
Image above: A nineteenth century Franklin Pool Painting showing a view looking north down Main Street from around the current corner of Main and Lincoln streets. | ||||||||
The area which is now Wakefield was first settled in 1639 by a small group of settlers. We have no buildings surviving from the town’s earliest period, but we do have a still functioning system of roads, a pattern of land use, landscaping features and the Old Burial Ground, laid out about 1688-1689.![]() Another First Period House, an ell of an old farmhouse, survives at 391 Vernon Streetand has been tentatively dated to 1680. The main part of this house was built by Captain Daniel Green in Lynnfield in 1750. It was moved to Wakefield by his son, Caleb Green. The house has been placed in a special “First Period” grouping of structures on the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service. As the agricultural community tended to grow slowly, not many Georgian houses were built in Wakefield. Of those remaining, most have been altered, often radically.
Another example of Georgian architecture is 71 Prospect, built c. 1764. Originally 3 bays long, it is said to have been built on the site of the original homestead of William Cowdrey, an influential first settler. Set on rubble stone foundations, it retains its Georgian window frames and sash. Its door surround appears to be transitional to the Federal period. The Georgian/Federal house at 58 Oak Street, is the James Smith/Ezekiel Oliver House, probably built before 1750.
With the coming of the railroad to South Reading in the 1840’s, the town’s population would double. South Reading was no longer a remote hamlet,. The town’s industries began to grow and evolve throughout the nineteenth century.
The Greek Revival style flourished in the town between 1830 and 1860. Most of the buildings designed in this style were constructed before the rapid industrialization of South Reading, but so persistent was the style in this conservative town that they continued to be erected until about 1860, when much of the rest of the country was building in the newer Gothic Revival and Italianate styles. The Gothic Revival style, begun in England and used in America by 1840, was a protestation against the artificial rigidities of the Greek Revival style. Houses built in this style were to have irregular, asymmetrical shapes, to blend with, rather than contrast to the environment, and to inspire feelings of cozy domesticity or grant ideal romance out of the pages of the widely popular Sir Walter Scott novels. In South Reading, the style was very restrained, although a notable example is at 16 Cordis Street.
The town’s early industrial boom remade the commercial center in the Italianate style, of which very little remains.
The Wakefield Block at 414-416 Main Street was next to the Town Hall and built at approximately the same date. It too had a mansard roof which is now demolished. Beneath it, the town’s largest commercial block had arched stone lintels incised with Eastlake motifs. Miller’s Piano Factory (razed in 1960 to provide space for a bank building) from the 1880’s was the third large Mansard style building at this town center.
The Shingle Style was originated by Boston architect H. H. Richardson in Cambridge of 1876. It was a style often chosen by the wealthy for their seaside or country homes. Their architects developed a high style characterized by the distinctive shingle clad exterior, smooth rounded forms, more open planning, horizontal emphasis, and a Queen Anne complexity of composition. For a brief period at the end of the nineteenth century, large masonry buildings in Wakefield including schools, commercial blocks and at least one apartment were constructed in one of two styles: the Romanesque Revival or the Renaissance Revival. The more conventional Romanesque Revival Lincoln School uses rounded arches are used to mark entry and windows, while the surface is colorfully treated with diapered brick and sandstone patterns. The turn of the century did not cause Wakefield architects and builders to abandon their popular Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Rather, new ideas made their way slowly alongside the old. Economics and the desire for more efficient, functional buildings were the basis for the development of the Rational Revival Style, which began to appear about 1910 – 1915. Closely allied with the Rational Revival is the Craftsman style, the expression in architecture of an entire aesthetic generated by Gustave Stickley The Craftsman aim for honesty and simplicity in construction. Wakefield architect Harland Perkins made an outstanding architectural contribution to Wakefield around 1910 – 1913 when he designed the three houses of Elizabeth Boit’s family compound at the corner of Prospect and Chestnut Streets.Perkins introduced the English Cottage Style which took the work of a number of contemporary English architects as its inspiration. The Neo-Historical or Period Revival styles are Neo-Renaissance, Georgian, Classical, Federal, Colonial, Norman and Tudor. A re-treading of the Revival styles, they combined traditional elements in a modern manner. At right, the Massachusetts State Armory Building, now the Americal Civic Center. It is the period of architecture which set its stamp most firmly on Wakefield’s downtown, its public buildings and public and private institutions. The styles were chosen to convey the dignity and security associated with historical architecture. Perhaps the most refined example of the Neo-Historical style’s intended message is the Beebe Memorial Library of 1922 on Main Street. |
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Wakefield Historical Commission, copyright 2010 | ||||||||