Pratt, Miles, House

date The Miles Pratt House, built ca. 1863, faces south on a suburban plot at the corner of Mt. Auburn and Palfrey Streets in Watertown, Massachusetts, about 3/10 of a mile from Watertown Square. The house is set back from the sidewalk about 20 to 25 feet. A driveway off Mt. Auburn Street passes along the house's east side and leads to a carriage house at the lot's rear. The lot was originally enclosed with a fine cast-iron Greek Revival fence; the granite gateposts and gate from this fence still remain. The immediately surrounding neighborhood is residential, containing a mix of mid-nineteenth century to early twentieth century housing on moderate-sized , Contaidirate-mized suburban lots. A mid-twentieth century house is located next door.

While no prehistoric archeological sites are recorded in the immediate area of the Miles Pratt House, many sites are known along the Charles River, especially in the vicinity of Watertown Square,where a ford and fishwier were located. There is thus potential for prehistoric resources, since the house seems to have been the first building on the lot and ground disturbance may be minimal. Historic archeological resources likely to be evident on the property include refuse scatter and other subsurface features such as privies, trash pits, wells, or undocumented outbuildings. The main block of the house is a gable-roofed, wood-frame structure, three bays wide and 2 1/2 stories tall. A large 2 1/2 story wing with a low pitched gable roof extends to the rear.

Though the primary facade is traditionally balanced, the plan and side elevations are asymmetrically organized. The main block is clad in wide shiplap boards, while the wing is clapboarded. The foundations are original brick. The roof is sheathed in asphalt shingles. The house displays some inventive and finely detailed characteristics of the Italianate style.

(in one paragraph) unknown The Miles Pratt House, at 106 Mt. Auburn Street in Watertown, Massachusetts, possesses integrity of location, design, setting, materials, and workmanship. The house is architecturally significant as Watertown's best example of high-style Italianate residential architecture. It is also significant for its associations with the local industrialist Miles Pratt, and for its role in the development of Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown's most fashionable residential artery in the second half of the nineteenth century. It meets Criteria A, B, and C for listing on the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. The Miles Pratt House is significant as a rare example of high-style Italianate domestic architecture in Watertown.

This well-preserved house retains all of its significant original features, including its shiplap board sheathing, intended to simulate stone, and its rich decorative trim on the main entry, windows, loggia, and cornice, which is an elegant exposition of the Italianate style. The complex plan, with its formal main block and large rear wing with service rooms beyond, the bay windows, the oriel, and the loggia are all important structural teatures of the Itallanate style. Finally, the house has been carefully rehabilitated, and thus stands out as a symbol of good preservation practises in a community whose nineteenth-century housing stock has been overwhelmingly sided with unsympathetic modern materials. Mt.

Auburn Street has been a principal transportation axis through Watertown since prehistoric times, when it was the main trail from the Massachusetts Bay area to Connecticut. In the Colonial period, Watertown's civic center was located at Mt. Auburn and Belmont Streets, and in the Federal period, the Mt. Auburn Street corridor between Watertown and Cambridge became the location of a number of suburban estates.