soon we will be at the end of our fiscal year i want to thank all of our board members and volunteers for their hard work this season to make oregon is ation a success i want to thank all of you our members for continuing to support us this year and over all our past years i also want to acknowledge our outgoing vice president in program director kathleen fahy who organized many of the programs that we enjoyed this season i would also like to thank the belmont media center for coming here tonight to record our program as the year closes i thought we would take a quick look back at some of the highlights of the year in september marsa scam from the way lectured and taught us about the history of our local public water supply in october we visited mon arbonne cemetery to enjoy the foliage and to learn about the history of some of those interred there in november author stephen polio lectured on his book the the assault that drove america to civil war and we learned about the political and social climate of the eight hundred fifty s america that helped lead our country to civil war in december cantering of historic new england explored the history of christmas and new england in february we celebrated the months month of washington's birthday with the lexington historical societies colonial singers came here and performed in march jim o'connell lectured on his book the hubs metropolis and we learned about the history of the development of the suburbs of boston including our own town of belmont in april we collaborate with the bomb a public library to organize a lecture by professor john stauffer on the revolutionary war era poet phillis wheatl award and the issuing of the david r johnson preservation awards among other activities we also instituted a new program the historic house plaque program this season which will be the focus of tonight's lecture by joe cornish and we also found ways to reach out to our members through the development of our new website w w w dot belmont historical society dot org and i invite you all to visit that if you have not already and revisit it if you already have it went live earlier this season a special thanks also to our webmaster nelson bolen for his work on building the site this year and his work with the website committee i would now like to turn to our treasurer d nominating committee for all their work to get our nomination slate ready for tonight's meeting they are audrey martin priscilla hughes flew elling and george packard i would now ask  is there a motion to close and   i'd like to ask everyone who has is on the slate to  rise is there a motion to accept the slate of officers and directors for the two thousand and fourteen fifteen season as read second it all in favor of the post let's have a round of applause for our two thousand and fourteen fifteen officers board of directors  so now as we as we move to the preservation awards in the program on the plaques joe cornish is the chair of both our david our johnson preservation award committee and our historic house plaque program committee and he will be presenting both this evening joe is the past president of the belmont historic sidey he serves on our society's board as the wellington station master for those of you are familiar with it it's the yellow building on the corner between con in common street with the conical roof and he is co chair of the belmont historic district commission joe is also the president of the new england chapter of the society of architectural historians and he has been employed by historic new england since one nine hundred ninety eight where he oversees the organization's per preservation easement program please help me welcome joe cornish great thank you everyone it's a delight to be here and it's really a wonderful to have the opportunity to continue on the committee for the david r johnson preservation awards david was our longtime treasurer and really a proponent he was an architect for preserving belmont's historic homes and buildings so it's a delight i think this is our tenth or eleventh year now doing this so it's really been a fun program to be part of  asked for nominations every year everyone has the opportunity to submit nominations we like to recognize people and projects preserving historic structures promoting history of belmont and preserving and protecting open space and belmont so to begin our first award this is a building that's probably familiar to most people driving up and down common street all saints church this is an image of the church taken in one thousand own nine for the fiftieth anniversary of belmont you can see it's a little smaller than it is today the building was extended in the one nine hundred fifty s to the north  this award is going out to recognize the church and its members really for taking the initiative to preserve and protect this building it's not located in a local historic district so this building has no protection but it still looks very much as it did when it was constructed in one thousand ninety six but just very lovingly restored and used also not for profit organizations especially churches really struggle to maintain their buildings in their membership so it's really a testament to this church to take that initiative to you know go really the extra step to to preserve this building and it's really a gift to the town of belmont so  we'd like to i think invite the members of the church up here to receive their award ok our next award winners a couple a husband and wife a long time residents of belmont peter and peggy gunness peter and peggy gunness own and occupied the wellington cottage pictured here  forty one pleasant street from one nine hundred sixty six to twenty thirteen they work to create belmont first historic district in one thousand nine hundred seventy one and at that time it was called the wellington historic district and that consisted of their home and the neighboring house the charles at six thirty one pleasant street the district was later expanded and renamed the pleasant street district in one thousand nine hundred five peter served on the local historic commission for many many years and  this year this past year they sold their house and downsized and they have moved to concord massachusetts they're not able to be here tonight but peter did send us a message and i'll read that peggy and i are thrilled by the news that we have been awarded the david or johnson preservation award the wellington college was our home for forty seven years even when piggy's work took us away for a few years our three children grew up in that house and in that wonderful neighborhood from ages one t win three the award has reminded us of those days when we naively plunged ahead inform the wellington historic district with the wellington house next door little did we know at that time how important that decision would be for the future of belmont and for the future of the concept of preservation for the town and accepting this award we must acknowledge the many people who encourage and supported us through the years camilla french was the leader of the committee which formed the first district others were muriel richard betts david rees lydia old will be and others who names they skate me at the moment preservation is not a static idea but a part of a dynamic cycle that allows us to build on firm basis knowing our roots gives us a security that allows us to grow with thanks in deep appreciation piggy in peter gunness so we'll see that they get their award and our third award this is  many important contributions to belmont where she and her family have lived for many years her interests are focused on town and regional history preservation and environmental protection and she has worked on these interest as a board member of the belmont citizens forum elected town meeting representative for precinct eight and as an individual volunteer and leader engaged educating the community and promoting planning and policies for preservation and environmental quality for example she is organizing and leading a little river nature walk and made a detailed presentation at a recent sustainable belmont meeting on the history in significance of the belmont uplands and the el wife area and the reservation which included discussion of the hughes just farm relocation of the little river town board meetings on these topics organize the two thousand and thirteen earth day clean up authored many informative articles in the belmont citizens forum newsletter and is currently preparing information on the historical significance of the l life area for the have with her impersonators of farmer he used to send his wife to help with the tour this is not anne marie here this is an impersonator of her book law olmsted but we're delighted we'd like to invite anne marie to come up  so i think we'll move on to our next part of our program in you're stuck with me for a little while longer i'm going to be talking about our historic house plaque program and we're really looking at tonight as our kickoff for this program which really we started to discuss about this time last year i think as co chair of the bellman historic district commission we received several calls from owners of historic properties asking about the possibility of getting a plaque for their historic home so working with a historic district commission and the historical society we had a sort of an ad hoc committee to talk about how best we could do this the reason to do it really we want to be able to recognize historic structures in our town and also to recognize historic preservation again as i mentioned with all scenes church property owners to really make efforts many times spending extra money to use appropriate materials and methods to preserve their homes all for the good of preserving our town belmont the town of homes this program is completely  voluntary we had a few people ask when we started think about this program if i get a program if i get a plaque will i be able to make changes to my house and i wish it was that simple that i could just go around town and pick plaques up on people's houses and then they couldn't do anything but but no if you have a historic plaque you're you can paint it purple you unless you're in historic district and then that's a problem but in no way does participating the plot program prevent you from changing your house or from selling it if a future owner decides they want to take the plaque off that that's fine also so we did some research and we looked at other town to see what their plaques looked like george packer two was on our committee really took the lead in that with terry mccarthy from the historic district commission and it turns out that there is a monopoly on sign making in in massachusetts or in new england really there is one company old colony artists in wiscasset maine that make these plaques and they make them for all the towns in massachusetts so we look through pages and pages of plaque ideas from other towns and we also wanted to look at plaxo already existed in town and if you driven around belmont you may notice that some of our historic houses have plaques that look kind of like this so we thought rather than create a new design that would conflict or or wouldn't really complement those those plaques that we would pick a design that was much similar it turns out that the town of lenox out in the berkshires also has this same design for plaque so i guess this we be known as the lenox in the belmont example we then tried to decide what size should these plaques be there are three sizes one was quite small and we thought that would be right for us because we want people to see these plaques but you know in looking at town and looking at houses around town and properties you know they come in all sizes and they also come from different set backs from the street so you know a larger plaque may be appropriate for a larger building or building set back from the street a smaller plaque for a house you know depending on its scale and its location to the street because again we want to make sure people can see them so they're currently offered in two sizes we have the standard twelve by sixteen which is what i think most people are going to receive and all of our plaques that will be distributing tonight are that size but there is a larger size sixteen by twenty four that is available and again that would be for a larger building perhaps a school town hall again depends on the size so where should these plaques be located ideally we would like them located between the first and second stories again houses and buildings com all special sizes so it's really a case by case decision that will work with the property owner on the cost how much does it cost we have sort of a scaled system depending on your membership if you're a member of the historical society it'll cost one hundred dollars if you're not a member it will cost one hundred twenty five dollars and then you get an annual membership free and then property owners that already have those existing plaques seventy five dollars so if you have an old plaque that's peeling or if you have an old plaque that you want to update you can do that at a discounted seventy five dollars rate so eligibility i know everyone sitting here is going to want to know how to get a plaque how you know how do we decide who gets a plaque again we have a committee that will work with we have an application and we have applications available at the back of the room will ask for property owners interested in applying for a plaque to complete an application form your house has to be at least fifty years old retain integrity of original construction and has to be well preserved that doesn't mean if your house had had some changes you're not possible to get a plaque  again it's a case by case basis that our committee will want to see images of your building or maybe even do a site visit from the street to see how well preserved the building is there are two real necessary  cases for getting plaques one we've decided to look at if you remember the demolition delay ordinance that was passed is based on existing survey forms with the massachusetts historic commission back in the early one nine hundred eighty s boston university conducted a survey of belmont and the green belmont book the town of holmes book was a product of that survey  during that survey there were probably at least two hundred or two hundred fifty houses that were surveyed and have survey forms so if your house has a survey form you are eligible and if you don't know if you have a survey form here is a faced with i just wanted people to see this so you're not startled it's not an easy website unfortunately it's bureaucratic it's a governmental agency so it's a little complicated but basically you'll be asked what town you live in and what type of form you're looking for their area forms a building forms a burial grounds except you want to look for a building form and this is what these building forms look like this is a thirty six sycamore tree it's the welling's house it's the reverend daniel butler house and these survey forms are really kind of a snippet of historic information on your property usually includes a photograph that shows the house was black and white basic information the date of construction the original owner names of owners the current owner and then also has a section on the second page of an architectural evaluation  the butler house here is the gothic revival house where the explains gothic revival architecture and then to find the historical significance of this particular building so what happens if you don't have a survey form so i have a case study here that i would like to prevent someone who submitted an application who did not have an application form and that's the owners of thirty six harriet avenue that you see here a nice kind of craftsman style house so what we ask if you don't have a survey form is for a chain of title to be completed and what i'm going to explain tonight is a little bit some pointers and how to do that but first it's quite helpful and if you look carefully i know it's hard for you to see it says age of the house nine hundred thirty five so you know we have a date you know in one nine hundred thirty five stylistically i'm an architectural historian so i can kind of identify this as a craftsman style house or maybe even a sears roebuck catalog house although i couldn't confirm that so we have this basic information that the homeowner has and we live in a wonderful age there's a lot of research we can do sitting on our desks  or you know in our in our living room wherever we have a laptop and the tax assessor's records are all available online if you go to the town of belmont's assessors page plug in the street address in the street number and you'll have the property card of your house so here's thirty six harriet avenue you have a color photo you have a footprint of the house and this also lists down below and again this is small i just wanted you to see what you're nail down the date so the next place i went was to the home or building and to the building inspector of the building department the community development each property has a folder so every property has a folder with building permits in it so if you did a new roof recently there's a building permit for that and that's in this file so i pulled the file for thirty six harriet avenue and found a wealth of information so i found the mcneil living on cutter's street we have the name of the builder which is a mr mills who lived on harriet avenue and then we have all sorts of information we have dimensions of the house we have the  original roof material which was asphalt and we have an estimated price for constructing this house in one nine hundred twenty two do we have anyone that wants to guess how much it cost to build this house in one thousand twenty two six thousand dollars  so with that information i then decided to do some deed in probate research and this is what we're going to ask people to do who don't have a survey form for their house and the way you do that is to start with the current owner so that's you and to trace back looking at past deeds and i'll talk a little bit more about that but what we can do is try to go back as far as we can until the deeds no longer reference the structure on the property on the premises some properties also as you probably know transfer when someone dies so you may have to go through some probate records to do  that doing indeed research can also include information such as mortgages in la times when someone buys a house or mortgage but if someone is doing a large improvement that may need a mortgage also so that can start to tell you a little bit more about the evolution of your house  so with thirty six harry ave twenty fourteen i decided to start with the current owners and you can see bill and nellie and their family here and their house and to work backwards so you can do this again starting from the comfort of your own home or your office by going to the website of the registry of deeds belmont registry of deeds in cambridge it's two hundred eight cambridge street it's the middle six south registry of deeds and when you get to the website there are you know options for you to start to select how to search land records so you want to select the land records in doing this  know is the original builder of the house you might wonder why nine hundred fifty two why was that such as a short period of time for these two people to own the house john mcneil and florence mills were the brother and sister kittle and she bought it from john the mccarthy and harriet mccarthy so also at the registry of deeds you never know what kind of information you might find recorded with this deed in the process of my research and just as a fun fact again you never know what you might find at the registry of deeds and this is something i borrowed from some other research i did on the belmont estate which everyone probably knows that's what belmont is named for and looking at the original deed of that house it included the name of the owner j p john perkins coaching the mason l wallace and the architect asher benjamin so that was you know some interesting information that was included with the deed that you might not someone would die it would be customary for an appraiser to go through the house and identify furniture and other goods that had value in trying to evaluate the estate and what's interesting about those records if you can imagine if you were doing an inventory you would move from room to room to room so it tells us a lot in reading these i'm in tory's how different rooms were used in houses so you may know you know a room that's currently used as a living room in seven hundred fifty was used as a bedroom so you know there's a lot of interesting information you can find at these registries so in continuing my research thirty six harriet avenue i looked at the poll list and the director that we have at the society's claflin room here in the library i was able to find out the viola even neil previously lived on cutter's street she was single she was a bookkeeper and she was born in eight seventy one and the couple she her estate would sell the property to every a wescott he was an artist born in one thousand and three and his wife ruth was a little younger she was born in one thousand eleven and she was a housewife so you know you have all these little goodies that you can find in the claflin room so i encourage everyone you know if you're doing research or if you're just interested in belmont history really to try to set out some time when that claflin room is open or make an appointment to come and see what we have there it's really a great collection and looking at local histories we have local histories in the claflin room there are several copies available to take out through the library and i think we also have some available tonight for sale if anyone wants to take something home with them too in valuable research pieces the belmont town of the home books that i mentioned was done in the one nine hundred eighty s through the boston university survey of the town and the updated the streets of belmont and how they were named by richard betts and this is really i think probably the bible for doing research in belmont and our collection is off also a wealth of historic images and photographs some of those have been published in these two publications through arcadia press but they're really just a snippet of what we have in our collection we have photographs stereo views postcards from the turn of the century really we really have such a great photographic record of our town in the classroom paintings paintings are a great source of research sometimes you have to be a little careful we have a wonderful collection of watercolors of historic sites and belmont but again you have to remember sometimes artists take a little artistic license so you know if you see a paint color or you know maybe a window that doesn't seem to be historic it could have been something that was added just to make the picture look a little better but we have some of these available i think this is one over here let's here a great resource that we have in the clapham room are our collections of atlases and fire insurance maps at the end of the one nine hundred centuries and early twentieth century a company called the sanborn map company mapped most communities throughout the united states and these maps were used for insurance purposes so they're very specific in detail this is an image showing the historic belmont state right here and these maps have great detail and they're color coded so you can tell important information about the construction of these properties pink as in the belmont a state house means brick yellow most of the houses you see wood frame stables are representative here with axes green houses and even stone walls and stone buildings are also identified in these snaps and again they were meant to be used you know if you were insuring a property you want to be able to had to make sure you had the most up to information about the footprint of the house who owned it and what it was made out of and again we just have a whole cache of items in our collection bills letters diaries journals and countless other items so again if you're doing research that's really an important place to stop so my summary of the of the history of thirty six harriet avenue of all my research i sort of pick here in sort of an outline  that consists of six streets so you probably know those streets on belmont street they have names there's frederick street jonathan allen harriet jeannette they're named for mr mccarthy's wife harriet and their who she is or why she purchased the property my guess is that she probably bought it as an investment and then quickly sold it in one thousand or three to charles mills who was a local builder so the law stays vacant  for almost ten years until one nine hundred twenty one when charles mill sells a lot to his sister in law by all of the mcneil and we know she lived that cutter street at the time cutter street is over near st patrick's cemetery so it's kind of in the border not far from this this neighborhood and again we know at that time she was fifty years old single and a bookkeeper in one nine hundred twenty two she applies for a building permit and she hires her brother in law to build the house she dies in  fifty two in the house is inherited by her brother john mcneil and her sister florence mills in one nine hundred fifty two the house was purchased by everett westcott a forty one year old artist and his wife ruth was who's thirty three years old and the house wife really expect someone to do that level of research when they're coming to us for a plaque but instead you know to do or at least start a simple chain of title research that we can help you with in the community can help you with  envision this plaque program again tonight is our kickoff event we're distributing five plaques but we really see this as an event that will do twice a year once in december we usually have a holiday event in december and then also this time of year at our and our annual meeting so we'll be taking applications for plaques throughout the years but we figure those read the two times that we actually be distributing plaques so i think our next order of business will be to distribute those was a merchant who so sold china and earthenware on union street in boston he was married to adeline wellington the daughter of colonel wellington an eight hundred thirty six homer purchased the property and at that time included  federal style home built in eight hundred twenty six that house would be moved in eight hundred fifty two up the hill and it's still there today and this current house built an eight hundred fifty  presenting it to the belmont women's club i think we have the plaque that we can give to them and we know this house this house i should mention the home or house williams like home or house obviously has a survey form it's located in the belmont historic district which is also also a national register district so it's well documented  this house circa eight hundred fifty three it does have a survey form in the research the little bit of extra research i was able to do unfortunately i wasn't able to pinpoint the date so we're seeing circa eight hundred fifty three because we know  the earliest document evidence that we have of this house is a map from eight hundred fifty three stylistically it is a transition greek revival to gothic revival house and that style was popular from the eight houses in waverly neighborhood and it's still very much intact has this great gothic pinnacle here this nice decorative element and if you look carefully you can have to see in person as this nice kind of ar school it's named in his honor he was a long time resident he lived here from the eight hundred sixty s until his death in the eight hundred ninety s also he was one of the founders of the waverly congregational church which we all know unfortunately was torn down purchased and the church constructed and if you remember that earlier photo i showed this is the this is the this site here is the original part of the church and in one nine hundred fifty four was expanded in this direction the church is really a wonderful actual example of late nineteenth century shingle style church architecture this church has been purchased by audrey martin to be presented to all scenes church in honor of richard bet so we're delighted that audrey did this for belmont for richard and for the church and i want to recognize too in part of the plaque programs goal is to recognize preservation and preservation of buildings and again recently over the past two years they went above and beyond preserving and restoring this house you'll see it still has original sidewall shingles you know someone may have been tempted to install binal siding has its original windows in just a lovely example of craftsman style architecture in belmont so we're packard and the history of this house and the neighborhood the house is part of an eighty two lot subdivision that was developed between one nine hundred twenty seven and one nine hundred thirty four by george toby the house was built in one nine hundred thirty by george toby hundred fifty five for i'm sorry one hundred fifty six when it was purchased by george and katherine packard the house is still owned by george their son and it's really a handsome example of colonial viable style architecture in belmont and again to give george credit and the dunham's credit and all of our ward winners you know really going the extra mile to preserve their homes and maintain them and this image it could be in one nine hundred thirty five i think house i mentioned that we have on the table at the back of the room we have applications available so if anyone would like to receive a plaque in december or this time next year please take one of those applications and please don't hesitate to contact the historical society and this subcommittee because really we want to be a resource to you to help you through this process and make it fun and have this type of program every year where we can recognize these houses we plan to keep histories these histories we develop we plan to keep as part of the historical societies collection so the information will be available in the claflin room and really resorts to future owners to  buying these properties if they want to be interested in their past history of their of their home so thank you a million you have some parting words well thank you all for being here tonight and we have freshman sin the back as joe was alluding to we have some merchandise that you're welcome to look at and hopefully you'll find something to purchase and bring home with you thank