Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1893.
From the record
“The Edward Devotion House is a historic house at 347 Harvard Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA. Built about 1745, it is one of the town's few surviving 18th-century structures, and is of those the best preserved.”
Wikipedia article Edward Devotion House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1978 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.78002835- 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 Brookline town. The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
"T shall be able to begin to travel home slowly in about 10 days, and shall, with the blessing of God, soon see you all. After being wounded I walked back to my tent, and in about an hour had only one arm, a circumstance which does not afflict me, my dear father, and must not you. But let us both thank God that he has so formed us that you have lived almost all your life happy & respectable, notwithstanding the loss of an eye, and I may spend the remainder of my life in the same manner with the loss of a limb, of all the most conveniently spared.
Fisher's Hill, sometimes called Henshaw Hill, is two hundred and forty feet high, and is near the corner of Brighton and Boylston Streets, has a fine broad top, from which the view of the surrounding country is exceedingly elegant, and on account of the eleva- and on the southerly side of the old Boston reservoir. The prospect from this hill, like all the hills in Brookline, is fine, but quite limited in comparison with many The north side of this is covered with residences, and there are more fine locations here to be found.
Harbor. larly circuitous that in passing from Dover to Sherburne over its bed in a straight line to its estuary or outlet is fourteen miles, while, taken by the serpentine course of its water, it measures thirty-eight and into the " Back Bay," sometimes called ' Charles River Bay," the centre of the stream forming the boundary line between Roxbury (Boston) and Brookline. The early settlement of the locality called " Muddy River" was named from the fact that this river was naturally muddy, owing to its peculiar location. itants there were two landings on this stream, known as "Cotton Landing" and " Aspinwall's Dock," where bricks and wood were landed. In order to a proper understanding as to how these docks were of use, direction, it empties into Muddy River near the works of the Brookline Gas Company. its rise near W. B. Cowan's farm and the vicinity of Warren Street, running in a northerly direction, and between the old reservoir belonging to the city of
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 29 fires within 5 miles of Edward Devotion House
between 2015 and 2020, burning about 23 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
14
Recreation and ceremony
7
Smoking
3
Arson/incendiarism
3
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Debris and open burning
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 12,596 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Edward Devotion House between 1810 and 1975: 5,185 Plantae, 3,855 Fungi, 3,086 Animalia, 193 Protozoa, 178 Chromista, 66 Unrecorded, 33 Bacteria.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, ? ex Herb. W.G. Farlow, A C Gibson 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
10 workings within 5 miles of Edward Devotion House: 8 plants, 2 past producers.
8 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Lead, Tantalum, Niobium (Columbium). 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
Brookline, the town this property stands in, in 19 storm reports between 1995 and 2022: 13 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 2 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.
Several trees and wires on Cottage Street and Dean Road were downed by thunderstorm winds. In addition, an amateur radio operator reported a 58 mph wind gust.
In Brookline, at 1259 PM EST (159 PM EDT), a tree was down onto a building on Perry Street. At 101 PM EST (201 PM EDT), a tree was down on the 200 block of Walnut Street.
Portions of Route 9 (Boylston Street) were flooded with up to three feet of water. Newton and South Streets and Clark Road were impassable due to flooding.
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 Edward Devotion House is located at 347 Harvard Street in Brookline. The house is surrounded by a low picket fence and tall maple trees. The lot is en- circled by the driveway for the Edward Devotion School, which surrounds the house on three sides. The school land was purchased by the Town in 1891 for the purpose of erecting a school with funds left by Edward Devotion in his will. The house site lies just west of Coolidge Corner, a commercial center in Brookline. The area west of the house is residential. In 1685 the Devotion property consisted of 102 acres on both sides of Harvard Street (which had been laid out in 1662 as the Road to the Collages, [sic] which the soatton "To go... by the Goodman Devotions").
Edward Devotion built a house and barn on the property, but these were torn down by the time Edward Devotion, Jr. sold the lot to his adopted son, Solomon Hill, in 1740. The present house was erected by Solomon Hill some time after this date. It now stands approximately 100 feet back from Harvard street. The building is the finest example of mid-18th century Colonial architecture remaining in Brookline today- It is a small house with a gambrel roof extended at the first pitch to form a lean-to at the rear. The 2½ story house has a central chimney, and is sheathed in clapboards painted yellow. The corner boards, door and window architraves, and eaves are painted white. Fenestration is varied and of contrasting scale. All windows have a plain sill and a molded, slightly projecting cornice.
The asymmetrical south facade is three bays wide, with the entrance placed at the western end.
/ARCHITECT Solomon Hill The Edward Devotion House is significant as an excellent example of mid-18th century architecture, one of the few representative examples extant in Brookline. It is also significant for its long term association with the Devotions, a locally prominent Huguenot family, influential in the Town's educational, governmental, and religious affairs during the 17th and 18th centuries. Edward Devotion, Sr. was born in 1621. He bought the land at Muddy River (Brook- line) and was living there by 1645. He was a French Huguenot immigrant from La Rochelle, France where the Devaution family are believed to be his ancestors. Devotion was a member of the church and a freeman. He married in 1649 and raised a family of ten.
John Devotion, born in 1659, served as had his father and his own son, Edward Jr., in such capacities as constable, tithingman, and perambulator of the town boundaries. John and his son Edward signed the petition for Brookline's separation from Boston. Edward Devotion, Jr. bequested numerous gifts to the church and town, with his residual estate being designated for the building and maintenance of a school near the center of town. The intent of his will was disregarded for many years, only to be fulfilled in 1891 with the first buildings of the Edward Devotion School, which today stands on the original Devotion property. Heirlooms presented by descendants of the Devotion family are on display at the house, which now serves as a museum open to the public two days a week.
Famous portraits of the Devotions and of other families are exhibited. The Edward Devotion School was attended by John F. Kennedy. The reenactment of William Dawes' ride of 1775 takes place annually on April 19th.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78002835, 14 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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