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NPS Form 10-900 (Rev. 10-90) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service OMB No. 1024-0018 RECEIVED 2280 National Register of Historic Places Registration Form 682 JUN | 2 2003 Trigster or for ure il nominaeis or reng lom ( detomineinse o inei ual r orie e le re y e iaerucirn ie aro care loe rar ear the information requested.If any item does not apply to the property being documented, enter "N/A" for"nopapplicable." For functions, architectural assification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the instructions. Place additional entries and narrativ ems on continuation sheets (NPS Form 10-900a). Use a typewriter, word processor, or computer, to complete all item 1. Name of Property historic name John Robbins House other names/site number Robbins "Lottery" House 2.
Location street & number 144 Great Road (MA Rtes 2A/119) N/A not for publication city or town Acton state Massachusetts _code_MA county_Middlesex N/Avicinity code_017_zip code _01720 3. State/Federal Agency Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1986, as amended, I hereby certify that this df nomination - request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property R meets - does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant - nationally - statewide locally. (- See continuation sheet for additional comments.) Retay Auedlerg 6/5/03 Signature of gertifying official/Title Cara/H.
Metz, SHPO, Massachusetts Historical Commissioh State or Federal agency and bureau In my opinion, the property l meets -] does not meet the National Register criteria. (C See continuation sheet for additional Comments.) Signature of certifying official/Title Date State or Federal agency and bureau 4. National Park Service Certification , hereby certify that this property is d entered in the National Registe - See continuation sheet. - determined eligible for the National Register - See continuation sheet. - determined not eligible for the National Register - removed from the National Register - other (explain): tion It Beall T 7/25/03 John Robbins House Name of Property 5.
Classification Dwnership of Property (Check as many boxes as apply X private _ public-local _ public-State _ public-Federal Middlesex, MA County and State Category of Property (Check only one box) X building(s) _ district _ Site _ structure _ object Number of Resources within Property (Do not include previously listed resources in the count.) Contributing Non-contributing 2 0 1 1 buildings sites _ structures objects Total Number of contributing resources previously listed in the National Register ame of related multiple property listin Enter "N/A" if property is not part of a multiple property listing N/A 6. Function or Use Historic Functions (Enter categories from instructions) DOMESTIC: single and double dwelling Current Functions (Enter categories from instructions) DOMESTIC: single dwelling 7.
Description Architectural Classification (Enter categories from instructions) EARLY REPUBLIC: Federal Materials (Enter categories from instructions) foundation STONE: granite, fieldstone walls WOOD: weatherboard ASPHALT roof other Narrative Description (Describe the historic and current condition of the property on one or more continuation sheets.) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number - Page - John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA 7. DESCRIPTION The John Robbins House stands on the west side of Great Road (Mass. Routes 2A and 119) close to the street on a broad, shallow lot. A large lawn with a pile of rocks marking where an 18th-century barn (Map #3) once stood occupies the area north of the house. South of the building are a large vegetable garden with a ca.
1920s farmstand (Map #2) and a variety of trees and shrubs. A fragment of an east- west fieldstone wall south of the house near the road marks the line of an old farm lane. Another length of wall lines the southwest edge of the property along the road. (Map #4) The north-south roadbed of the former Framingham & Lowell Railroad parallels the Great Road directly behind the Robbins property. West of the railroad embankment is Ice House Pond, a long body of water on Nashoba Brook, created by a dam about 500 yards southwest of the house that was associated with a sawmill complex built by John Robbins' father, Joseph, in 1788. West across the brook are woods, open meadows, a playing field, and Acton's oldest and largest cemetery, Woodlawn Cemetery.
The house is one of the last residential properties on what gradually became a long commercial strip over the course of the second half of the 20th century, extending through Acton west from the Concord line to Littleton Common. Today, the character of Great Road in the immediate vicinity of the Robbins House is a disparate mix of modern commercial complexes and a handful of pre-and post-1960s houses converted to business uses. Directly across the street, a shopping plaza is presently being developed on 20 acres that were divided out from the Robbins farm in about 1930. Exterior description. Completed in 1800, the 42 by 36-foot main block of the John Robbins House is a large, four-square late Georgian/early Federal dwelling, two stories high, capped by a shallow-hipped, asphalt-shingle roof. Two large painted brick chimneys rise from the inner portions of the side planes of the roof.
The - building is elevated slightly above the level of the road atop a granite-block foundation on a low earthen terrace which extends into a small forecourt enclosed by a picket fence in the form of a balustrade. A 14 foot deep two-part, one-story leanto spans the south two-thirds of the rear of the house, to connect at the southwest house corner with a long one-story, side-gable-roofed chaise house/woodshed. Across the rear west wall of the chaise house/shed is a much later leanto, added in two sections between 1950 and 1960. Giant order Roman Doric (Tuscan) pilasters, set on granite plinths and surmounted by a full cornice, define the corners of the main house block.
The wood-frame building is clad in wood clapboards (continued) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet 2 Section number - Page - John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA which reduce gradually in their reveals toward the lower part of the walls, where they end at a broad water table. The main block has two principal facades. The east elevation, the proper "front" facing the road, is a ormal symmetrical five-bay arrangement. (Photo 1) Its focal point is á generously scaled cente rontispiece, also with Tuscan pilasters, and with an entablature enriched with dentils and modillion (Photo 5) The entry has a large six-panel door under a five-light transom. The windows, both here and throughout most of the house, are 12-over-12-sash, in plank frames with molded edges.
Most are fitted with wood louvered blinds dating to the early 19th century. The secondary south facade, facing the circular, unpaved driveway, is also of five bays, but is less formal in its arrangement. The windows toward the rear of the house are placed closer together than the two at the front. The south side entrance is in a one-story hip-roofed enclosed porch occupying the middle bay - a feature common in late 18th-century domestic architecture in the Acton/Concord area. The south door, located in the east face of the entry, is a large six-panel type, surrounded by a molded architrave. A window centered in the south wall of the entry is 8-over-12-sash. West of the entry is the bulkhead door to the cellar. Between the two, at foundation level, is a surviving section of the brick gutter which formerly ringed the base of three sides of the house but was mostly covered over in the 1920s.
The north side of the house is two bays wide. The west rear wall of the house, on which the pilasters do not return, is three bays wide at the second story. The rear leanto is composed of two sections. Its north part, projecting from the center of the main house wall, is a 1967 rebuilding of the original leanto of 1799-1800, measuring 14 by 14-feet. It stands on the original fieldstone foundation, and has one 6- over-9-sash window in the north end, and two 6-over-9's on the west side. The section to its south, under a continuation of the leanto roof, is built over the original well. It was probably at one-time an open "piazza" forming a sheltered work space and an open passage to the chaise house/woodshed.
In the early 1920s, the original leanto was taken down and replaced by a smaller tarpapered structure on a frame of railroad ties, sections of telephone poles, and some existing timbers. The 1967 reconstruction was based on considerable existing evidence, using as much of the original material as was practical. At that time the rear piazza over the well was enclosed as a summer porch, with four large four-pane storm windows over a low clapboard wall, and centrally placed panel-and-glass door. The two heavy late 19th-century semicircular wheel brackets now embellishing the corners of the latter section were relocated from a former door hood on the chaise house. (Photo #4) (continued) United States Dep tment of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet 7 3 Section number - Page.
- John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA Chaise house/woodshed, ca. 1800 (Photos 2-4) Extending south from the enclosed piazza, on slightly lower ground, is the combined chaise house/woodshed. This is a long narrow 1 1/2-story structure with a side-gabled roof, built partly of timbers, sheathing, and paneling from the ca. 1745 Wooley House, which had stood across the road. (Other reused elements of the earlier house, including hardware, paneling, and doors, appear in the cellar and in some rooms of the main house.) The long east wall, facing the driveway, (Photo 2) has a single 6-over-y-sash window toward the north end, with a 4-panel Victorian door just south of it. A six- pane window occupies the walled-in former opening of the woodshed, but the elliptical-arched doorway of the outer chaise house end, fitted with double-leaf carriage doors, still occupies the south part of the wall.
The positions of the interior spaces--a utility room at the north end, a woodshed in the center, and the chaise house in the south end, are demarcated on the exterior by vertical and horizontal trim boards, presently picked out in white against the red walls. The horizontal sheathing of the east front, which was originally exposed, was uncovered in the 1960s when later clapboards were removed. The rest of the structure is clapboarded. The south and north ends of the chaise house/woodshed each have one 6/9 window in the gable peak. (Photos 3 and 4) Extending to the rear are two shed-roofed leanto additions of the 1950s. The northernmost, a room about 20 feet square, with two 8-over-12-sash windows in its north wall, was built first, in about 1950. Its rear wall has an asymmetrical arrangement of one 16-pane window and a panel and glass door.
Three small multi-pane windows are placed high in the wall of the later south section. The south end of the latter leanto has a 6/9 window and a horizontal-panel and glass door. Other exterior alterations. Aside from maintenance repairs, including the restoration of the front. cornice in the 1930s, the exterior of the main house block remains substantially as first built. The windows are original throughout, and all but a few of the louvered blinds first hung in about 1835-40 remain. The clapboarding of the north, east, and south walls is almost entirely original; the west rear wall was largely reclapboarded in about 1850.
With the exception of a brief period in the 1950s and 60s, when the back of the house was painted white and the blinds black, the color scheme has always - been as it is now--white for the elevations visible from the street and red for the back and the chaise house, with green blinds. The only major repairs to the main house have involved the rear leanto (described above) and the reinstallation of the balustrade around the front terrace. The balustrade, originally framed into the house but removed about 1900, was rebuilt in 1973 following evidence found on the site and in legal descriptions of the property. Its design--flat 1 1/2- by 3/4" pickets set into bottom boards and a molded upper rail, with square posts with molded caps--was also based on the recollections of those who remembered the original. The only part of it not replaced was an arched rose trellis over the front gate.
In the late 1980s the purple Welsh slate roof-either the original roof or a 19th-century (continued) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number - Page -4 John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA replacement--was replaced with asphalt shingle, and in the 1990s a small wooden landing with stairs and a simple balustrade was built over the existing granite slab steps for safer access to the south entry. The basic Federal "four-square" plan of the main house consists of a wide central hallway bay, containing front and rear stairs placed back to back against an intervening wall, flanked by two principal rooms at the front of the house and two at the back. The front and back rooms are separated by the two chimneys, vhich serve four fireplaces on each floor, one in each room.
Passageways or large closets occupy the space etween the chimneys and the outer walls at both stories. As indicated by the fenestration on the exterior the front rooms are a few feet deeper than the rear rooms. (See Sketch Floor Plans) Like the exterior, the interior of the house, finished in three distinct stages as rooms came into active use, remains largely unchanged. The broad front stair hall and the rooms south of it were completed in 1800 with finely executed late Georgian/early Federal woodwork derived from William Pain's Practical Builder. (See photocopied plates from the Boston edition, 1792) The four-and six-panel interior doors are typical of the turn of the 19th century--with raised panels on one side, recessed panels on the other.
Throughout the house a large amount of the early hardware remains--hinges of several types, Norfolk latches, iron spring latches with small brass knobs, etc., and the front door bell that is operated by a pull with connecting wires and springs. The stair hall, (Photos 8 and 9) between the two front rooms has a generously proportioned two-run staircase with scrolled tread ends and a molded rail set on square, diagonally-positioned dowels. The newel posts are 3-inches square, with molded tops. A low dado of wide horizontal boards with molded chair rail rings the lower part of the walls. The upper, plastered wall surfaces of the stair hall retain unrestored stenciling done probably in the 1830s by the itinerant artist Moses Eaton, Jr. (1796-1883). Originally from Hancock, New Hampshire, Mr.
Eaton, who learned his craft from his father, spent many years traveling throughout New England, New York, and as far west as Ohio, decorating the interiors of his day. Extant examples of Eaton's work in Massachusetts are still being identified. Among them are stencils in the Lemuel Fales/Rufus Bullock House in Royalston (NR 1976), the George Hosman House in West Newbury, and the Caleb Wheeler, Jr. House in Bolton. The stenciling in the Robbins House is still largely intact on the unpainted surface of the plaster. The design, executed in green and red, consists of large-scale foliate motifs aligned vertically between stripes of short diagonal green lines, with upper and lower vine and leaf borders.
The main alteration to the stair hall is an opening, fitted with a small reused two-panel door, that was cut through the back wall of the stair landing for easier access to the upstairs back hall in about 1945. The low dado is also present in the south entry and in the southeast parlor. Other than the front stair hall, this is the only room in the house with this type of dado, and the only one to have low window (continued) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number - Page - John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA seats. In the south part of the west wall of this room is a pair of 6-panel doors-one to the south entry and one to a shallow china cabinet with pull-out desk or tea table. The center of the wall is occupied by a fireplace with an elaborate mantel with full entablature and cornice.
The frieze is carved in intersecting circles, and flanked by gouge-work capitals which are a simpler substitute for the foliate-carved capitals shown in the Pain illustration. (See Photo 7, and Pain, Plate 47.) The cornice at the top of the wall in this room is the most elaborate in the house, consisting of a crown molding of heavy Georgian proportions over a frieze embellished with gougework triglyphs. The louvered interior blinds in the parlor window reveals were installed in about 1850, replacing former paneled shutters. At about the same time, the brass doorknobs were replaced with rosewood ones. The spacious southwest kitchen is in unusually original condition for a house that is two hundred years old.
Although a sink, countertop with drawers, and wooden wall cabinets were installed along the south part of the rear wall in the mid-20th century, the rest of the room retains its early 19#hcentury appearance. The east wall of the room is dominated by the very long fireplace (now filled in), which has a wide wood surround embellished with Federal moldings and a shallow, molded mantel shelf. (Photo 10) The brick bake oven is still in place north of the plastered-over firebox, its opening covered by an ornamented cast-iron door. A 42-inch-high dado covers the lower part of the painted plaster walls, and a simple horizontal trim board, about four inches wide, rings the upper parts of the walls about two feet below the ceiling. The northeast rooms on the first and second stories, finished about 1830-35, contain a combination of simple ca.
1800 Federal trim with transitional Federal/Greek Revival detailing of a type that was still popular in Acton until about 1840. The mantel in the lower room, apparently used as a second,. northeast parlor, which has raised-panel pilasters and capitals, retains its original painted surface variegated in black, gold, and green to resemble marble. (Photo 11.) The first-story northwest room, separated from the southwest kitchen by the basement stairwell and enclosed rear stair, may have begun as a partially-finished summer kitchen. It was apparently updated in the 1830s after Elbridge and Charlotte Robbins were married and had come to settle here in the house with his parents. The reduced brick fireplace in this room has angled side walls. (Photo 12.) Like its southwest counterpart, the fireplace has a wide wooden surround embellished with an architrave and a molded mantel shelf.
Here the adjacent bake oven and the ash pit below it are concealed by a single wooden door with a long raised-field panel. The fireplace is flanked by two 4-panel doors-the one to the north leading to the northeast parlor, and the one to the south opening into a china closet. The simple casings on the room's corner posts, the dado, the four-panel doors, and the horizontal trim board placed high on the walls are all similar to the 1800 finish of the south kitchen. One whimsical detail is the trefoil-shaped ventilation holes cut in the upper panels of the door to the rear leanto. (Photo 13) (continued) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number -/.
Page - John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA An early spearheaded Suffolk latch on the door to the china cabinet south of the fireplace was probably the front door latch to the original farmhouse on the property, the old Wooley House of ca. 1745. It was formerly used on the south entry door of the Robbins House. The china closet contains a pass-through to the front room. Second story. Of the two south chambers, finished in 1800, the southeast chamber is the more elaborate. A crown molding rings the top of the wall, and the shallow fireplace has an elegantly carved surround with a molded architrave and an entablature that includes a fretwork band in the "wall of Troy" pattern. (Photo 14) The fireplace of the southwest chamber has a similar architrave, but a simpler, shallower mantel shelf.
The north part of the firebox was filled in, and a Franklin stove installed, probably in the 1830s. (Photo 15) The north chambers, like the rooms below them, were apparently finished during the Greek Revival period. The mantelpiece in the northeast chamber, (Photo 16) has pilasters of similar proportions to those in the northeast parlor, but with recessed, rather than raised panels. Completed last of all, in about 1850, the northwest chamber and a small room (converted to a bathroom in 1929), off the second-floor back hall have very simple Greek Revival detail. Rear leanto: interior. As described above, the structure of the original rear leanto was rebuilt in the 1960s. At that time a small lavatory and laundry room were installed in the south part. The remainder is a large paneled room, now used as a den.
The leanto as built in 1799-1800 was 14 by 14-feet, apparently a single large room that was used as a buttery, sink room, or other utilitarian space: It is referred to in Elbridge Robbins' 1891 inventory as a "pantry." The interior was wood-sheathed on all sides, and had exposed ceiling joists. Sometime in the middle of the 19th century the leanto room was divided into two spaces, and-the ceiling was plastered. At about the same time, the well area between the leanto and chaise house was enclosed, and a wood floor, supported on reused timbers, was installed over the well area. Today that south section is used as a summer porch. Chaise house/woodshed interior. The long southwest combined chaise house and woodshed, built about 1800 or slightly later, incorporates materials reused from the first house (ca.
1745) on the property, including some timbers, sheathing, and paneling used as sheathing. (Other reused elements of the earlier house, such as some feather-edged sheathing and batten doors of the same material, are present in the cellar of the main house.) Originally containing a whitewashed utility room at the north end, with two arched-front sheds south of that, and a passageway to the rear privy along the west side (see Sketch Plan) the structure's interior arrangements, like the exterior, were altered somewhat in the mid-19th century. The stairs to the loft, formerly located against the front wall of the utility room, were relocated to the front wall of the middle woodshed bay when its opening was closed in.
(See Sketch Plan) (continued) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number - John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA The loft contains three pairs of dovecote openings-one on the east that is keyhole-shaped, and two made up of small arches on the south. Additions built in the 1940s and 1950s doubled the ground plan of the building by adding two leantos with very shallow-pitched roofs across the rear, the south one slightly lower in height than the north. (The north leanto was a small outbuilding that was moved to the site from Littleton.) Their intended funetion is uncertain. Today they are used for storage, and a space partitioned off at the rear center is a small bedroom. Site features A few features of the early landscaping around the house are still evident.
At the east, north, and west sides of the house the sod terraces elevating the house well above the natural grade are still intact. That at the south side was mostly faced with a low mortared stone retaining wall in the 1920s. A pair of spruce trees formerly stood within the fenced front courtyard. The northern tree, apparently a late 19th-century replacement for an elm or other deciduous tree, died and was taken down in the 1980s. The southern tree was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane, and a new spruce, now about 25 feet high, was planted in its place some years later. Along the fieldstone wall (Map #4) separating the south yard or driveway from an old farm lane is a very large lilac bush, believed to have been planted when the house was built. Just west of the end of the wall is a ca. 1920s farmstand (Map #2, Photo 7), which has been used for many years as a storage shed.
It originally stood about fifty feet north of the house, closer to the road, and was moved to its present location in the 1940s. The unpainted, somewhat deteriorated wooden building has a shallow-pitched shed roof, vertical-board sides, and horizontal-board shutters spanning the broad front opening. The roof of the farmstand was extended to the rear in about 1970 to shelter lawn equipment. South of the farm lane, along the Great Road boundary, is another length of old fieldstone wall, and about thirty yards north of the house is a pile of rocks marking the site of the farm's original barn (Map #3), built about 1745 and demolished in 1922.
Recent additions to the property include a windbreak of pine trees planted in the 1930s along the north edge of the property and a line of tall hemlocks close to the north wall of the house, the circular gravel driveway in the angle of the house and chaise house created in the 1960s; and plantings of shrubs, fruit and ornamental trees and flower beds. Among the latter is a clump of tiger lilies which was transplanted to the front court in the 1970s to the front terrace from the site of the 1730s garden originally belonging to John Robbins' grandmother. Archaeological Description While no ancient Native American sites are located on the John Robbins House property, sites may be present. Environmental characteristics indicate a high potential for the presence of ancient sites in the area.
The house is located on a well drained, level to moderately sloping terrace within 1000 feet of Nashoba Brook, now impounded forming Ice House Pond. Nashoba Brook drains southeasterly to the Assabet River within the larger Concord/Merrimack River drainage. Given the above information, regional patterns of Native settlement, the small size of the nominated parcel (1.08 acres), and impacts related to construction of the adjacent railroad right-of-way, the house, and barn, a low to moderate potential exists for locating significant ancient Native American resources on the property. (continued) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet 8 Section number - Page - John Robbins House Acton (Middlesex), MA A high potential exists for locating historic archaeological resources on the Robbins House property.
Structural evidence may exist from barns, outbuildings, and alterations made to the house during various periods of renovation. A pile of rocks, possibly foundation remains, reportedly marks the location of a 1745 barn north of the house. The barn was originally associated with the Wooley Farm located across the road from the house. Most agricultural outbuildings associated with the Robbins Farm were located across the road. Construction and occupational related features (trash pits, privies, wells) may also exist on the property. The original well is reported under the southern part of the rear leanto attached to the present house, and the privy was located against the original exterior west wall of the chaisehouse. The locations of trash pits/areas are unknown. Stratigraphic evidence may also exist related to grading and/or railroad bed construction along the western property boundary.
(End) John Robbins House Name of Property 8. Statement of Significance