No. 20278 24 Carruth Street, photograph March 31, 2020.
Date of construction: 1889-1890
Architect: Frank L. Smith
The following is from Ashmont by Douglass Shand-Tucci.
The Connors-Jacques House at 30 Carruth was evidently very fortunate in Mr. Jacques’s period of occupancy after 1905 in having a particularly charming parlormaid who seems to have early on caught the eye of Mr. Jacques’s clerk, young George O’Brien. They were soon married, and when O’Brien succeeded to the business after twenty years of apprenticeship, he too bought a house on Carruth . Of course, that meant the maid at 30 Carruth became the chatelaine of 24 Carruth — which caused a frisson here and there!
The house the O’Briens bought is the next up the street from the Percival House: 24 Carruth, the George-O’Brien House (also happily in possession of its original shutters). Built in 1890, it is richly endowed with porch, balustrade, and pediment as one might expect of a house erected for a company president, Greenleaf C. George. A Newburyport native and blacksmith’s son, born in 1826, George entered the Eliot Insurance Company as a clerk in 1861 and rose to become its president in 1890. He was also an ardent Baptist and a keen Mason. The architect of this stately mansion was Frank L. Smith, who specialized in low-cost suburban housing, but his widely published designs (in Homes of Today, where rather as in a pattern book he promoted his work) included in the October 1889 issue an illustration of this elaborate house just a year before it was built for the hardly very low cost (then!) of $8000. If you are touring during the summer, notice the gracious front porch with its wooden screening, very like what would originally have been used and painted black so as not to disrupt the architectural lines of the “piazza,” as it then would have been called.
The following is from the inventory form for Carruth Street – Peabody Square, Boston Landmarks Commission.
24 Carruth Street was built on part of a two-lot tract owned by Ellen and Emma Carruth in 1884. Built in 1890, it was originally owned by Elizabeth A. and Greenleaf C. George. Born in 1826, George was a Newburyport native and blacksmith’s son. Mr. George entered the Eliot Insurance Company as a clerk in 1861 and rose to become its president in 1890. According to Douglass ShandTucci, “the architect of this stately mansion was Frank L. Smith, who specialized in low-cost suburban housing.”
By the real estate prices of the 1890’s, the $8,000.00 purchase price of 24 Carruth was anything but low. This house’s design was published in the October, 1889 issue of Homes of Today. By 1933 it was owned by George J. O’Brien, president and treasurer of George O’Brien & Sons., grocers. O’Brien started in this business as a clerk when this store was owned by Frederick P. Jacques, the second owner of 30 Carruth Street.
24 Carruth Street successfully blends boxy Colonial Revival form, symmetrical facades and Tuscan columned front porch with the Queen Anne tendency towards surface plasticity with a center, second floor oriel and broad pedimented dormer which projects from the hip roof.
owners from atlases
1889 no house on map
1894 Eliza A. George
1898 Eliza A. George
1904 Eliza A. George
1910 Eliza A. George
1918 Everett W. Hutchins
1933 Ellen O’Brien
deed
May 31, 1889 from Herbert S. Carruth, Trustee, to Eliza Anna George, wife of Greenleaf C. George, 1879.558 lot 4 plan 1867.589
parcel of land with no mention of a building
deed
April 9, 1918 from Arthur L. Foster et al Exrs & Trs under the will of Eliza A George, to Everett W. Hutchins of Lewiston, Maine, Edward W. Hutchins of Lewiston, Lura A. Gill of Chesterville, Maine, Frank E. Downing of Auburn, Maine and Annie E. Downing of Auburn, widow 4080.214
deed
March 20, 1919 from Edward N. Hutchins to Ellen E. O’Brien, wife of George J. O’Brien 4128.478
Boston Directory
1889 Greenleaf C. George, pres. Eliot Insurance Co. 12 Kilby, bds 2 Dunreath pl.
1890 Greenleaf C. George, pres. Eliot Insruance Co. 12 Kilby, h. Caruth [!], Dor.
Census 1900
Greenleaf C. George, 73, retired
Eliza A. George, 61
Census 1910
Greenleaf C. George, 83
Eliza A. George, 73
Marie Leonard, 62, nurse
Maggie Galvin, 43, servant
Find a Grave
Greenleaf C. George, born June 12, 1826, Newbury, MA. died April 5, 1911, buried Forest Hills
city of Boston tax records 1918
George J. O’Brien of 60 Wrentham Street has not “gone to 24 Carruth”