National Register of Historic Places

Devotion, Edward, House

Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts
Listed
February 14, 1978
Type
Building
Period
Industrial
Ref No.
78002835

About this property

The Edward Devotion House is a historic house at 347 Harvard Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA. Built about 1745, it is one of the town's few surviving 18th-century structures, and is of those the best preserved. The house is owned by the town and administered by the Brookline Historical Society as a historic house museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The building is also the headquarters of the Brookline Historical Society. The Edward Devotion House is located on the north side of Harvard Street, a major north–south roadway dating back to early colonial days. It is set west of Coolidge Corner, one of Brookline's major commercial centers, and is nearly surrounded by the Florida Ruffin Ridley School, a public elementary school formerly named for Devotion. The house is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, three bays wide, with a gambrel roof that is extended at the rear by a leanto section, which extends beyond the left facade in a "Beverly jog". It has a brick central chimney, and entrances in the left bay of the main facade and in the jog. The main facade entrance is flanked by pilasters and topped by an entablature and triangular pediment. The house was built about 1745 by Solomon Hill on land he had purchased from Edward Devotion, Jr., that had been in his family since at least 1645. The house appears to have been built around, or contain elements of, an older structure dating to about 1680. The Devotion family was long prominent in Brookline civic affairs, petitioning for the town's separation from Boston. Edward Devotion, Jr. bequeathed funds to the town for the construction of a school, which the town did not act on until 1891, when the town purchased the house and built the first schoolhouse nearby. The house has been maintained by the Brookline Historical Society since its founding in 1901, and now displays objects of Brookline history and the Devotion family. National Register of Historic Places listings in Brookline, Massachusetts Media related to Edward Devotion House (Brookline, Massachusetts) at Wikimedia Commons

Location

347 Harvard St.
Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts
42.34433, -71.12420

Categories

ARCHITECTURE
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Historic Sites

Town Stable
Industrial
0 mi
Arcade Building
Civil War
0.1 mi
Cypress-Emerson Historic District
Listed
0.1 mi
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site (Additional Documentation)
Industrial
0.2 mi
House at 156 Mason Terrace
Industrial
0.3 mi

Nearby Battles

Siege of Boston – Roxbury Lines
1775Revolutionary War
1.5 mi
Siege of Boston – Cambridge Lines
1775Revolutionary War
2.2 mi

Questions about this property

When was Devotion, Edward, House listed on the National Register?

Devotion, Edward, House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 14, 1978.

What type of historic resource is Devotion, Edward, House?

Devotion, Edward, House is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Devotion, Edward, House?

The period of significance for Devotion, Edward, House is recorded as the industrial era.

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