Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow House
- Architect
- Henry Hobson Richardson
- Year
- 1887
- Style
- Shingle Style
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- richardson romanesque
Built in 1887 at 72-80 Ober Road in Newton's Oak Hill village, this rambling shingle-style residence was one of the last private houses Henry Hobson Richardson designed before his death in 1886. It was commissioned by Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow, a prominent Boston surgeon, and today survives as condominiums after a 1980s renovation carried out for the PBS series This Old House.
the building
Courtyard organization. The house is a large 2½-story wood-frame structure wrapped around a central courtyard rather than built as a single block. The main house occupies the east side, a southern wing held servants' quarters and service facilities, and a carriage house closes the north side - a working arrangement as much as an architectural one.
Corner turret. A small turret with a conical roof projects from the building's southwest corner, one of the few overtly picturesque touches on an otherwise broad, shingled mass, and typical of the shingle style's taste for an irregular silhouette built from a combination of roof types.
This Old House conversion. In the 1980s the house was converted into condominiums as a project for the PBS program This Old House, giving Richardson's estate a second life as multi-unit housing rather than facing demolition or long-term neglect.
the style
The Bigelow House is a textbook example of the shingle style, built up from a combination of roof types and continuous wood-shingle cladding rather than applied Victorian ornament. Richardson was working at the height of the style's development in the mid-1880s, letting massing and roofline rather than decoration give the sprawling house its character.
More on Shingle Stylethe architect
Henry Hobson Richardson was among the most influential American architects of the 19th century, best known for the muscular masonry Romanesque style that bears his name. The Bigelow House is notable for the opposite reason: it was one of his last residential commissions, completed the year after his 1886 death, and shows him working in the lighter, shingled idiom he helped popularize for domestic work.
More on Henry Hobson Richardsonsignificance
The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, recognizing both its architectural pedigree and its association with Richardson's late career.
more by Henry Hobson Richardson
nearby
- Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church
- Kingsbury House
- Brandegee Estate
- Hammond House
- Adams Claflin House
- Perkins Estate