No. 6081 24 Alban Street, photograph April 18, 2005.
Based on deed to Sprague is dated July 1875, and the Boston Directory for 1876 has an entry for Sprague on Alban Street.
The following is from Ashmont by Douglass Shand-Tucci, p. 100-101
There is no point in repeating here the well-known biography of Tarbell, a painter universally regarded as the leader of the Boston School and whom R. H. Ives Gammell has pronounced “the most eminent American painter of his generation.” Instead, it may be more useful to dwell on Tarbell’s Ashmont connections. The artist was a member of one of the area; leading families, the Hartfords of 52 Alban and 25 Harley: David Frank Hartford was Tarbell’s stepfather, and Tarbell lived at 52 Alban up through his student days at the Museum of Fine Arts School. Tarbell became a member of yet another prominent Ashmont family when he married Emiline Souther, daughter of Harrison P. Souther, the head of a Boston drug broker and apothecary agency. And though his studio was intown on St. Botolph Street, Tarbell, always in his day admired locally (from the Beacon in April 1890: “our Boston artist, Mr. Tarbell, received an exhibition from the New York Academy”), did not a little of his best work at Ashmont. One of his most important pictures, In the Orchard, which was recently in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibition The Bostonians: Painters of an Elegant Age, was painted in 1891 at the home of Tarbell’s father-in-law between Ashmont and Beaumont Streets on Adams Street. The young men in striped blazers and straw boaters and the young ladies in long white day dresses lounging about in chairs in an Ashmont garden in 1891 are members of Tarbells’s family, who often figured in his pictures. (Another celebrated picture by Tarbell, My Family of 1914, though executed elsewhere, could easily be taken for having been painted in the living hall of 13 Carruth Street.)
Tarbell settled at 24 Alban Street after his return from Paris in 1886 and remained there after his marriage, living in all for more than twenty years on Alban Street, at the height of his career. But is In the Orchard that preserves that forever preserves the Ashmont he knew, and it is interesting that Tarbell painted it only a very few houses removed from the house (also on Adams Street) where Edwin J. Lewis lived and worked for most of his career. For it is clear that in the mid-1880s Tarbell’s family were among Lewis’s first patrons: 21 Harley, for example, perhaps Lewis’s first house, was commissioned by David Frank Hartford. Thus it is likely that Tarbell and Lewis, only three years apart in age, were acquaintances, perhaps even friends, and it makes for a nice conclusion to our Ashmont walking tour that our last house, the next but two after Tarbell’s at 24 Alban, should be one of Lewis’s masterworks. Really, one years in the face of such a circle of talents hereabouts to try to pry up some tiles in this house to see if, perchance, they might be the work of William Grueby, who also quite likely knew Lewis and perhaps Tarbell as well.
The following is from the area form for Ashmont Hill, Boston Landmarks Commission
24 Alban Street has significant historical associations with the important American artist Edmund Tarbell (1862-1938). Built during the mid-1880s from designs provided by Edwin J. Lewis, Jr., this was the house that Tarbell settled in after returning from Paris in 1886. For more than twenty years, Tarbell lived on Alban Street while at the height of his remarkable career as an Impressionist painter. He studied at the Boston Museum School and Academie Julien. Tarbell became known for his upper- middle -class genre scenes and portraits. After World War I he moved to Washington D.C. where he painted portraits of presidents Wilson and Hoover.
24 Alban Street was the home of the well-known painter Edmund Tarbell.
Dorchester Atlases show owners:
1884 Harriet Sprague
1889 A.M. Bartlett
1894 D.F. Hartford
1898 D.F. Hartford
1904 D.F. Hartford
1910 D.F. Hartford
1918 D.F. Hartford
1933 Susan C. Buzzell
Deed
July 8, 1875 from George Derby Welles to Harriett S. Sprague, wife of Thomas L. Sprague 1277.304 lots 195 & 196 pt lots 192, 193, 194
Parcel of land
Oct 30, 1875 from George Derby Welles to Harriett S. Sprague 1298.188 pt lts 192, 193, 194
May 23, 1877 from George Derby Welles to Harriett S. Sprague 1376.153 pt lts 192, 193, 194
October 23, 1883 from Thomas L. Sprague and Harriet S. Sprague to Addington M. Bartlett 1615.385 lots 195, 196 & pt 192 193 194
land with the buildings thereon
April 24, 1891 from Addington M. Bartlett to D. Frank Hartford 1555.285
Boston Directory
1875 Thomas L. Sprague, bookkeeper, Shoe and Leather National Bank, 13 Kilby, h. at Hingham
1876 Thomas L. Sprague, bookkeeper, Soe and Leather National Bank, 150 Devonshire, house Alban, near Ashmont
1884 Addington M. Bartlett, sales (Beals & Bartlett), teamsters, 71 Commercial, h. Alban, Dorc.
Dorchester Blue Books
1885 There are no street numbers, but Addington M. Bartlett and Edmund C. Tarbell are both listed as residents of Alban Street
1894 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Edward Tarbell
1896 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Edmund Tarbell
1900 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Edmund Tarbell
1902 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Edmund Tarbell
1904 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Edmund Tarbell
1906 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Edmund Tarbell
1908 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. E. C. Andres
1910 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. E. C. Andres
1913 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. E. C. Andres
1915 Residents of 24 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. E. C. Andres
Census 1900
Edmnd Tarbell, 37, artist
Emeline Tarbell, 34
Josephine, Trabell, 10
Mercie Tarbell, 5
Mary Tarbell, 3
Edmund Tarbell, 1
Mary Holly, 26, servant
Katy Carroll, 21, servant
Annie Feeney, 23, servant