Round Hill - Sunnyside
From HistoricHydeSquare
| Proposed Round Hill - Sunnyside National Register Historic District |
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| Edge Hill Street - Gay Head Street - Round Hill Street - Sunnyside Street - Westerly Street |
The Round Hill - Sunnyside neighborhood was Robert Treat Paine’s second and largest attempt to create a substantial neighborhood of affordable housing in Boston.
As an alternative to building attached row houses or the more common three-decker, Paine envisioned an attractive, affordable neighborhood of modest single family homes.
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Affordable housing circa 1890
The Workingmen’s Building Association built the houses and then sold them at cost. Most of the houses sold for about $2,500—roughly $100,000 in today’s dollars. The Workingmen’s Cooperative Bank offered amortizing mortgages to buyers—an innovation for its time that let working people buy these homes on an installment plan.
Paine adapted some of the ideals of his time—light, gardens, and rich ornamentation—scaled them down, and put them into practice for the benefit of working people.
A Picturesque Vision
The Workingmen’s Building Association purchased the land for the neighborhood from the Susan Weld estate in 1888. At that time, it was a farm with a pond and few buildings. By the turn of the century, the land was transformed into a subdivision of curving streets that followed the contours of the land.
Paine turned to Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture and the designer of Boston’s Emerald Necklace, for advice on the street layout and plantings for the wooded slope between Sunnyside and Edge Hill streets.
George W. Pope designed the houses with Victorian details of more expensive homes — patterned shingles, decorative bracketing and cornices, bay windows, and dormers. Paine had recently commissioned Henry Hobson Richardson to renovate his own home in Waltham, and that experience clearly influenced the residential styles of the houses built here. Paine wanted to build housing that people could aspire to own, not to build houses that were solely utilitarian.
Related News
- Round Hill-Sunnyside eligible for National Register nomination
- Round Hill-Sunnyside Research: Building Inspector?s Reports
- 1984 Survey Report ? Centre Street/Heath Street
- Round Hill-Sunnyside brochure
- Request for Opinion of Eligibility submitted
District Details
According to the 1984 Parker Hill/Mission Hill Study Report, this district is eligible for National Register and Architectural Conservation listings.
This district qualifies for designation as an
"intact example of well-planned 1890's development of modestly scaled wood frame single and two family houses exhibiting elements of the Italianate, Queen Anne, Shingle, and Colonial Revival styles... This subdivision has significant historical associations with Boston corporation lawyer/banker/philanthropist Robert Treat Paine."
Edge Hill Street inventory forms (276 K)
Round Hill Street inventory forms (220 KB)
Sunnyside Street inventory forms (260 KB)
Westerly Street inventory forms (113 KB)
Note: The 1984 survey did not include any inventory sheets for houses on Gay Head Street.
National Register Nomination status
- Summer 2007: Fundraising to hire a preservation consultant to write the nomination.
- August 2006: Boston Landmarks Commission and Massachusetts Historic Commission staff determine eligible boundaries for a National Register district.
- January 2006: Boston Landmarks Commission and Massachusetts Historic Commission staff walked the neighborhood in January 2006 and deferred their determination pending further study. According to Boston Landmarks Commission staff, this is on their workplan for spring 2006.
- December 2005: Historic Hyde Square requested a determination of eligibility for a National Register nomination (see Maps & Plans, below, for a map of the proposed boundaries).
District brochure
Round Hill - Sunnyside District Brochure (200K), updated August 4, 2006.
Highlights
Contributing resources
The following properties are within the boundaries of the National Register eligible district:
- 10-26 and 3-21 Edge Hill Street
- 4-24 and 5-23 Gay Head Street
- 27-59 and 42-66 Round Hill Street
- 4-14 and 1-33 Sunnyside Street
- 4-10 and 3-11 Westerly Street.
Noncontributing resources
These houses were built after the period of the district's significance and are not expected to be included in the National Register nomination:
- 1 & 3 Gay Head Street (built 2006)
- 13 Round Hill Street (built 1993)
- 15-25 Round Hill Street (built c. 1920)
- 41 Round Hill Street (built 2006).
The garages, sheds, and other outbuildings constructed after 1900 will also be considered noncontributing.
External links
- Boston Landmarks Commission
- Stonehurst, the Robert Treat Paine Estate
- Robert Treat Paine at SaveTrinity.org
- Interactive map at the Boston Atlas
- Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS) online database
Maps & Plans
Google Map of Round Hill - Sunnyside boundaries
Bibliography
- Culver, David M. "Tenement House Reform in Boston, 1846-1898" Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1972.
- Drake, Frances S. "The Town of Roxbury: Its Memorable Persons and Places." Roxbury: Published by the author, 1878.
- Ellis, Charles M. The History of Roxbury Town. Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1874.
- FitzPatrick, Maura E. "Frederick Douglass Square Historic District Registration Form". National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of the Interior National Parks Service, 1996.
- "George W. Pope Obituary." Boston Evening Transcript. January 17, 1896.
- Gould, Elgin Ralston Lovell. "The housing of the working people / prepared under the direction of Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, by E.R.L Gould, Ph.D." United State Bureau of Labor, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1895.
- Handlin, David P. "The American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815-1915." Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1979.
- Paine, Jr., Robert Treat. "Immediate Duty of Every City to Organize its Charities." Report of a Committee of the Churches Associated in the Boston Quarterly Charity Lecture. Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1885.
- Paine, Jr., Robert Treat. "The Inspiration of Charity." Pamphlet. Boston: W.B. Clarke Co., 1905.
- Paine, Jr., Robert Treat. "The Housing Conditions in Boston." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 20, July 1902, pp. 123-136.
- Paine, Sarah Cushing. Paine Ancestry: The Family of Robert Treat Paine, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Including Maternal Lines. ed. Charles Henry Pope. Boston: printed by the family, 1912.
- "Robert Treat Paine Obituary." Boston Evening Transcript. August 12, 1910.
- Warner, Sam Bass. Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.
- Whitehill, Walter Muir. Boston: A Topographical History. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1968.
- Zaitzevsky, Cynthia. "Housing Boston's Poor: The First Philanthropic Experiments." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. May 1983.
