Neighbors

This spectacular 1872 house on the corner of Beacon and Fairfield Streets. From 1906 to 1928, this was home to the man some say invented modern financial journalism. Clarence Walker Barron was born in Boston in 1855 and went on to become the owner of the Dow Jones News Company from 1901 until his death in 1928. During that time, Barron also managed the company’s newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. In 1921, he founded a financial news magazine and decided to name it after himself: Barron’s Business and Financial Weekly.

Here’s the back of the house, as seen from the Esplanade. In 1940, the mansion was converted into a lodging house. In the 1980s it was divided up into condominiums. They say a portrait of Barron is prominently displayed on the parlor level. Barron got his start working for Boston papers, including the Boston Daily News and the Boston Evening Transcript. While some say he got a little too cozy with the corporations he was covering, Barron knew how to dig. A 1920 story he did for the Boston Post is credited with leading to the arrest and conviction of Charles Ponzi, the Boston-based inventor of the so-called Ponzi Scheme.

What’s the connection between this copper-colored house with garlands on Commonwealth Avenue and those old copper-bottomed pans in my kitchen cupboard? 40 Comm Ave. was once the home of John Revere (1822-1886), grandson of Paul Revere. As you probably know, when Paul wasn’t taking historic midnight rides, his day job was as a master silversmith. In 1801, he founded Revere Copper Company, which pioneered the manufacture of rolled copper. Revere’s company went on to become a big military contractor, selling its copper to the government (principally the Charlestown Navy Yard) for use on battleship hulls, including the USS Constitution.

Grandson John Revere was treasurer and then president of Revere Copper Company. John lived with his wife at 40 Commonwealth from 1870 until his death. The famous Copley portrait of Grandpa Paul hung in John Revere’s parlor during that time. In 1930, the Revere family donated the painting to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After John’s death, Revere Copper expanded its product lines to include copper-clad cooking pans. The “Revere Ware’’ line eventually became the leading stainless steel cookware in the United States.

This house at 90 Marlborough Street was built in 1872 for Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-1894), a direct descendant of John Winthrop, the leading figure in the founding of Massachusetts. R.C. Winthrop was famous in his own right: president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a U.S. Senator. Winthrop’s political career apparently hit the skids in the 1850s when he failed to support the abolition of slavery–a very unpopular position in Boston at that time, as well.

According to BackBayHouses.org, 90 Marlborough was for 30 years (from 1924-1955) home to the Katherine Gibbs School, a for-profit institution for the career education of young women. After that, 90 Marlborough was owned and occupied by the Chamberlain School of Retailing Fashion, a two-year fashion/business college for women. When Chamberlain moved out in the late 1980s, the building was initially converted into apartments before being turned into condos in 1990.

Imagine my history-nerd excitement when I learned that this house on the corner of Exeter and Marlborough Streets is called the Bradbury House. I was all ready to discover that it was once the home of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), the celebrated science fiction writer (Farenheit 451, Illustrated Man, etc.) But turns out this magnificent home was built in 1886 for an apparently very successful dentist who happened to be named Bradbury. Seems Dr. Edwin Perley Bradbury lived in one half of the mansion (Exeter Street side, on the right) and used the other half for his dental offices (Marlborough Street side, on the left).

In 1892, Bradbury and his wife moved to Weston, but the dentist maintained his Marlborough Street office and leased the rest of the house to others. According to BackBayHouses.org, among the notables who rented the place was John Irving Taylor, owner of the Boston Red Sox (known back then as the “Red Socks’’) from 1904 to 1911. Taylor lived at 16 Exeter in 1897 and subsequently moved to Brookline. Taylor was responsible for building and naming Fenway Park, which opened in 1912—also when the team’s name changed to the Sox. In 1903, Bradbury moved to California and sold the house to…another dentist.

This 1888 house in Back Bay was originally the home of one of the most philanthropic Bostonians you’ve never heard of. Neither Charles Tidd Baker (1830-1905) nor his sister, Susan Porter Baker (1837-1921), was ever married, and both lived in the house at 461 Beacon St. until their deaths. Susan is listed as having been a trustee of the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital (now part of Boston Medical Center). Charles apparently did quite well as an insurance broker for a firm called Field and Cowles on Water Street near Liberty Square downtown.

In his will, Charles left $250,000 to charities. That translates to over $6 million in 2015 dollars. A big chunk went to MIT, for “the assistance of poor and worthy students.’’ Apparently Susan and Charles were lovers of art and donated several items to the Museum of Fine Arts, including an 1851 silver pitcher by Boston silversmith Newell Harding that has Susan’s name engraved on the handle.

You’ve no doubt heard of Isabella Stewart Gardner and her stunning house at Fenway Court, which functions today as a world-class art museum. So consider the tan house on the right at 145 Beacon St. her in-law apartment. Before moving into her renowned mansion/museum in 1903, Isabella lived with her husband, John “Jack’’ Lowell Gardner, Jr., in Back Bay at 152 Beacon St. And just down the street was this house at 145 Beacon, built by Jack’s father in 1861, the year after Jack and Isabella were married and moved into 152 Beacon. Though Isabella’s father-in-law apparently lived at 145 Beacon for only a few years, numerous other Gardner family members and in-laws subsequently called the building home, according to BackBayHouses.org.