No. 5201 Roswell Gleason House, painting on brick.
Edward A. Huebener, a former Board member of the Dorchester Historical Society, was a collector of materials relating to Dorchester history including a very large collection of graphic materials, including prints and photographs, now owned by the Society. His very own contribution to this group of materials was the idea of taking a brick from a house that had been demolished and asking a local illustrator to paint a picture of the house upon the brick. The painted bricks may be viewed at the Dorchester Historical Society.
The Roswell Gleason House, the Knox-Webster, First Baptist Church and Second Church bricks that have new paintings. Some of the other bricks have been restored, but the these four were out on loan for an exhibition and never returned. The replacements were painted by Bruno Gizzi in the 1980s.
No. 2499 Detail from 1874 Hopkins atlas. The Gleason House “Lilacs” was at the corner of Washington Street and Park.
Roswell Gleason (1799-1887) spent his early years on a farm in Putney, Vermont. In 1818 he arrived in Dorchester and found employment with Mr. Wilcox, a maker of tinware. When Wilcox retired a few years later, Gleason went into business for himself, beginning with the manufacture of block tin and pewter.
By 1837, when the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association awarded Gleason a medal for his tinware, he had also branched out into the production of britannia ware with considerable recognition. In the 1850s with the encouragement of Daniel Webster, Gleason and one of his sons opened the first silver-plating establishment in America. At one time he employed 125 men at his factory on Washington Street. By 1851 Gleason had become wealthy enough to be included in a book entitled Rich Men of Massachusetts. Indeed, Lilacs, his home on Washington Street, built in 1837, had become one of the show places in the neighborhood of Boston. He owned a property of 25 acres with a 1,000 foot frontage on Washington Street encompassing his house and 15 other structures including stables, outbuildings and factory buildings. Park Street was installed on the southern border of his land.
No. 2404 Woodcut in the collection of the Dorchester Historical Society
In the 1890s after Gleason’s death and the subdivision of the property, Claybourne Street (originally Ridge Road) was constructed, and the Gleason House was turned around to face east, later becoming 101 Claybourne Street. The house was one of the area’s finest examples of the transition from Greek to Gothic Revival domestic architecture. The form of the house was characteristic of Greek Revival standards, but the decorative elements were part of the late Gothic style. The two-bay entrance contained a portico of gothic spirelets and floor-length lancet-shaped sidelight windows. There was a two-story, three-bay porch composed of arcaded, pointed arches supported by clustered columns with annulets below the capitals and scroll-carved decoration in the spandrels. The interior of the house was decorated in Empire style. Many of the features of the house were taken by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for its collection prior to demolition of the building in the 1980s.
When Gleason began the production of silver-plate, the style of his work began to change from the simple, traditionally inspired design of his early work to a more heavily ornamented and opulent style which better suited the tastes of his Victorian clientele. Largely due to this ability to adapt to changing tastes and to keep abreast of technical advances in manufacturing, Gleason’s operation continued to prosper. In his later years, business suffered when the Civil War interrupted sales in the southern states. After both his sons died, and an explosion occurred in one of his factories, he retired in 1871 at the age of 72.
No. 3356 Photograph from ca. 1970 of Gleason House
No. 2618 Porringer made by Gleason
No. 2595 Coffee pot made by Gleason.
No. 3357 Worker housing along Washington Street, circa 1860. Photograph in the collection of the Dorchester Historical Society.
No. 3357 Worker housing along Washington Street shown in photograph in the collections of the Dorchester Historical Society.
Sources:
Berman, Julie. “Roswell Gleason House.” In Alliance Letter, Monthly Newsletter of the Boston Preservation Alliance, v. 2, no. 4, November. 1981.
Bowen, Richard L., Jr. “Some of Roswell Gleason’s Early Workers.” In PCCA Bulletin #83 (Pewter Colletor’s Club of America), September, 1981.
Report of the Boston Landmarks Commission on the Potential Designation of the Roswell Gleason House as a Landmark. 1977.
Webber, John Whiting. “Roswell Gleason.” in Antiques, August 1931.