No. 11885 23 Beaumont Street, photograph from Andrew Saxe
No. 11886 23 Beaumont Street front porch, photograph by Andrew Saxe.
No. 7843 23 Beaumont Street in 1892.
Date of construction: ca. 1889-1890
Date of construction: ca. 1889-1890
Architect: John A. Fox – from Shand-Tucci
The following is from Ashmont by Douglass Shand-Tucci:
The third house at the junction of Little Fairfax and Beaumont designed by John Fox, 23 Beaumont, the Thomas-Curtiss House, erected in 1889-90, was, like the Nichols McGill House [i.e., 24 Beaumont], built for a sea captain, Eugene B. Thomas of the United States Navy, and it is easy to relate the prominent rooftop lookout (now without its balustrade) to Captain Thomas. Otherwise, Fox responded to the Arts and Crafts sensibility here with one of the most accomplished designs of its period in New England, and more than a decade in advance of the date one might expect of such a design, the house can only be called modernist arts and Crafts — certainly the most unusual and powerful piece of architecture at Ashmont. … Reminiscent of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sometime chief draftsman, Walter Burghley Griffin, the front-porch elevation, with its square postlike solids and the long horizontal void behind the clustered balusters, all hard under a steep roof with so dramatically tall a dormer, might be a fireplace elevation by Wright himself. An extraordinary house architecturally, 23 Beaumont is also of interest because it is one of two houses at Ashmont (the other is 22 Harley), where a scrapbook of family photographs of the 1890s has survived, that of the John Curtiss family (now at the library of the society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities).
owners from atlases
1884 – no building on parcel
1889 E. B. Thomas
1894 John L. Curtis
1898 John L. Curtis
1904 Hrs. John L. Curtis
1910 Mabel J. Davis
1918 Mabel J. Davis
1933 Alice A. McElaney
Boston Directory
1889 no entry for Eugene Thomas
1890 Eugene B. Thomas, U.S.N. h. Beaumont
1891 – no entry for Eugene Thomas
1890 John L. Curtiss, 111 Devonshire, h. Hotel Edinburgh
1891 John L. Curtiss, 111 Devonshire, h. 7 Beaumont [sic]
deed
Nov. 10, 1883 from Herbert S. Carruth to Eugene B. Thomas, of Troy, Ohio, lieutenant commander in the US Navy 1617.444 Beaumont St
lot 15 on plan at 1608.234
March 9, 1889 from Herbert S. Carruth to Eugene B. Thomas 1865.489 Beaumont St & Fairfax Sts
Thomas enlarged his lot by acquiring the land between him and Fairfax Street
March 30, 1889 from Herbert S. Carruth to Eugene B. Thomas 1868.293 Beaumont St. & Fairfax Sts partial release of restrictions
August 9, 1890 from Eugene B. Thomas to John L. Curtiss 1951.245 Beaumont & Fairfax Streets
parcel of land with the buildings thereon
Ancestry.com Find A Grave Indes, John Lord Curtiss, b. 1846, Manhattan, NY; d Feb. 3, 1903, Dorchester. Buried Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY. His father Nathan P. B. Curtiss and mother Caroline Curtiss
1900 Census
John L. Curtiss, , 54, Beaumont Street, single, banking
Sarah D. Mathews, 57, housekeeper