No. 6089 44 Alban Street, photograph April 18, 2005.
Date of construction:1875-1876
The following is from Ashmont by Douglass Shand-Tucci, p. 97-98
Thanks to this reminiscence, we know, for example, that Mrs. Martin’s [Dorothy Wyman Martin’s] mother was the daughter of Gardner Asaph Churchill, a leading Boston printer (King’s Handbook of Boston in the 1880s devotes two pages of encomia to this famous firm), who lived across the street in the Churchill-Dewey House, 44 Alban. She was married to Franklin Wyman in that gorgeous ca. 1880 house, the true Stick Style gem of Ashmont Hill, with its square tower and turret, so well maintained today. Later in the 1900s, this was the home of Dr. and Mrs. Charles Dewey. But the deeper value of Mrs. Martin’s history [see 53 Alban] speaks to why a Boston businessman decided to become a commuter and having deserted (as all the upper middle class eventually did) the better part of the South End moved not to the Back Bay but to a garden suburb (like Brookline or Hyde Park) and why he chose Ashmont and how the decision involved not only social class and ease of transportation but also (for all its elegance of parlors and maids) a very small-town-like seclusion and lifestyle; gathering barrels of apples, forsooth fifteen minutes from the 1890s in town Boston of the first local skyscrapers (though the Wymans do not seem to have had a cow)!
The following is from the area form for Ashmont Hill, Boston Landmarks Commission.
A handsome example of a Stick Style house, 44 Alban Streetposseses an asymmetrical form sheathed with clapboards and an overlay of vertical and horizontal boards. Its full length front porch features square posts, diagonal bracing and a center pediment with a modified king post Projecting from near the southeast corner is a polygonal oriel with pyramidal, finial-topped roof cap; in general the roof is characterised by a complex configuration, enclosed as it is by a massive hip roof and steeply pitched mansardic cap at the northeast corner.
The following is from: Codman Square House Tour Booklet 1997
Notice the house at number 44 Alban Street. This ca. 1880 house is the largest and most intact example of the Stick style to be found on Ashmont Hill. As is typical of the style, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal braces are intended to suggest the structural elements of the house frame. While partaking of this same functional raison d’etre, the cornice brackets also show the lingering influence of the Italianate idiom, the prevailing mode for New England frame houses for a generation. Not to be outdone, however, the polygonal corner turret heralds the picturesque impulses of the approaching Queen Anne style.
The following is from: Ashmont Hill Association House Tour Guide, Sunday, May 22, 1977
Built around 1880, this is the Hill’s best example of the Stick Style. Its characteristic features place an emphasis on verticality: flat wooden “sticks” outline the structure of the house, which is rectangular but not symmetrical. Notice the “candlesnuffer” roofs, in the manner of a French chateau, and the wrought-iron ornament on the tower. The interior further elaborates on the style, with its long, vertical windows and high ceilings. Details of interest include the etched glass in the front doors, the oak floors, the ceiling medallions, and the fireplaces. Also note the large newel post at the bottom of the stairway; it once has a gas lighting fixture set into the top. The carved brackets in the doorway at the rear of the hall are similar to the brackets on the house’s exterior.
Outside, walk around to the back yard to see the carriage house, built about the same time as the house, the beehives (a neighborhood tradition), and the stained glass window set in the chimney of the house next door.
Owners from atlases:
1884 E. Fowler
1889 Ellen Churchill
1894 Ellen B. Churchill
1898 Ellen B. Churchill
1904 Ellen B. Churchill Hrs
1910 Ellen B. Churchill Hrs
1918 Alice L. Dewery
1933 C. G. & A. L. Dewery
Deed
December 21, 1875 from George Derby Welles to Edwin W. Fowler 1307.109 lots 200, 201 & pt 199
Parcel of land
Nov. 7, 1884 from Edwin W. Fowler to Ellen B. Churchill, wife of Gardner A. Churchill 1658.22
parcel of land with the buildings thereon
Boston Directory
1875 Edwin W. Fowler, bookkeeper, 447 Wash. h. 175 K
1876 Edwin W. Fowler, bookkeeper, 447 Wash. house Alban, Dorch
1885 Churchill, Gardener A (Rockwell & Churchill), 39 Arch, h. Alban Dor
Dorchester Blue Books
1885 There are no street numbers, but Gardner A. Churchill is listed as a resident of Alban Street.
1894 Residents of 44 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Gardner Churchill
1896 Residents of 44 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Gardner A. Churchill
1900 Resident of 44 Alban Street was Mrs. Gardner A. Churchill
1902 Residents of 44 Alban Street were Mrs. Gardner A. Churchll, Mill Ellen B. Churchill
1904 no entry
1906 Residents of 44 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Arthur W. Leonard
1908 Residents of 44 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. Arthur W. Leonard
1910 no residents listed
1913 Resident of 44 Alban Street was Miss Grace D. Pelton
1915 Residents of 44 Alban Street were Dr. & Mrs. Charles G. Dewey, Mrs. Grace D. Pelton
Census 1900
Ellen B. Churchill, 59
Asaph Churchill, 34, paper salesman
Ellen B. Churchill, 23
Delia Sullivan, 28, servant
Mary Lewis, 28, servant
Marriage record
Gardner A. Churchill, 23, b in Dorchester, married April 16, 1862 in Roxbury Ellen B. Barnett. His parents were Asaph Churchill and Mary Churchill. Her parents were Matthew and Harriet Barnett.
See also Massachusetts Historical Society Wyman family photos
Asaph Churchill (1814-1892), lawyer of Milton, Mass. Married in 1838 Mary Buckminster Brewer (d. 1860). Among their children was Gardner Asaph Churchill (1839-1896). Asaph Churchill m. (2nd) in 1862 Mary Anne Ware (d. 1886).
Gardner Asaph Churchill (1839-1896) m. in 1862 Ellen Brastow Barrett. Their children were Mary Brewer, Asaph, and Ellen Barrett Churchill. Mary Brewer Churchill m. Franklin A. Wyman.
Collection Description
Papers of Wyman and related Churchill family members, including account book (1794-1804) for general store (retail) of Abijah Wyman in Ashby, Mass.; unidentified woman’s commonplace book (1834); recipe book, mostly for cakes (1840-41); narrative log of a trading voyage (1855-56) from Boston to Calcutta, India, and back kept by Gardner A. Churchill; family letters (1847-54) from Eunice P.H. Wyman to her son John S. Wyman; papers of Boston wool merchant Franklin A. Wyman; and correspondence and other papers of 20th c. artist Dorothy C. (Wyman) Martin, including a travel scrapbook. Also, many genealogical notes on the Wyman, Churchill, and related families.
Mary Brewer Churchill Wyman and the house
#151.41
#151.47
#151.48
and others
Franklin A. Wyman (1850-2922), a wool merchant of Boston, Mass., married in 1898 Mary Brewer Church (1864-1929). They had one child, Dorothy Churchill Wyman (1899-1993). Dorothy was a painter who was professionally known as D.C. Wyman (or, after marriage, as D. Wyman Martin).
D. C. Wyman
Painter Dorothy Churchill Wyman was professionally known as D. C. Wyman (or later D. Wyman Martin). She studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, Massachusetts and then privately with George Elmer Browne. She accompanied Browne on her first trip to Europe and later studied with him in Provincetown during the summer.
Wyman’s first solo exhibition was at Grace Horne’s Galleries, the trend setting Boston gallery of its time, where she sold six of the landscapes she had done in Spain and France during her outdoor instruction with Browne. Her work first prompted national recognition at the twenty-second annual exhibition of the Allied Artists of America held in New York in 1935. Wyman continued to exhibit extensively throughout her career at the Boston Society of Independent Artists, the Copley Society and the Provincetown Art Association, among others. Some of her most interesting exhibitions, however, were held in her own studio located at 112 Newbury Street in Boston.
Source:
Peter Falk. Who Was Who in American Art, Robyn Watson Gallery