Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Sherburne, Warren E., House
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1977. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Such were tlie opinions expressed, the resokitions adopted, and the measures taken by the people of tliis Province, long before the 19th of April, 1775. It was not the battle of Lexington that gave rise to the llevolution.”
History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement to 1868, with a Genealogical Register of Lexington Families (1868). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1977 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.77000178- 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.
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Lexington town, The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
He was first taxed in 1748< He was a member of Capt. Parker's company on the morning of 19 April 1775, and was severely wounded by a bullet which struck his right arm, and so fractured the bone that he was not only disabled for a long time, but pieces of bone were extracted from it for several months afterward.
Of the illustrations bound witli this work, the portraits of Rev. Mr. Hancock, Col. INIunroe, and the author were furnished by their respective descendants ; and those of Theodore Parker, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Follen, and Rev. Mr. Stetson, by their numerous friends resident in the vicinity. The views of dwelling-houses, including the Lexington House, Avere, except as stated below, sup])lied by their present or late owners ; and those of public buildings by citizens' subscriptions.
In the exercise of the powers given to them, the Committee have inserted the following illustrations at the town's expense, viz. : a lithographic portrait of Jonathan Harrington ; wood enjrravinffs of the Clarke House, the old Munroe Tavern, the INIonument, the proposed Monument, and the Battle Scene on the 19th of April ; diagrams of Lexington Common, and the Old North Bridge at Concord, with their surroundings as they were in 1775 ; andy^c similes of the autogi'aphs of twenty-nine men whose names are affixed to public documents which are a part of the History. It was thought that nothing ought to be omitted from the book, which could serve to explain, or invest with additional interest, the events narrated.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 52 fires within 5 miles of Sherburne, Warren E., House between
1992 and 2020, burning about 104 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 23 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
Arson/incendiarism
23
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
13
Debris and open burning
12
Other causes
1
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Natural
1
Recreation and ceremony
1
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 1,883 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Sherburne, Warren E., House between 1898 and
1975: 819 Animalia, 573 Plantae, 434 Fungi, 23 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 9 Unrecorded, 8 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper 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
11 workings within 5 miles of Sherburne, Warren E., House: 7 past producers, 2 producers, 2 plants.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Peat, Clay, Iron. 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
Lexington, the town this property stands in, in 14 storm reports between 1997 and 2022: 6 hail, 6 thunderstorm wind, 1 flood, 1 lightning.
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.
Three lanes of Route 128 in Burlington were closed due to flooding. There was also 6 inches of flooding across the all lanes of Route 128 near North Street in Reading.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,098 words on record
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 Warren Sherburne House is located on approximately one acre of well landscaped property on Percy Road in Lexington. The house was designed by the Boston architect Samuel D. Kelly and built in 1893. It is an example of the exuberance of design possible to the eclectic style. Its design draws upon the irregular massing of the Queen Anne and the decorative vocabulary of the emerging Colonial Revival styles. The 2½ story, hip roofed, white clapboard structure has irregular massing and fenes- tration. A wide molded entablature and carved bracketed cornice run continuously beneath the eaves. There are four chimneys. The facade faces south toward Percy Road. A barrel vaulted, pedimented, open entrance portico is supported by slender columns raised on large stone bases.
This portico leads to a large wooden door flanked by sidelights and headed by an ornate fan of leaded stained glass. The dominance of this central element. is emphasized by a curved balcony with a delicate balustrade on the second story. Thebalcony is in front of a double window defined by pilasters and headed by a wide entablature. This is surmounted by a double window dormer with a dentiled cornice and a broken scroll pediment in the high hip roof. Beneath the apex of the scroll is a delicately carved garland. To the right of the front entrance, a windowed porch wraps around from the facade portico to a two story semi-circular bay on the east elevation. To the left of the center entrance a two story semi-circular bay curves gently around the corner to the west elevation.
This bay and the one on the east elevation are both crowned by conical roofs. There are large panes of curved glass in the first story curved bay of the west ele- vation.
/ARCHITECT Samuel D. Kelley The Warren Sherburne House is significant as one of the finest of the few remaining examples of its genre in Lexington. The house is also significant because it was built for and lived in by the successful glass manufacturer, Warren Sherburne, whose glassmaking interests are represented in the generous use of curvilinear glass panes in his home. In 1893 Mr. Sherburne, owner of the prosperous glass-making company, commissioned Samuel D. Kelley, architect of Boston, to design a house for him on land he had owned for several years in Lexington. Sherburne's acquaintance with Kelley preceded this commission by several years. Kelly had designed the Sherburne family house on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.
Other notable buildings by Kelly include the Tremont Theater, the Perkins School for the Blind, Hoffman House, the Savoy Hotel and a number of churches. Kelly also designed several houses in the Back Bay, specifically, on Bay State Road. He worked in the prevailing eclectic idiom of the late nineteenth century, moving easily from Richardsonian Romanesque to Colonial Revival. During the late nineteenth century a number of large estates in Lexington were acquired by early commuters who, influenced by Frederic Law Olmsted, built houses in the country towns surrounding Boston. They could take advantage of rural tran- quility and yet not sacrifice urban amenities.
The Sherburne House is one of the few survivers of that grander era in Lexington's history; most of its contemporaries were lost to fire or demolition. The Sherburne House demonstrates clearly the prevailing trends in architectural taste which sought to combine the spaciousness of the Queen Anne with the revived interest in eighteenth century colonial decorative motifs.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 77000178, 12 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.
Block
