Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1893.
From the record
“The Townsend House is a historic late First Period house in Needham, Massachusetts, United States. The wood-frame house was built in 1720 by Gregory Sugars, a sea captain, for his son-in-law, Rev.”
Wikipedia article Townsend House (Needham, Massachusetts), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1982 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.82004420- 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 gave the new town the name of Needham is not definitely known, but Rev. Stephen Palmer, who was an authority on the local history of this town, in | a note to an historical address delivered by him in | 1811, says, '' The author has been informed by one of the descendants of the venerable Timothy Dwight, of Dedham, who was a member of the Legislature when this town was incorporated, that it was named | Needham at the request of Governor Dudley after | Needham in England, and because that town is near | to Dedham, although in a different county."
Parker was shot making for the woods. Fisher escaped. Lieut. John Bacon lived in that part of Needham set off to Natick in 1797. Born in 1721; married Abigail Sawin, 1744. They had nine children. Austin Bacon, Esq., a great-grandson of Lieut. Bacon, gives the following interesting account of the cireumstances attending the death of his ancestor: " In the night or near morning the alarm was given, and he set eastern part of the town, and sent his horse back Soon after he had gone a trumpet sounded, and some Framingham men came along with one Nero Benson, a negro, for a trumpeter, and every house they passed had a blast. they heard from him, when one Hawes, they used to call 'Old Hawes,' came home (he was a soldier in the French and Indian war), and gave the following account: That Bacon and himself were on a ledge of rocks in Menotomy behind a stone wall, trying to get a good shot at the red-coats. the flank guard should surprise them, and kept a lookout. Bacon, with his powder in his hat, was lying behind the wall with another, when Hawes said, 'Run or you are dead, here's the side guard.' They tried to get over the wall, but Bacon was shot through near the third button on his vest. receiving the news my grandfather (son of Lieut. Bacon) went off to see how it was, and near night, April 20, came home with his clothes, the body having been buried at West Cambridge. The clothes erandfather entered the room he knew the old striped hat which was put on top of the roll of clothes." Bacon was described as a great worker, and would
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 114 fires within 5 miles of Townsend House
between 2003 and 2020, burning about 380 acres in total. None started naturally. None was 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
Recreation and ceremony
64
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
33
Smoking
7
Debris and open burning
6
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Other causes
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 15,509 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Townsend House between 1805 and 1975: 6,463 Animalia, 4,588 Plantae, 4,017 Fungi, 192 Protozoa, 169 Chromista, 48 Unrecorded, 32 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
9 workings within 5 miles of Townsend House: 6 past producers, 1 producer, 1 unknown, 1 plant.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Tantalum. 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
Needham, the town this property stands in, in 19 storm reports between 2000 and 2023: 8 thunderstorm wind, 5 hail, 4 flood, 2 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.
Flooding reaching the tops of tires in Needham at the intersection of Great Plain Avenue and Ivy Road. The Canton Street railroad underpass in Sharon was flooded. A section of Village Street in Medway was flooded. The exit ramp from U.S. Route 1 near an auto dealership in Norwood was flooded; Dean Street in Norwood was flooded; two sections of University Avenue in Norwood were flooded. Oak Street at Park Street in Medfield was flooded. Albion Road at Cliff Road in Wellesley was flooded; State Route 9 near the Fire Department Headquarters was flooded.
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 Townsend House stands on its original site at the junction of Central Avenue and Nehoiden Street adjacent to Needham's early town center. Its site, which borders North H1ll and occcu- pies a slight rise surrounded by lawns, gardens, and shade trees, is part of the twenty acre parcel purchased by the first owner, Reverend Jonathan Townsend. The property is now sur- rounded by other private homes, primarily of a later date. Extensively remodeled during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Townsend House is presently square in plan and two rooms deep with a five bay center entry facade facing north. The two story wood frame structure is sheathed with clapboards and is enclosed by a mansard S/o in the maih fiors and i ia the dr rootwith patred interior chimneys.
Trim consists of paneled corner pilasters supporting a wide frieze and boxed cornice as well as molded window frames with corner blocks. Sash is Entries are located on the north and west elevations. The north entry consists of a paneled door enframed by sidelights and a transom and is protected by a Doric portico. The west entry is flanked by sidelights and has a more severe Doric portico which carries a balustrade. A one story shed roof porch extends from the east elevation, while a gable roof ell and hip roof garage partially obscure the south elevation. As originally constructed c. 1720, the house was a one room deep, two story structure with a central chimney and a center entry on the west elevation.
On the first floor the south served as a kitchen while the north room served as a parlor and the upper rooms as chambers. This original structure measured 50 feet by 23 feet and had a fieldstone foundation only under the parlor.
/Architect Rev. Jonathan Townsend (1720) Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Reverend Jonathan Townsend House possesses integrity of Tocation, design, setting, materials, and workmanship as well as significant historical associations with Needham's early ministers. Additionally, it is a good example of eighteenth century construction modified during the nineteenth century to meet changing needs. The Townsend House thus meets criteria B and C of the National Register of Historic Places. Rev. Townsend, who was born in Lynn on January 1, 1697, moved to Needham in 1720 to become ordained as the first minister of the town's First Church on March 23.
Two months later he married Mary Sugars of Boston and bought twenty acres of outlands as well as a separate eight acre house lot at the junction of Central Avenue and Nehoiden Street from the heirs of Thomas Aldrich of Dedham (Needham was set off from the original Dedham grant in 1711). Here he erected a two story wood frame house of one room depth, five bay facade, and central chimney plan. This house stood at the southern corner of the Central-Nehoiden juncture facing Central Avenue, and a footpath ran from the rear ofthe house to Nehoiden Street where the meetinghouse stood. Rev. Townsend served as the town's minister and occupied this house unitl his death on September 30, 1762.
For the next two years Needham remained without a permanent pastor, making do with guest preachers who boarded with Townsend's widow Mary. It was not until the Rev. Samuel west was ordained on April 25, 1754, that the post was finally filled.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 82004420, 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.
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