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NPS Form 10-900 (Rev. 10-90) 1267 OMB No. 1024-0018 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service RECEIVED National Register of Historic Places Registration Form banassny Register of Historic Places Registration Form (National Register Bulletin 16A). Complete each item by marking "xCfythe appropriate box or by entering the information requested. If any item does not apply to the property being documented, enter "N/A" for "not applicable" For functions, architectural classification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the instructions. Place additional entries and narrative 1. Name of Property historic name Azariah Newton House other names/site number 2. Location street & number 44 Silver Hill Road ._not for publication city or town Milford _vicinity state_ Massachusetts code_MA countyWorcester _ code_027 _ zip code _01757 3.
State/Federal Agency Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1986, as amended, I hereby certify that thisy nomination - request for determination of eligibility meetsthe 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 Bmeets - does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant - nationally - statewide z locally. (- See continuation sheet for additional comments.) uditeb.
MiDonoua Signature of certifying official/Title Judith BLMcDonough, Executive Director 8/27/99 Massachusetts Historical Commission, State Historic Preservation Officer State or Federal agency and bureau In my opinion, the property meets [does not meet the National Register criteria. ( See continuation sheet for additional Comments.) Signature of certifying official/Title Date State or Federal agency and bureau 4. National Park Service Certification 1, hereby certify that this property is: Ventered in the National Register - 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): Ee A. Beall Date of Action 10.14.94 Azariah Newton House Name of Property 5.
Classification Ownership of Property (Check as many boxes as apply) x private -public-local _ public-State - public-Federal Worcester, MA County and State (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 Noncontributing 1 1 building sites structures objects Total Name of related multiple property listing (Enter "N/A" if property is not part of a multiple property listing.) 1 1 Number of contributing resources previously listed in the National Register 6. Function or Use Historic Functions (Enter categories from instructions) Domestic: single dwelling Current Functions (Enter categories from instructions) Domestic: single dwelling 7.
Description Architectural Classification (Enter categories from instructions) Colonial ---- Georgian Materials (Enter categories from instructions) foundation_stone: granite and fieldstone walls asbestos asphalt roof other Narrative Description (Describe the historic and current condition of the property on one or more continuation sheets.) posfam 10-200a United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet 7 Section number Page 1 OMB Approvel Na. 102-0018 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA The Azariah Newton House is located in the southeastern part of Worcester County and consists of a single Cape Cod dwelling on a three-quarters acre lot in the Town of Milford.
Silver Hill Road is approximately two miles north-northwest of the center of town between the two rivers, the Charles and the Mill River, both of which flow south through the Town forming a level highlands between the two. Unlike other parts of Milford, Silver Hill Road is an area of relatively flat highlands yielding the better agricultural soils of the Town. The property of the Azariah Newton House is surrounded by mid-to-late twentieth century subdivision with houses of modest scale and one or two late eighteenth century properties in the vicinity. Milford is slightly east of the area characterized as the Blackstone Valley and once was part of Mendon, which lies to the west. Three numbered routes cut through Milford connecting it with its neighbors. Route 16, an east-west route, leads from Holliston on the east through Milford southwest to Hopedale and Mendon.
Route 85 originates in Milford center and extends north through Hopkinton. Route 140 cuts through the southwest corner connecting the Town to Upton on the west and Bellingham and Franklin on the south. The Azariah Newton House is representative of the ubiquitous Cape Cod Cottage built in New England towns in the eighteenth century. This house was constructed in ca. 1747 marking the beginning of the period of significance, which extends to ca. 1945 when the house achieved its present condition. The house represents the consistency of function and the structural architecture that has been sustained for the last two hundred and fifty years. There is a one-car garage set away from the Azariah Newton house at the road edge. It is the only other building or structure on the lot. Remnants of a large barn foundation used to be visible southeast of the house.
Demolition of the barn occurred in the early 1900s. The setting of the house is picturesque and, although the land has been subdivided, the road retains scenic road characteristics. The lot is defined by a low stone wall with an entrance leading from the roadway along a stone walkway to the side entrance of the rear ell of the house. The lot slopes from southeast to northeast so that the root cellar under the rear ell is above ground and a retaining wall extends from the road to the northwest corner of the building forming a flat garden area along the rear ell which today is the (continued) pesfam 10-2001 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet 7 Section number - Page. 2 OMB Approvel Na 1024-0018 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA location of the functional entrance to the Azariah Newton House.
The house is oriented to the southwest, thus the main entrance faces into the garden area. One of the gable ends of the main block and the side of the rear ell face the road running along the northwest side of the lot. The property is elaborated with mature trees, old-fashioned rose bushes, perennial gardens, and an herb garden. A four-foot high arborvitae hedge grows close to the house foundation on the north and west sides, with a break in the hedge marking the center entrance on the original main façade. The eighteenth century Cape is constructed around a large central chimney and displays a five-bay, center entrance main façade with gable roof. The one and one-half story house is two bays deep with a single window in the northwest gable peak and two sash in the southeast peak. The wide gable ends and the large roof surface are consistent with the ca. mid-eighteenth century date.
A single-story, four-bay rear ell extends from the northwest side of the main block. Although the house was covered with asbestos shingles prior to 1940, the wood clapboards remain under the shingles. The windows of the main (southwest) façade are nearly paired with only a narrow division between each of the two windows flanking the centered entrance. Six over six sash are set in plain recessed frames that are masked by the asbestos shingles. A louvered wood shutter on each side of each pair visually unites each set of windows. The former main entrance has an early twentieth century paneled door reminiscent of Italianate design with paired applied roundheaded panel moldings over a single horizontal applied panel over two square panels. The centered entrance also has flanking, full-length, wood louvered shutters, a twentieth century addition.
The southeast side of the house displays the wide gable end with a narrow roof overhang and return. Great stepping stones lead to an entrance door, which is similar to the main centered entrance on the southwest side, with applied paneled molding displaying rectangular panels in place of the roundheaded panels found on the center entrance. Structurally the house presents traditional eighteenth century techniques. The common rafter framing shows evenly spaced rafters hewn at the ends and laid upon joints or pockets in the ridge and plates. Long pegs that pierce the rafters and ridge secure these joints. Wide board sheathing then is laid over the rafters from the ridge to the front and rear plates (on the southwest and northeast sides).
The chimney rises through the roof (continued) omsfom 10800a United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Aaprovel Na. 1024-0018 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA Section number. Page 3 just in front of the ridge and has rafters lain against the two sides of the chimney. The house rests on a large stone foundation with some concrete parging around the main block. The rear ell, which is built into the slope of the land, has a raised stone and granite block foundation indicating a later date of the mid-nineteenth century, which is consistent with the interior framing.
The interior plan displays the common shallow front stair hall in front of the stack with flanking parlors and three rooms behind; one small room that is separated from the east parlor by a narrow entrance hall leading from the east gable end entrance to the eighteenth century kitchen, which is the second room located directly behind the stack and overlapping with part of the east parlor. A third room is directly behind the west parlor. The old kitchen or keeping room and present dining room, behind the west parlor, are divided by a stairwall that lines the attic and cellar steps. This location of the stairs with encasing stairwalls is awkward and would appear not to have been part of the eighteenth century construction.
The reason for this assumption is that the stairwalls that now divide the two rooms and encase the attic and cellar steps overlap onto the brick hearth in a fashion that would have made use of the bake over nearly impossible without stepping down on to the cellar stairs. However, this alteration appears to be a mid- nineteenth century alteration and may be coincident with the addition of the rear ell. Behind the rooms on the west side of the house there extends a twenty-four foot one-story ell with twentieth-century kitchen and two small anterooms behind the kitchen. This ell is of a later date than the main block as demonstrated by the foundation wall and by the roof framing. The foundation is of granite and the roof framing in the attic space above this ell has smaller members than the main block including a narrow ridge and narrow evenly cut rafters.
Original interior finish is retained and preserved to articulate the early function and design of this ca. 1747 dwelling. Three fireplaces are located in rooms bordering the center stack that takes up a sizable volume of the core of the house. Each fireplace is shallow with the exception of the kitchen fireplace, which is deeper and has a crane and separate outside beehive bake oven. The front stair hall is not used today however the wood vertical beaded board stair wall with door to stairs that wrap in front of the stack and low door accessing storage under the stairs, are in tact.
The functional stairs to the cellar and attic are behind the stack and separate the original kitchen from the present dining room behind the front southwest (continued) Nes Form 10900 1380 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number _ Page - 4 OMB Aaprovel Na 1021-0018 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA parlor. There are no front stairs to the cellar due to the size of the stack which extends to the front foundation wall in the cellar. Early access to the attic was from this front stair hall, however, access to the cellar probably was through the bulkhead on the east gable end of the dwelling.
As noted above, the stair walls dividing the early kitchen/keeping room from the dining room probably are not part of the original plan because the stair walls and cellar door extend on to the deep brick hearth in front of the bake oven making access to the bake oven difficult. Furthermore it would have been unusual for a house of the original size to have two sets of stairs to the attic. Additional structural research is necessary to account for this odd alteration of plan. These interior rear stairs leading to the cellar have been replaced within the last fifty years, thus yield little information about original date or location. It should be noted that the stair wall facing into the kitchen/keeping room is made of vertical beaded tongue and groove panels of varying width and straightness and may have been relocated.
It is similar to other paneling in the room and other parts of the house that are consistent with an eighteenth century date. Structural members visible in the cellar are as expected: large chimney girts running front to back along the side of the stone chimney base have large rough hewn beams, some retaining bark, connecting the end sills with the chimney girts by means of mortise and tenon joints. As noted above, the large stone chimney base takes up most of the cellar and extends to the front foundation wall, thus is only viewed on three sides. Clearly this was part of the original design as the large chimney base stones are laid up randomly and interwoven to form one wall of one construction. As noted above, there is a bulkhead leading from the cellar to the outside at the east gable end, next to the side or southeast entrance to the little hall leading to the old kitchen.
The side walls and the sill at the top of the bulkhead are large granite and fieldstone similar to the rest of the mid-eighteenth century foundation. The cellar of the rear ell is not connected with that of the main block and is accessed by an exterior door in the end wall of the rear ell foundation. Structural evidence in the attic, the half-story above the main block, confirms the mid eighteenth century date and the evolution of this dwelling. The breadth of the house, the low roof pitch, and the wide expanse of the roof area clearly are evident, as well as the roof and framing structure in the unfinished attic. The cut into the original house's roof area to attach the rear ell displays exterior roof sheathing with evidence of the nail holes for shingles.
Further the roof structure of the real ell shows sawn common rafters that are (continued) peps famm 10-900a United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Aaprovel Na 1021-0018 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA 7 5 Section number - Page simply laid on a narrow ridge board. Also in the attic on the southeast end of the original house are two small rooms with plaster walls and board and batten doors. Each of the two rooms has a window accounting for the exterior view of two windows in the southeast gable peak. Attic floor boards are wide and in excellent unfinished, unaltered condition. Architectural interior detail is extensive and includes raised field panel fire place walls, interior wood partition walls, paneled doors and eighteenth century hardware, and wide pine floor boards.
The fireplace walls in each of the two front parlors flanking the centered entrance stairhall display multiple patterns with a raised field four-paneled door at the front end of each wall leading to the center stair hall and against a cased post. Each room has a pattern of three or four side-by-side vertical panels over the mantel, a two paneled door to a narrow shelved closet on one side of the mantel and a cupboard and square panels on the other side. In the southwest parlor, now a living room, there is evidence of eighteenth century and later Federal-like paneling. A bolection molding frames the fireplace opening, however a narrow mantel that is raised above the fireplace opening, separates two sets of three panels over the fireplace. This fireplace wall has recessed panels with a fine bead framing the recessed panels reminiscent of Federal-style detail.
The closet door in this room to the right of the fireplace has two large panels, H- hinges and only a wood latch. In the southeast parlor, now a bedroom, the fireplace wall has a rich raised field panel pattern with H-hinges, thumb latch on the hall door and small wood twist latch on the shallow closet door, and HL hinges on the cupboard door. The mantel in this room also may have been added in the early nineteenth century. The lintel of this fireplace is a stripped wide board with a painted quote similar to others in the house that were added fifty years ago by the present owners. The keeping room or original kitchen behind the chimney stack has vertical tongue and groove paneling, the boards of which are irregular in width and straightness.
The large cooking fireplace opening is nearly four feet high and has a vertical board fireplace wall with two narrow raised-field paneled wall cupboards cut into the upper corners and a vertical paneled door over the beehive bake oven which is outside and to the right of the main fireplace opening. A large iron crane is attached to the interior wall of the cooking (continued) pesFa 102000 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approvel Na. 1021-0010 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA 7 Section number - 6 Page - fireplace.
This room has two windows, at the rear of the main block; one six-over-six similar to other windows of the house and one fifteen-over-fifteen double-hung sash that appears to have all old glass and munton bars of an early window, possibly evidence of the original kind of window. Alterations are consistent with the preservation trends of the early twentieth century and are interesting for the pattern and interest of preservation demonstrated in this area that was a remote rural community at the turn of the century. Although the windows are the expected configuration with the exception of the one fifteen-over-fifteen sash, they appear to be early twentieth century reproductions noted by the munton bar profile and the overall conformity and tightness that would be unusual for mid-eighteenth century windows.
The exposed beams with a swirled plaster ceiling have been added after the period of significance and are not accurate nor original to the construction or decoration of the eighteenth century dwelling. The exposed beams are not consistent with cased structural posts as seen in each room, nor do they extend to and connect to cross beams and first-story plates in the appropriate locations. Most abut plaster and paneled walls in an awkward fashion. However, the concept of exposed beams was a popular notion until just after the mid-1900s when structural analysis dispelled this misunderstanding of Second Period construction. Also consistent with early preservation trends is the fact that many of the paneled walls had been stripped of paint and were in a more natural state. The present owners have painted most which more accurately reflects mid- to late- eighteenth century finishing practices.
Archaeological Description While no prehistoric sites are recorded on the Azariah Newton House property, sites may be present. Two prehistoric sites have been recorded in the general area (within one mile). One site borders Charles River wetlands located to the east, the other site borders Mill River wetlands to the west. "Some arrowheads" have reportedly been found on the property, however these finds have not been documented. Environmental characteristics (slope, drainage, distance to wetlands) of the property are favorable for many types of prehistoric sites. The property occupies a well-drained level to moderately sloping east facing terrace overlooking a tributary stream of the Charles River.
The unnamed stream drains southerly converging with Huckleberry Brook, other unnamed ponds and wetlands (continued) MPS Form 10-800- United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 7 Page. 7 OMB Aaprovel Na 1024-0016 Azariah Newton House Milford (Worcester Co.), MA then a dammed portion of the Charles River known as Milford Pond about one mile southeast of the property. Given the above information, the small size of the property (.75 acre) and historic period development, a moderate potential exists for the recovery of prehistoric resources. A high potential exists for the recovery of historic archaeological resources on the Azariah Newton House property.
Further documentary research combined with archaeological survey and testing can document the locations of outbuildings and occupational related features (trash pits, privies, wells) that were probably present on the property. Foundation stones from a large barn, demolished in the early 1900's, were visible southeast of the house until the mid 20" century. Structural evidence of additional barns and sheds may also be present. One well is known on the property, however additional wells may also exist related to earlier periods of occupancy. The locations of privies and trash pits/areas are presently unknown, however archaeological évidence of these types of occupational features are also probably present. Construction features should also exist around the house and possibly some outbuildings. (end) Azariah Newton House Name of Property 8. Statement of Significance