Massachusetts

The Edmund Fowle House, 28 Marshall St. Watertown Massachusetts (42.368643,-71.179959)

Felling date: Spring 1771, Summer 1771, and Winter 1771/2

Joists (16/28) 1771(12C, C3), 1770(½C, 3¼C), 1767, 1765(5), 1761(H/S), 1759(2), 1757(7), 1756, 1753, 1730, 1729, 1720; Beams 1771(30C, 18C, 10C, 8C), 1752; Tiebeam 1771(14C). Site Master 1673-1771 EFH (t = 8.2 SEMASS3; 6.5 NPC; 5.7 BCC; 5.32 JWL).

The Edmund Fowle House is two-and-one-half story double pile house with a central chimney and a hip roof. The clapboarded exterior retains its overall Georgian design. Modifications, in connection with the conversion of the house to a two family dwelling in 1871 included the addition of a front entry porch, a porch and entry on the left-hand side, a bay window on the right-hand side, and a rear ell. In 2006-2007, the house underwent a thorough restoration in which Georgian features such as chimney breasts were refurbished, and other features were reconstructed on the basis of physical evidence remaining in the house. Prominent among the reconstructions was the return of the council room on the second floor to its original L-shaped configuration spanning the right-hand side and the rear central part of the house.

In 1775, the Provincial Congress had provided funds to finish the room and outfit it for meetings. The house was built by Edmund Fowle in 1772, a year after he inherited the property. In 1775, when the seat of government in Massachusetts was in Watertown, committees of the 2nd and 3rd Provincial Congress and the Executive Council of the Congress met in the house on a regular basis. The house remained in the hands of the Fowle family until 1856. In 1871, architects John Sturgis and Charles Brigham, recognizing the historical significance of the house, purchased the building and moved it to newly laid out Marshall Street in order to save it from destruction. The Historical Society of Watertown acquired the house in 1922.

Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory Unpublished Report 2007/22

Link to the The Historical Society of Watertown's webpage for The Edmund Fowle House here.

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