No. 15826 52 Alban Street, photograph April 22, 2016.
Date of construction: 1882
The following is from Ashmont by Douglass Shand-Tucci, p. 99-101.
… the D. F. Hartford House, 52 Alban, is quite close to the street. Yet David Frank Hartford was the owner of Hartford Bros., boot and shoe machinery, of Boston (with his brother Thomas, whom we met at the corner of Harley and Roslin), and 52 is by no means a poor cousin to 60 [Alban]. Indeed, Hartford created one of the most interesting of Alban’s houses by commissioning Edwin J. Lewis in 1888 to add, on side and rear wings, alterations that are among Lewis’s earliest work. Thereafter Lewis designed a stable behind the house, which is stunning — and fortunately quite visible from the street.
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 studnt 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: Ashmont Hill Association House Tour Guide, Sunday, May 22, 1977
Now a nursing home, this house has a distinctive shingle pattern and wrought-iron cresting on the roof.
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Note the house and carriage house were turned into condominiums in 2007-2008.
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Owners from atlases:
1884 M. Hartford
1889 Mary Hartford
1894 Mary S. Hartford
1898 Mary S. Hartford
1904 Mary S. Hartford
1910 Mary S. Hartford
1918 Mary S. Hartford Hrs
1933 Wm & Hannah A. Douse
Deed
April 1, 1882 from George Derby Welles to Mary S. Hartford 1555.285 lots 202 & 203
Parcel of land
January 17, 1883 from George D. Welles to Mary S. Hartford 1585.316 part lot 203
March 20, 1885 from George Derby Welles to Mary S. Hartford 1670.470 lot 2-4
Boston Directory
1882 D. Frank Hartford (Hartford Bros.), 154 Federal, house 76 Dorchester
1883 D. Frank Hartford (Hartford Bros.), 154 Federal, house Alban, Dor.
1884 D Frank Hartford (Hartford Bros.), 154 Federal, h. Alban, Dor.
1885 D. Frank Hartford (Hartford Bros.), 154 Federal, h. Alban, Dor.
Dorchester Blue Books
1885 There are no street numbers, but David F. Hartford is listed as a resident of Alban Street.
1894 no residents listed
1896 Residents of 52 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. D. F. Hartford
1900 Residents of 52 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. D. F. Hartford
1902 Residents of 52 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. D. F. Hartford
1904 Residents of 52 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. D. F. Hartford
1906 Residents of 52 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. D. F. Hartford
1908 Residents of 52 Alban Street were Mr. & Mrs. David Frank Hartford
1910 Resident of 52 Alban Street was Mr. David Frank Hartford
1913 Resident of 52 Alban Street was Mr. David Frank Hartford
1915 Resident of 52 Alban Street was Mr. David Frank Hartford
Census 1900
David Hartford, 56, mgf. shoe machinery
Mary S. Hartford, 59
Nellie T. Craven, 29, Cook
Clarance Burbank, 26, Coachman
death record
David Frank Hartford, b. August 19, 1843, Milton Mills, NH; died February 21, 1919, Dorchester
Census 1910
David F. Hartford, 66, manufacturer of shoe machinery
Nellie Kelley, 28, housekeeper