Cybertravel broadens your thinking about home

The Elbridge Newton House in Somerville, MA, built in 1898 and revived from dormancy by Thomas and Mrs. Lifson in the eighties, is now on the National Register of Historic Places

One of the most treasured unforeseen consequences of blogging is that you sometimes get esoteric bits of information from fellow bloggers that open your eyes to previously unknown wonders in your own back yard. We made Thomas Lifson's restored Queen Anne/Dutch Colonial/Shingle Style mansion in Somerville the raison d'etre of our Sunday "Read the Landscape" walk today and were not disappointed.

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[goomp]

The stained-glass windows recall my childhood. Now in my eighties, I recall these late 1800 houses were abundant in the neighborhoods in which I grew up. I lived in two of them. One on Babcock Street in Brookline had a furnished front hall 25 x 40, a den, a study, a living room, a music room, and enclosed heated sun room, a dining room, a butler's pantry, a storage pantry, a 30 x 20 kitchen and a back hall, six bedrooms, a pool hall, a sewing room and servants quarters of three bedrooms. There were four bathrooms and a lavatory. In addition the stables were nearly as large as the house and included quarters for the chauffeur. Unfortunately it was turned into a day school and then later torn down to make an apartment house. I lived here with my grandmother from 1925 until she died in 1930. I then moved to my other grandmother's home in Melrose. It was of the same vintage, but on a far less grandiose scale. It still stands on its one-acre lot.