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57 Kensington Avenue 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): January, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31A-241-001 Easthampton NTH.2457 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 57 Kensington Avenue Historic Name: Edythe and William Grieg House Uses: Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1895-1910 Source: Atlas of 1895 Style/Form: Queen Anne Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: clapboards, shingles Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): rehabilitation with new windows, new clapboards and new shingles, 2009. Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.113 acres Setting: This is an east-facing house on one of Northampton’s well-developed side streets. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [57 KENSINGTON AVENUE] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NTH.2457 __x_ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. 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. This two-and-a-half story house is the most recent house to be rehabilitated on Kensington Avenue. It was designed in the Queen Anne style as were most of the houses on Kensington Avenue. It has a hipped roof with an off-center, transverse, front- gable on the east facade, a hipped dormer on its south side, and a four-sided corner tower at its south east corner. There is also a transverse gable bay on the south elevation of the house. All these features achieve the complexity of plan and elevation sought by the Queen Anne style. Three bays wide and four deep, the house has on its south elevation a through-cornice chimney and chamfered corners at the first story. The house has clapboards on the first and second stories and fish scale shingles at the attic level. In the gable ends are an applied decoration suggesting half-timbering. There is a porch across the east façade of the house with a pediment above its steps. In the pediment’s tympanum, the half-timbering motif is repeated. The porch has square baluster railings. Windows are replacements with 1/1 sash. 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. Kensington Avenue was fully developed by Charles Crouch an entrepreneur and developer. Crouch bought the land from Mrs. Emory Wells who had laid out a street on it – perhaps only on paper – that she named Delano Avenue. Prior to her purchase, the land had been part of the Aaron Beck farm as this part of Northampton until the turn of the century was an area of farms and gentlemen’s estates. Charles Crouch changed Delano to Kensington Avenue, built the street, sidewalks and laid in sewer lines, and built houses on each of its sides. Some of the houses Crouch built on speculation, some were built as rentals and Crouch also built as a general contractor for those who bought the lots. Kensington Avenue was only one of the many places in Northampton where Crouch built new homes. In 1895 he had already constructed 150 houses in Northampton. But he was to die soon after starting Kensington Avenue, in 1901 of tuberculosis. The probate inventory of his property in 1901 listed five half houses on Kensington that he owned, and one whole house. His wife also held in her name five half houses and their lots. Crouch was over-extended financially at his death, but his developments were successfully completed over the next few decades. This house began as a single-family house between 1895 and 1910 with its first clear owner from the street directories in 1919 Edythe F. Grieg, whose husband William left Northampton that year. Edythe was a practical nurse and soon moved to a boarding house in 1920. This house appears from the directory listings to have been converted then to a two-family after 1920, though it has been documented that at least five houses on the street had been constructed as two-family houses but do not appear as such in the early directories. By 1925 its two tenants were clearly Mrs. Gertrude B. Titus, dressmaker, living with her three sons Howard, who was in the foreign service, Eugene, who was at the veterans bureau, and Kenneth; and Mrs. Mary Warnock, gift shop bookkeeper and her daughter Eleanor, who was a college student. Gertrude Titus ran her dressmaking business from her half of the house. By 1932 Mary Warnock had moved to another apartment in Northampton on New South Street, but Gertrude Titus was still at this location working as one of Northampton’s thirty-three dressmakers. But she too moved in 1933. Charles and Beatrice Cohn were here in 1940 in one of the units, and in the other was Vera Saillon and her husband Zoel. Charles Cohn was an insurance agent in Springfield and Zoel Saillon was a guard in West Springfield. The Saillons remained in the house through 1950 but the Cohns were replaced by Margaret Murphy who was employed in a business on Main Street in Northampton. In 1960 only one family occupied the house: Anne and Melvin Prouser. Melvin was a budget analyst at Westover Air Base in Chicopee. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [57 KENSINGTON AVENUE] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NTH.2457 The history of the occupancy of this house and its probable conversion from one to two-family represents the shift that took place in Northampton when the nearly universal ownership of automobiles allowed people to commute elsewhere to work, but to live in the highly-regarded city. Conversion from one to two-family occupancy was a response to the need for middle class housing for Northampton’s growing population, which had increased by 10% between 1920 and 1925. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, 1873. Massachusetts Historical Commission. Reconnaissance Reports, “Northampton”, 1982. Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895. Northampton Directories 1910-1960. Sanborn Insurance Maps, Northampton, 1915. U. S. Federal censuses 1890-1930. Walker, George H. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Massachusetts Historical Commission Community Property Address State Archives Facility 220 Morrissey Boulevard Northampton 57 Kensington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02125 Area(s) Form No. NTH.2457 National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in an historic district Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by ___Bonnie Parsons__________________________ The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. This property would contribute to a potential historic district that would encompass the residential/institutional side streets laid out from Elm Street in Northampton Center between Main Street on the east and the west boundary of Childs Park on the west. This potential historic district is significant according to criteria A and C and would have local significance. These residential streets are significant according to criterion A for their reflection of the development of Northampton from the mid-19th century as a relatively affluent community that supported several private schools for young women, which prepared them after 1875 for attendance at Smith College, and the Clarke School where deaf students were given an education that thoroughly prepared them for the hearing world. The residences in this area made a shift from gentlemen’s estates to accommodation of the growing middle class in Northampton during the 19th century with businessmen, scholars, teachers, doctors, and retired farmers. According to criterion C this district would be significant for the range of historical styles that it includes. Gothic Revival, Italianate, French Second Empire, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles are all well-represented within a landscape of individual large lots, and streetscapes that were laid out and developed at one time.