337 Elm Street
Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.
FORM B − BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
Topographic or Assessor's Map
Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons
Organization: PVPC
Date (month / year): February, 2010
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
24C-045-001 Easthampton NTH.2448
Town: Northampton
Place: (neighborhood or village)
Address: 337 Elm Street
Historic Name: Edward and Laura Brown House
Uses: Present: three-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1911-1912
Source: Northampton Directories
Style/Form: Colonial Revival
Architect/Builder:
Exterior Material:
Foundation: brick
Wall/Trim: clapboards, vinyl
Roof: slate
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
garage
Major Alterations (with dates): siding applied partially, ca.
1990
Condition: good
Moved: no | x | yes | | Date
Acreage: 0.295 acres
Setting: This house is set on the main thoroughfare of
Northampton in a residential area with mature trees on the
properties.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [337 ELM STREET]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
NTH.2448
___ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. This property is within a local historic district.
If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.
Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets.
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community.
The Nora and Edward Brown House was built between 1911 and 1912 as a Colonial Revival style house on the north side of
Elm Street. It is a two-and-a-half story house under a side-gable roof and while most of it is clapboard sided, the gable ends and
eaves have vinyl siding. The house has brick foundations and a slate roof. The house is a only three bays wide but its
proportions are large. It is two bays deep and the eaves make full returns in the gable ends. Sash in the windows is 6/1 and
windows at both stories have crown molded lintels. The most elaborate decorative feature of the house, however, is the center
door surround that is composed of fluted pilasters supporting an entablature topped by a broken, segmentally arched pediment.
Over-scaled dentils trim the pediment and entablature and are also found at the eaves. Within the surround is a transom light
made up of two rows of 8 lights. Two front-gabled dormers are on the south façade roof. While this house is simple in its overall
elevations, its Colonial Revival details are well-developed and accurately reproduce Federal features. At the north west corner
of the house is a separate, one-bay garage that has a gable-on-hip roof. It is sided.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the
owners/occupants played within the community.
This house was built between 1911 and 1912 for Laura and Edward W. Brown, M.D., a physician and surgeon who began his
practice in Northampton in 1900. It was built on land that had been between 1873 and 1895 part of the large Arthur Watson
Estate known as Wildwood on the north side of Elm Street. Most of the Watson Estate became Child’s Park, but two lots were
divided off, possibly when Woodlawn Avenue was put in on the north side of Elm Street, and one of the lots became 337 Elm
Street. By 1900, Elm Street in this section was actively being developed including demolition of two houses on the property of J.
Frank, construction of the Blessed Sacrament Church, parish house, and groundskeeper’s house in 1900 on a part of Frank’s
lot, and the Frank Davis house at #336 in 1903-04.
Dr. Edward W. Brown was long a fixture in Northampton in both the private and public spheres. He was a Yale and University of
Wisconsin graduate who did his medical training at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. He
came to Northampton in the early years of his career and remained for the rest of his life. In addition to the private practice that
he carried out in his offices on Main and later Center Streets, Brown was Northampton’s City Physician, was the county Medical
Examiner from 1915, the first Chief of Staff at Dickinson Hospital, consulting surgeon at the Northampton State Hospital and at
the Veterans’ Hospital, and the Boston and Maine Railroad. When he died at 84, Brown had still been doing rounds and was
memorialized by many in the City for his tireless care of his patients. The Browns had two children, Stephen and Janet, who
were livingl at home in 1930. Edward Brown died in 1935, but Laura Brown continued to live in the house through 1950 and
divided the house into several apartment units. In 1950 she shared it with Winifred and Glendon A. Fuller and Sally C. Gage.
Glendon worked at McCallum’s Department Store in Northampton, and Sally was assistant field director of the American Red
Cross. By 1960 the house was occupied by only two couples, James and Constance Whelan, John and Minerva Mckee, Jr.
James Whelan was a sergeant in the Northampton Police Department and John was a purchasing agent in Holyoke.
This substantial house was one of the relatively large number built from the 1910s through the 1920s in Northampton at a time of
industrial and commercial prosperity. Many of these large houses were converted after the 1920s to two-family residences
either by Smith College needing housing for its expanding faculty, or by private owners to meet the demand for housing brought
about by the population that grew by 10% between 1920 and 1925.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, 1873.
Walker, George H. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884.
Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [337 ELM STREET]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
NTH.2448
US federal censuses 1900-1930
Northampton directories 1900-1948.
Sanborn Insurance map of 1915.