Thursday, 4:30 PM
Historic Pinebank mansion to be razed
By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff
The historic Pinebank mansion on Jamaica Pond, the focus of a decades-long battle between preservationists and the city, will be razed in the next two weeks, city officials announced Thursday.
The once-stately home, the only estate Frederick Law Olmsted retained when designing and building the Emerald Necklace’s parks and waterways, remains on the National Register of Historic Places but is a shell of its former opulence.
City officials say the building, fenced off from the public for years after fires and vandalism, has become a dangerous ruin held up by English brick and hand-carved spandrels, which workers were slowly dismantling and placing on palettes Thursday.
But Hugh Mattison, founder of Friends of Pinebank, said he believes the building can be saved and restored as an arts center. "In my view, it’s next in the state to the State House in terms of importance," he said. "We want to rebuild it, but the next move is Boston’s."
On Dec. 19, the city’s Inspectional Services Department ordered the Parks and Recreation Department to demolish the building, saying "the structure is a hazard and dangerous."
Parks Department officials said that they are working with the Boston Landmarks Commission on site improvements and that the new design could include architectural elements from the building. They plan to update the landmarks commission on Tuesday.
The estate is actually the third Pinebank on the site, built by the famed Perkins family of merchants and philanthropists and founders of the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown.
The first building was a summer home on a promontory overlooking Jamaica Pond in 1806. It was torn down and replaced by a year-round mansion in 1848, which burned down 20 years later and was replaced by the current building.
The Perkins family later moved out, and the site became the headquarters of the Boston Parks Department. In 1913, it was the city’s first Children’s Museum. The Parks Department took the building back in 1936, but a series of fires in the 1970s gutted the structure.
Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.
