A group of Jamaica Plain neighbors are working to get landmark status of a Kenton Road house before it’s demolished by a new owner.
Built around 1858, the house at 19 Kenton Road, “…features a significant number of original, classic Italianate details: overhanging gables, eave brackets, hood moldings, projecting bays, and arched windows. 19 Kenton contributes significantly to the design quality and historical character of the entirety of Kenton Rd, a short, narrow, tree-lined street that has only 15 houses, featuring a mix of historic architectural styles: Italianate, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, and Second Empire, with the most recently built house dating to 1905,” says a letter sent to elected representatives encouraging them to support the house to gain landmark status from the Boston Landmark Commission.
The letter states that a developer recently purchased the double-lot property and wants to build something bigger across both lots, which they claim would be out of scale and style for the street. The petitioning neighbors suggest that if granted landmark status, the new owner would have to save/renovate the house, not demolish it, but could still add a new second building next to it to achieve the same number of units being proposed.
The developer is currently waiting out a demolition delay period which ends in mid-May, and the Boston Landmarks Commission (BLC) is concurrently awaiting a study report (that it funded) on the house, which, if approved by the commissioners before the demo delay has ended, will landmark the house and save it from demolition.
Kenton Road is a small side street off Washington Street in the Stonybrook neighborhood, and several houses on the street are listed in the Massachusetts Historical Commission database, and in a 1983 BLC Jamaica Plain Preservation Study. All Kenton Road houses date from the 1850s to around 1905. At the encouragement by Landmark Commission members, neighbors have also started an effort to create a Kenton Road area Architectural Conservation District.
Here is the landmark petition submitted to the BLC. Here is the presentation the petitioners made to the BLC at the petition hearing.
The petitioners would like elected officials, neighbors, and Boston residents to submit support letters for the landmark status to be sent to the Boston Landmark Commission at BLC@Boston.gov by April 30.
Read more about the history of the house and petitioners reasoning for granting it landmark status:
Originally Greenwood Avenue, Kenton was among the first streets established between Washington and Forest Hills Streets. Isaac H. Cary, proprietor of a “Fancy Goods Store” in downtown Boston, owned a substantial amount of this land southwest of his own house from Forest Hills St to Washington St, including Greenwood Ave (Kenton Rd), Garfield Ave (now Gartland St), Williams St, and on down Washington St toward what is now Forest Hills T station. Cary bought and then subdivided these large tracts of his estate, sold the parcels or built houses on them, some of which he rented out.Beyond its architectural character, 19 Kenton represents an important span of time in Jamaica Plain’s transition from vast country estates into a subdivided and developed, more affordable and accessible neighborhood. In the mid-1800s ordinary people could live here and commute to downtown via the newly constructed and expanded public transit options near or on Washington St. (Boston and Providence Railroad, horse-car trolleys, electric streetcars, and the MBTA Elevated Railway). 19 Kenton is a two-family, and modest in size compared to the mansions of Boston, but it was exactly the scale needed at the time to house the growing Jamaica Plain middle- to working-class population.After Cary sold 19 Kenton in 1879, it was successively owned by a piano company foreman, a retail liquor store proprietor, and a mason, to mention a few. Renters over time included a photographer, a milkman, a driver, a trucker, a carpenter, and a stair builder. This house represents the history of the middle and working class in Jamaica Plain; even its most recent owner was a brewer, connecting back to when Jamaica Plain hosted the majority of Boston’s breweries. This house’s tenant record represents one of a number of classes of people typically not represented in Boston’s landmarked properties.
This house, as a symbol of the arrival of the middle and working classes in Jamaica Plain, as evidence of a country estate owner making way for progress by creating new transportation-oriented development, and as an intact and attractive example of mid-1800s Italianate architecture, should be landmarked.
