a wing of the Holman Inn, probably added to the inn between 1800 and 1810.

It was moved to its present site when the inn was demolished in 1874; hence it now presents its wide gable-end, with the district's only-high-style Federal elliptical-fanlighted entry, to the street. (A two-bay section on the east is an addition of 1915.)

By the 1830s numerous central Massachusetts houses were beginning to appear with roofs oriented with the ridge perpendicular to the front wall, in the fully-developed gable-end, side-hall entry form that was to dominate residential building construction in the region through the end of the nineteenth century. There are three 2 1/2-story houses of this type in the district, all of them with Greek Revival details and 6-over-6-sash windows.

The most intact, in spite of the addition of a 1980s side wing, is the converted Houghton House at 674 Main Street (Map #23). Concealing its earlier structure, and reoriented gable-end to the street, this became a typical 2 1/2-story, three-bay building with a pedimented front gable and a wide side-hall entry with an unusual 8-panel door and 4-pane sidelights over paneled aprons. Two similar houses stand at 713 and 715 Main Street. 713, the Towne/Bigelow/Everett House (Map #39) of 1839, also has an 8-panel door, but in a surround with 5--paned, full-length sidelights, tapered pilasters, and a high frieze.

Although #715 (Map #44), is said to have been built by Caleb Wheeler as early as 1815, its similarity to #713 indicates that it is a replacement, or at least a radical renovation of the 1830's. Here, the entry also has a wide surround with tapered pilasters, but, like the Houghton House, continues the 4-paned sidelights above beaded-paneled aprons seen on the nearby houses of the Federal period.

The, largest number of houses in the district with a gable-end, side-hall-entry form and plan appear in the smaller, 1-1/2- or two-story gable-end cottage configuration. All seven of these houses have attached ells; six have attached barns. Two houses, at 621 and 631 Main Street (Map #s 8 and 9), were built ca. 1851 with recessed entries with full-length, 5-pane sidelights, as was the pedimented house at 749 Main Street (Map #58), built in 1849. The ca. 1855 S.K. Sawyer House at 708 Main Street (Map #37), also has full-length sidelights, but the 1842 house of Horatio Newton at 683 Main Street (Map #26), still has a 6-panel door flanked by 4-pane sidelights with paneled aprons below.

After 1855 houses were being built with 2-over-2-sash windows, and these appear at the two later gable-end cottages in the district--662 Main Street of 1869 (Map #18), and 725 (Map #49), built between 1870 and 1872. Both houses have details more characteristic of the vernacular Italianate style--662, the Warren Houghton House, has a door with two long glass lights over two panels, and 725, built for resale by William Robinson' has a polygonal bay window on the facade. Both display simple sawcut brackets at their overhanging entry canopies.

The Bolton Center District is fortunate to have five examples of the side-gabled, 1 1/2-story cottage, four of which appear as late versions of the two-room-deep Cape Cod cottage house-type. Three five-bay examples were-built in 1830 and 1831. The 1831 Simeon Cunningham House at 777 Main Street (Map #61) has a 6-panel door, 6-over-6-sash windows, and paired ridge chimneys. (Its shed--roofed facade dormer is a later addition.) An architectural highlight of the district is the pair of large, nearly identical houses that Gen. Stephen Gardner had built for his son and daughter in 1830-31, at 649 and 655 Main Street (Map #s 11 and 13). Both are deep, five-bay houses with a facade-width porch sheltered by the front overhang of the roof, which has thee small pedimented facade dormers. Both retain their 6-over-6-sash windows and a gothic-inspired pointed-arched window under each side-gable peak, covered with louvered shutters.

The facade of 649 Main Street, the Theodore Gardner House, has fluted Doric columns and 4-pane sidelights at the center entry; #655's columns are unfluted, and its entry also has short sidelights, but here they are divided into multiple, uneven panes. The facade of a little cottage at 607 Main Street (Map #6), another apparently built by Gen. Gardner in about 1830, is also recessed under the front plane of the roof, although its supporting columns have been replaced, and it now has a shed-roofed dormer over the facade. This house is four bays wide, with 6-over-6-sash windows. Just to its east at 601 Main Street (Map #5), is an earlier side-gabled, 1 1/2-story cottage, probably built in the late 1790s, which is now altered by changes in siding and windows, and by numerous additions.

Four houses known to have been built as multi-family residences stand in the district. The earliest was the Jacob and Levi Houghton House of 18 11, mentioned above. The others, all built in the 1830s and 1840s, are clustered in the west part of the district opposite the former Holman Inn site. Two, #720 Main Street (Map #46), built by Woodbury & Holman, owners of the Brick Store, and #726/728 (Map #50), apparently put up for rental by Amory Holman, are 2 1/2-story double-houses oriented with their four-bay gable-ends to the street, and a vestibuled entry on each side, sheltered by an open porch. The former retains several Greek Revival details, including Ionic pilasters at the house comers and Doric porch columns. 730 Great Road (Map #52), located behind 726/728 is now altered by porch enclosures, but may originally have been similar in form and plan to the other two.

The small number of late-nineteenth-century houses in Bolton Center reflects the decline in settlement that took place here with the demise of stage-coach travel and the eclipse of local manufacturing concerns in the late-industrial period. Only two houses were built here in the 1880s and 1890s. One, the Ellen Winde House of 1880 at 733 Main Street (Map #53), which was built on the site of the Holman Inn (demolished in 1874), is a tall, upright gable-end house with a few vernacular Italianate features, including a two-story polygonal bay window on the facade, and a scroll-bracketed canopy at the main entry. The 1890s Proctor/Powers House at 651 Main Street (Map #12), is another building of the same general form, with a 2-story polygonal facade bay and an elaborately-bracketed door hood. It shows the Queen Anne influence, however, in its projecting side-bay with patterned-shingle gable, and open--bracketed side porch.

Very late Queen Anne forms are evident at the 1912 Thomas Wetherbee House at #670 Main Street (Map #20), where the second-story facade bay projects forward from a 2 1/2-story side-gabled house over a first-story polygonal bay. This house also has the rubble foundation, diamond gable window, multi-paned colored glass stair window, large-paned "picture" window in the bay, and a large-light glass-and panel door that were popular at the time. A simpler early-twentieth-century two-story house is the two-bay, gable-end Sutton House of ca. 1918 at 723 Main Street (Map #48), also on a rubble foundation.

With the exception of a gambrel-roofed Cape Cod cottage at 615 Main Street (1942, Map #64), all the other pre-1950 houses in the district are small cottages and bungalows with Craftsman or subdued Colonial Revival accents. #550 Main Street (Map #1) is a 1 1/2-story side-gabled cottage of ca. 1919 with a center through-cornice wall dormer and pedimented entry portico; the gambrel-roofed 562 Main Street (Map #3) built about the same time, is an early example of a Dutch Colonial Revival cottage.

The small side-gabled version of the popular Craftsman bungalow with a wide dormer located over the facade porch is represented by the Pardee House at 608 Main Street (Map #7), the John Smith House of 1932 at 703 Main Street (Map #34), and one of the ca. 1919 Atwood farm employees' houses at 556 Main Street (Map #2). The best-preserved of these houses is the Pardee House, which still has its original 2-over-l -sash windows, a square stair window, single-light glass-and-panel door, and decorative exposed rafter ends.