Built in 1821 (Federal architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1885.
From the record
“The Caleb Lothrop House is a historic house in Cohasset, Massachusetts. The two-story hip-roof wood-frame house was built in 1821, and is the only brick-ended houses in the town.”
Wikipedia article Caleb Lothrop House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · built in 1821, Federal architecture.
National Register reference number.76000269- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
An interesting event in the annals of your parent town was the obtaining of a deed of its territory from the heirs of Chickatabut. living on the banks of the Neponset, ruled over a ereat part of what is now Plymouth and Norfolk Counties. He is supposed to have given permission to the first settlers to make Hingham their home. His sons, Wampatuck, Squmuck, and Ahahden, sion of meadow land was made among the proprieters at Conghasset. Not all of these proprietors, however, were residents of this territory. Hingham settlers here are said, by Rev. Mr. Flint, to have borne the familiar names of Beal, Cushing, James, Lincoln, Tower, and Sutton. joined the families of Bates, Kent, Nichols, Orcutt, Pratt, and Stoddard. The first settlement is reported to have been at Rocky Nook, and on the Jerusalem road. The name of your town is said by some to mean '"'a fishing promontory,' by others to mean "a and either name would apply to Cohasset Narrows, in Sandwich. Mr. Trumbull, the best living authority, Unfortunately, he cannot give the true meaning of the word. It ig enough that Cohasset now means a place where, for two hundred years, upright men have led honorable lives, and where an honest New England town has flourished for a century.
In 1714 Hingham was requested in vain to remit the school and ministerial taxes to this portion of the old town. quest, provided that Cohasset would settle an orthodox minister, and accept this settlement of the matter But the citizens of Cohasset voted that they could not do so cheerfully. In 1717 an act of the General Court was obtained creating a second parish in Hingham; and on July 14, 1718, the act was accepted at a meeting, over which Daniel Lin- The meeting was called for Cohasset, alias Little Hingham.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 104 fires within 5 miles of Caleb Lothrop House
between 2015 and 2020, burning about 34 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
65
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
15
Misuse of fire by a minor
9
Smoking
5
Recreation and ceremony
5
Natural
3
Arson/incendiarism
2
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 2,832 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Caleb Lothrop House between 1836 and 1975: 1,890 Plantae, 349 Chromista, 273 Animalia, 244 Fungi, 57 Unrecorded, 13 Protozoa, 6 Bacteria.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A Loveridge, A. B. Seymour, A. C. Mathieson and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
1 working within 5 miles of Caleb Lothrop House: 1 past producer.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cohasset, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 1998 and 2020: 3 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood, 1 hail.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Caleb Lothrop House, built about 1823, is located in a residential section of Cohasset. It is located on about half an acre of land, protected by trees in the side and back yards and large evergreen bushes in the front. The two story house has a hip roof and brick ends with a clapboard facade and a shingled rear elevation. Portions of the roof are still slated, but many parts have been covered with composition shingles. The house rests on a granite foundation and has a full basement. A two story clapboard ell, built c. 1900, has been added to the northeast rear of the house. Iwo tall inside end chimneys, both in need of repair, serve the four main fireplaces. The house is symmetrical, with a five bay facade; the brick ends are two bays deep.
A11 of the windows in the main part of the house have 6/6 sash and louvered shutters; those on the ell have 2/2 sash... The centered front door, covered by a non-original flat hood, is flanked by half sidelights and slender pilasters. The door itself, also probably not original, has six finely moldedd panels; a large granite slab serves as a step up to the door. The plan of the interior of the house has been slightly altered over the years, but a surprising amount of original paneling and molding are extant. The mantels in the two first floor front rooms are original, and finely molded; the mantels on the second floor are simplified versions of those below.
The upstairs ceilings appear to have been slight- ly raised, which incongruously reveals the building's structural members in a manner more appropriate to early Georgian architecture than to Federal.
/ARCHITECT The Caleb Iothrop House is not only significant architecturally but also has strong associations through the Iothrop family with the development of Cohasset. The house was built c. 1823 by Caleb Iothrop, who was the grandson of Revolutionary War hero Thomas Lothrop. Caleb was a ship owner and ship chandler, and served the town as a member of the Board of Selectmen and as town treasurer. The Iothrop family for many years owned a wharf at the cove end of Cohasset Harbor, and were involved in the town's principal industry, mackerel fishing. Members of the Lothrop family lived in the house until 1966, and while none of them achieved outstanding significance the family was always an important part of the community life. In 1966 the house was sold to St.
Anthony's Church to be used as hous- ing for nuns; when that plan did not materialize the house was rented out for a number of years. The building has been vacant for three years but plans are now underway to restore the house and turn it into a community historic resource center. The Iothrop House is' significant architecturally to the town of Cohasset because it is one of two brick end Federal period houses left in the community. Brick was not com- monly used for fesidential purposes in Massachusetts until the latter half of the nineteenth century, so brick walls on an earlier house usually denoted affluence and importance. The house, which has been very little altered through the years, is a good example of the architectural style once so popular in Massachusetts' seaports.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76000269, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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