Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. 19 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1886.
From the record
“The Robert Fuller House is a historic house at 3 Burrill Lane in Needham, Massachusetts. Built in 1707 and moved to its present location in 1750, it is the oldest house in Needham.”
Wikipedia article Robert Fuller House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1987 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.87001476- 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 106 fires within 5 miles of Robert Fuller House
between 2003 and 2020, burning about 377 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
60
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
32
Debris and open burning
7
Smoking
3
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
Misuse of fire by a minor
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 14,373 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Robert Fuller House between 1805 and 1975: 5,981 Animalia, 4,085 Plantae, 3,869 Fungi, 192 Protozoa, 168 Chromista, 46 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
8 workings within 5 miles of Robert Fuller House: 6 past producers, 1 producer, 1 plant.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, 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
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 Robert Fuller, Needham,is located on the corner of Burrill Lane and Forest Street. The Robert Fuller House was built in 1707, a five bay, 2 1/2 storystructure,and moved, in 1735, five hundred feet up Burrill Lane from its original site. After the move, ca. 1750, a lean-to was added to the The building is of wood construction, clapboarded with two areas of patterned shingle added some time in the late nineteenth century. The ma in block sits on a fieldstone-lined cellar hole which was prepared at the time of the move. Some time after the house had been moved to its new location, Robert Fuller, Jr., the new owner, purchased 18 acres across Burrill Lane, built a barn and dug a well. The lot has now been reduced to an acre and the barn has been demolished.
The houseis setback approximately 15-20 feet from the road and is surrounded by shrubs and a few small trees. The area is now a suburban residential community. The house was constructed in several phases; the major alterations took place after the house was moved to its present site. In 1750 the lean-to was added, in 1823 the house was sold to Abijah Greenwood. In 1861, Timothy Newel1 Smith painted a "portrait" of the Robert Fuller House. The painting shows how similar the house of 1861 is to the house of today; it also shows the farm buildings which have since been demolished. The south, front, facade is five bays wide. The foundation is fieldstone and door which has a concrete doorstep, a raking pediment, coach lamps on either side and an eagle above the door.
An earlier, if not the original, door frame was a simple post and lintel construction as is shown in the painting by Timothy Newell Smith.
(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect Unknown The Robert Fuller House, Needham, retains integrity of design, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. Architecturally, the building is significant as an example of First Period construction and a demonstration of the evolution of building practices and styles in the colonial period: the main block of the house is the original 1707 structure with the 1750 lean-to. The rear and west ells were added in either the last part of the nineteenth century or the early part of the twentieth century. The later additions to the house are an indication of the adaptation of the house to fit the changing needs of the Fuller family for the first 130 years and after them the Greenwood family.
The Robert Fuller house, the oldest house in Needham, fulfills Criterion C of the National Register of Historic Places on the -. religion science sculpture social/ humanitarian theater _ transportation X other (specify) community development Needh am, originally part of the 1636 Dedham grant, was incorporated in 1711. By ca. 1712, a meetinghouse stood west of the Great Plain (at the intersection of Great Plains Avenue and present day Central and Nehoiden Streets). Before this meetinghouse was built, meetings and religious services were often held in the Robert Fuller House. Great Plains Avenue evolved early in the 18th century as a link from Dedham west to a growing village center in Needham.
The Plain and the bank of the Charles River were the first areas settled, with scattered farmsteads. The village as a whole remained rather isolated and under developed up to the eve of the Revolution. The first Fullers to arrive in Needham, then part of Dedham, were Thomas and Hannah Fuller who came from England in 1635. They were the grandparents of Captain Robert Fuller.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 87001476, 15 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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