With historic homes being lost across Needham, what does it take to save a home whose roots go back to the colonial era?
One ambitious effort is currently underway at 1427 Great Plain Ave. The Daniel Kingsbury House sits near the intersection of Great Plain and Central Avenue, or “McIntosh Corner,” which was near the town center until the mid-1800s. It is the oldest home in the 11-acre McIntosh Corner Historic District, one of two nationally registered historic districts in Needham, according to Gloria Greis, executive director of the Needham History Center & Museum. The other historic district encompasses just one building: Town Hall.
Jeff Heller bought the property in 2019 with the intention of both retaining the 1792 home’s historic nature and modernizing it for resale.
“It would have been a lot simpler to demolish it,” Heller said.
Heller has lived next door for the past 41 years in another historic home built in the early years of the American republic. “I’ve always liked older houses, the character and warmth of period houses,” he said.
Greis said that she has fielded many calls complaining about what looks like a knockdown in progress. She explains that Heller’s modernizations, which include an addition to allow a modern kitchen and main bedroom suite, will save the house.
McIntosh Corner Historic District
A history society publication from 1989 lists 10 important buildings in the McIntosh Corner district. Seven are still standing, including the two owned by Heller. Other historic buildings in the district have not been as fortunate. Some were razed, and others lost their historical character when they were remodeled.
Heller believes that the loss of these homes is a loss in a neighborhood’s charm.
The trend is common across Needham. The William Emerson Baker House on Grove Street is scheduled for demolition, and the future of the N.C. Wyeth home on South Street remains unclear after a deal with Linda Bean’s estate to save it fell through.
When historic homes are lost, Greis said, “It hurts my heart, but it’s within the purview of the bylaw.”
Today, McIntosh Corner carries a constant stream of traffic, with cars traveling the same routes as the horse-drawn coaches and wagons of the 18th and early-19th centuries. The coaches on Central Avenue brought passengers and freight from Boston headed south. The route along Great Plain connected Dedham with points north and west toward Worcester.
The coaches stopped at McIntosh Tavern, the most important building in the district, which still stands at 1453 Great Plain Ave., though it’s now a private home. “That’s where the news came. It was the mail drop, the center of gossip,” Greis said. “It was also a place for coroners’ juries and selectmen meetings.”
“The district memorializes the old center,” Greis said. In 1853, when the railroad line was constructed, the center of Needham was moved to its current location.
The crossroad’s history did not begin with colonists or early Americans. According to a 1989 publication of the Needham Historical Commission, it was the crossroads of important native travel routes, connecting the Massachusett village in Waban with an important fishing site at Hemlock Gorge and onto the Noanet area of Dover, which may have included both Nipmuc and Wampanoag peoples. The Great Plain route began in the Massachusett villages at the Blue Hills and went to the “lesser villages to the west of Natick and Grafton.”
It is Heller’s hope to return this intersection to prominence. “It will be landscaped and rebuilt in a way that it will be a showcase as you come into Needham,” he said.
Heller’s purchase included a vacant lot on Noyes Street. According to Heller, the vacant lot had lots of bidders, but Heller’s successful bid included both the vacant lot and the adjacent historic home. He built and sold a new house on the vacant lot while the 1792 Daniel Kingsbury house was rented.
He hoped that the package deal would help attract lenders, but a Needham bank rejected Heller’s application. Banks from Newton and Wellesley agreed to fund the project. He said it was also difficult to find a builder who wanted to attempt to fuse the foundations of the 18th-century structure with a modern wing that will include a new kitchen, a cathedral-ceilinged family room and a spacious primary suite.
Heller said he needed a builder who “would make the new look old and the old look new.”
The Daniel Kingsbury house will more than double in size to 3,600-square feet. Heller anticipates a selling price above $2.5 million.
As Heller expected, the project has encountered hurdles due to the building’s age. “They had to excavate the foundation and repour it,” he said. Also, when tube-and-knob wiring was discovered, walls had to be opened. Heller said that a new house would have had half the construction costs.
He has preserved as much as possible including the five-bay center-entry colonial design that faces Great Plain.
“I feel like I am a caretaker of history,” he said.
Greis and Heller are both members of the Needham Historical Commission where their task is to examine builders’ plans and determine if they preserve historical integrity. If they don’t, the board can vote to choose to impose a six-month demolition delay. After that wait period when the owner is encouraged to search for alternatives, historical homes can be demolished. Greis said that the bylaw also allows a homeowner to skirt any restrictions by remodeling piecemeal and never triggering a Historical Commission review.
She said that Heller is doing it the right way. “This type of renovation will save the historic house for another 100 years.”
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