n i've been the president for the last three years and it has truly been an honor and something i have enjoyed tremendously so i'm going to make a few remarks about some of the things that we've accomplished over the last three years we are also going to have a committee report and we'll be electing new officers and new board members we will be distributing the historic house plants and we have about seven to distribute today so we're pretty happy about the fact that we are able to get so many house plants into the community and finally well not finally we will also be presenting david johnson preservation awards will be giving out several of those and finally we have a special guest tonight  standing in the back of the hall while we're really glad that you're here i started out telling joe this wasn't going to be very much work that i just wanted him to tell me a little you know give a few details about the historic houses and then i upped the ante and i said well you know joe as long as you're coming would you like to talk and next thing you know joe had volunteered and i really appreciate you doing so to talk about the history of preservation and belmont joe was very involved in this community for many many many years so he knows tremendous amount about the amount of work joe thank you so much for being here tonight so let me begin with a few of the things that i've seen happen in the time i've been president one is that the library and the media center have gotten involved in the story project and that has been a very successful program it pairs people to have conversations with other people in the community about their memories of belmont and it can be any age you can be interviewed by your son or your neighbor you can interview three year old if you want to and say tell me about your neighborhood but mostly it's trying to reach out to people who have lived here a long time who remember things about the community and trying to get those memories down and any number of people here have been actively involved in flows down a number of interviews nancy was interviewed by her son and a little bit of that got played the last board meeting when you were there to hear it was lovely so i want to make sure everyone knows about that because that's a great great program and they're looking to keep it going and look for more people to both be interviewers and interviewees we had a couple of significant losses in the historical society community over the last few years one was richard betts who was a long time town historian and a very valuable member of the community and we actually pulled our resources and pulled our connections in town and we made  bet we had commissioned a granite to be made for him which is installed in front of the town hall complex and it's actually below the window that was richard's office when he worked for the town so that feels good that that's there another person that we lost in our community was an alan who was one of our board members also like richard tremendously helpful to our community and when the trees put when the town put trees into the town green one of those trees was dedicated to the memory of it and we had a small memorial stone put in there and it's the tree closest to the savings bank on the railroad tracks sides of that triangular green so as you're walking up that street sometime you'll look and see a small stone dedicated to an alan a small person but a large personality and a large force in our community i would say the underwood pool was built we didn't have anything to do with that per se but we were able to find a great place now i you know i couldn't do this job without all the people who helped me victoria it has the it's been in charge of the claflin room for i don't even know how long it's open for ten days a week for two hours at a time there are regular volunteers phil hughes george packer debbie rowe's alice and victoria who really keeps the ball rolling in that room she's had high school volunteers bill dunham worked with the high school community and got some volunteers to come and help so if you can get up there to to see the claflin room it is just it's actually amazing because the high school volunteers have really helped to victoria to get the room in order and it looks great another big project that victoria had a large hand in was the wellington roofing project and this was a project that joe cornish started he wrote the original grant to the city to town of belmont to get community preservation funding to do the roof of those welling station but it wouldn't have happened without victoria picking up the ball and moving it forward and so that got done last year and now david flew well deploying has volunteered to be our new station master so wellington  by his son george there was a program about george marsh which was great we had people lined up out the door for that and we serve blueberry muffins when there was a holiday open house in the claflin room which i think people enjoyed perhaps we'll do that again we'll see folks in bloom we pulled out we had paintings down here we had displays upstairs we had a videotape runnings of the history of belmont so that turned out to be a great program and the last program of the year was the golden age of boston television by terry and no i can't i'm sure i'm not going to thank everyone i know that there's you know many hands make light make light work but i also want to put out a thank you to nelson ball and has done a lot to advertise our program through our website and through the newspapers and it's been very appreciated this year so my thank you and thanks to everyone you know so many people do so many things i can't even today i'm trying to get something done and feels three steps ahead of me trying to make sure everyone has the right size screws to put the plaque on their house so you know many hands ma light work and with that i would like to introduce debbie rowe's alice who's the chair of our nominating committee to give the nominating committee report or  oh i have a mike we could be in trouble good evening and so nice to see such a large group here tonight so the nominating committee of the belmont to start will society met on april eighteenth and the committee members are as follows debbie rowe's alice william don and julie or myself elizabeth gibson and sheila flu and at that meeting the committee reviewed the society by laws and i would eligibility requirements for office for society officers and members of the board of directors the committee in accordance with by law section two point three shall submit a slate of nominees for big and c's on the board of the society after meeting and deliberation the nominating committee nominees the following slate of officers to serve beginning immediately following the annual meeting and which they were elected and shall continue in office until the close of the next annual meeting at which time successors have been elected and qualified for continuity of official duties president for next year will be philip thank you all in favor please say i thank you so much thank you allison i think it will hand out the historic plaques now joe if you could help me with that i'd be very grateful  this this plaque goes to angelo in vegas friends who live at three clover street the house was originally owned by george and minnie armstrong and has been in the frenzy family since nineteen fifty two and i was just going to make some architectural comments on the styles of these houses this style that is arts and crafts style with the twist of england with it and what makes arts and craft it's a stucco style house and you'll notice the exposed framing the rafter tails at the roof and this type of house was really a reaction against the busy victorian styles you know with all their doodads and carvings and this was looking more back at the hand craftsmanship of the time so it's  historic style and it's one that's well represented in belmont and this is probably one of the best example and this is the bathroom house this is owned by sally and terence martin it's at twenty nine oaks street and it was part of the belmont park subdivision located off of concord avenue and it's probably likely built by the this is the brown house arjun even steve read here how are you know i have a like email relationships with people who i haven't met before this is a really great house it's  they recently redid the front porch of their house isn't that fantastic so keep that picture in mind because they've actually won a preservation of art also and it's because they have put their effort into really bringing this about this house back to you know how lovely it is heart hello out there so this house was a workman's house it was originally built at the town hall annex the town hall and next was in fact the high point was the high school so this house was condemned and mcdonald picked it up it's a three story house six bedroom he literally jack screwed it up he put twelve by twelve beams underneath it he was he ran a drainage company and moving company so we had teams oh and he picked the house up with jackscrews put wheels under that frame carried it up more and down pleasant street and put it on its present rock rubble foundation so this tells the story it was actually published in the belmont citizen fifty seven i think and when we rebuilt one of the bathrooms up stairs which i think was a linen closet certainly they had no indoor plumbing we thought the mcdonald drainage company card so we put her down and at the same time we also uncovered a boat schedule doesn't have anything to do with the house i just figured that about throwing it in for good measure but we put it together because it's always fun to be able to talk about your house and the stories associated it's just an old workman's house a victorian but it's our house we love  there's another view of the house see this is why i do so that we learned things like that i didn't know that about the ventilation i don't know if you've noticed i've gone from the most recent house back in time  there's at least one yeah yeah yeah so this is the house i think i found the most intriguing of all of them because this is a workman's cottage and i'll be interested to know if  can tell us what style it is because i was scratching my head about this it when we think it was built about eight hundred sixty three but we're not entirely certain and what's intriguing about this is that it was it wasn't owned by someone wealthy and it wasn't known by someone famous it's just a workman's cottage it was built by a man named mr brown who was from no sorry daniel mahoney who was from ireland he lived with his wife they had about eight children and he bought the land from ellie is their home or it was originally when l a is their home or bought the land it was described as lawn pasture and then when he sold it to the honeys it was described as mowing intelligent land and  specifies that either home or in this is quote sea homer reserves the right to the crop of eight hundred sixty three so the year that it changed hands ellie is or homer kept the right of the crop that year so we're fairly certain there wasn't a house there that year although the assessor's office said it was built in eight hundred fifty so i went to the assessor's office and said you know eight hundred fifty they said well in nineteen twenty when the assessor's office was formed we didn't know what the dates were for various houses so sometimes we put place holders in and you know it wasn't owned by someone who was famous when you look at the census forms he was a laborer so one of the things i tried and also interestingly enough it's right on the border of what used to be arlington was called west cambridge at the time but it's right on the border like it used to be arlington until the town became belmont so little hard to research a poor family shifting borders what town is it in what's going on so i happen to find an eight hundred sixty nine belmont directory and i thought this was interesting because i think of belmont as a place that's a fairly upper class place but i found that there were three hundred sixty eight heads of household in that eight hundred sixty nine directory and out of that three hundred sixty eight one hundred nine people were laborers that's a quarter of the town and one hundred eight people were farmers so there's another quarter of the town out of the farmers twenty of them have the last name  frost by the way we'll get to the prosperity in another and later on in this meeting no the other professions weren't exactly high class professions either there carpenter gardeners stone cutter machinist direct laborers horse men so you know there were very there were the laborers weren't even including things like machinists and stone masons those were different class of people so just just for fun i looked up a couple people who i knew were upper class here one was the a family where they have the profession for someone else they listed him as in the award william mead i knew he was upper class he's listed as charlestown navy yard and mr underwood is listed as pickles preserves it cetera so i thought that was very interesting so i found this house just charming and intriguing what do you think it is we would call it or not killer farmhouse and that's what architectural historians call houses when they don't know what style but it's probably i would say and the telling the style because you do see the eaves of the roof do extend a little further from the front of the the house than normal and above the door there is kind of a recor so the next house is james brown house which is owned by i and john brace and the first owner as i said was james brown who was an owner of the little brown publishing company james brown's we know sold the house in now i just want to mention that mr gray's and his sister judy stetson donated a beautiful painting to us which is now hanging up in the claflin room so please come during our open hours and check it out it's just a beautiful painting and he donated it a couple of years ago and i'm really happy that it's hanging up just as i'm stepping down so thank you very much for that but shortly after she moved in she married dr john bloch alexander and they lived in the house until about eighteen nineteen this is a wonderful house that so attractive and it's a really lovely spot on pleasant street and if you look that was also something that was added to the ventilation for that stack of facts so you would have cooling air come up not necessarily for views as everyone thinks you know you have this couple to go out and look at people although it's certainly a good perch for that and that's the seven plaques and we have one on the list for next year already so we had a great response to the plaque program this year and now i guess yeah the other the other people so i'd also like to give out the preservation rewards and then i'm going to ask joe to speak and the first preservation award is being given to read in recognition of their efforts to preserve and restore their  like joe to tell us a little bit about this house because i think you know better than i do some of the history of it it's probably one of the best mid century modern houses that we have the belmont that has ties to walter gro s it's just typical of the style situated on that site just perfectly and it overlooks conservation land and it's just a wonderful celebration of the century modern architecture and you t next award is being given to loren meyer who i don't believe is here today in recognition of the pivotal role she played in creating the demolition delay by law and she was nominated for this award by roger rubles so we'll  meantime and the last award is going to joe cornish which is a surprise for joe i didn't i didn't know i had it's not in recognition of his service on the belmont historical commission the belmont historical society and all of his efforts on behalf of the town of belmont to preserve our architectural legacy hopefully that won't be the case well thank you for having me back here it's really a delight to see so many of my old friends i really enjoyed all my time on the belmont historical society i was president i was wellington station master and i really got  know a lot of our members and a lot of our board members so many wonderful people like an alan who's no longer with us and david johnson and richard betts so we were really really a wonderful opportunity for i'm not so young anymore for that time a young person to get to know so many dedicated people so what my talk it's going to be fairly brief but what i wanted to do was celebrate preservation may has been designated preservation month by the national trust that was designated in one nine hundred seventy three the year that i was born so maybe that had something to do with it in my career choice but in one thousand seventy three the national trust decided they wanted to recognize all preservation effort s in the country and to really celebrate preservation in the people who do preservation and unfortunately as historic preservation ists we always tend to lament all of the lost buildings and here we have two in belmont the waverly congregational church it was constructed in clark outs and this was really a heart wrenching epic we thought it was saved for a while and then it was lost and so many people in this room really dedicated a lot of resources and time to try to see that we really tried but it just unfortunately didn't happen it takes losses like this sometimes for us to move ahead and preservation and think ahead but again i don't want to give a presentation tonight about everything that we lost but rather everything we saved and to give a pat on the back and say  good job and let's keep go so i made a timeline of sorts of preservation efforts and the earliest other could come up with it was the beaverbrook preservation from eight hundred ninety three it's about fifty nine acres of land and it was established as the first reservation by the metropolitan park commission to protect the twenty two white oaks known as the we've really oaks and the last one died in the early one nine hundred twenty s this land was formally farmland and there were two historic mill sites on the property and fortunately well over one hundred years ago people had the foresight to protecting conserve this wonderful resource and it still enjoying today it even has a spray part that i saw is being restored and will be opened in time for the hot weather so that that will be refreshing for when i'll see you in your probably the most well known for his famous nephew winslow homer the artist people have come and visited the house for many many years probably what a lot of people don't know is that this house was threatened with demolition in one nine hundred twenty seven a developer threatened to demolish it and tear it down and that was when the belmont women's club stepped in and purchased it and they have been the stewards ever said and large houses small houses historic houses are very expensive to upkeep and i really have to say that the belmont women's club have really done the best that they can i think to keep this large treasure going and i think everything that we can do in this town to support them in their effort to keep the williams like home or how it's going would really be in everyone's best interest so we could all make an effort to do that and commit to that today i think that would be wonderful the images i chose when the house was first constructed to look much like the the image on the left and i understand that as part of the restoration work that's going to be happening at the coupal at the roof that they plan to restore that finial so that should be quite an interesting change to the building and something that i think will really make it more interesting people wonder what the hit the history of the design of this house is and my best guess is that it could have been from a design by alexander jackson downing which you seen from his pattern book here on the right and you can see influences the steep man our roof with the flared edges the porches in a slightly different location to the side of the building but the overall form with that great kind of bed in the at the center is one of the hallmarks features of the women's club me think that it probably was at influenced by this pattern book you see today with that shower cap on the coupal of which we will be going away soon has a really marvelous interior to and again the bell when the club have done a really great job in keeping it restored but also sharing it with the public and really in the past five years have made a wonderful effort to share this interior space with the public one of the rooms here and of course i don't know if it's open to the public but maybe if you can get a special tore up to the coop all of that probably has one of the nicest views and with cambridge out in the distance hundred thirty five and then became defunct soon after perhaps something to do with the great depression it's not really clear to me what happened but it wouldn't be until the one nine hundred sixty five that would be reorganized and probably one of the best and we've had many great leaders you see richard bentsen you know victoria here they really ushered us through probably the past three decades at least in having this wonderful thriving society and what a testament to have so many people here tonight so it is historical societies are dwindling and people are losing interested in history it's great to see so many people here tonight still interested and what the bellman historical society does in addition to preserving the wellington station historic structure they preserve the stories in the collections of bell lives so it's really a very important or next we moved to the highland brook farm a capital that and this started in one nine hundred sixty five with the donation of twenty two acres of land and then soon after another donation of twenty two acres of land in one thousand nine hundred seventy ruth hornblower atkins donated her colonial revival house which you see here quite recently probably in the past three or four years the historical society had a great program there does anyone remember going there and touring the touring the mansion and seeing the grounds it's a great combination of how open space conservation can go hand in hand with historic preservation because this organization and this done a great job preserving the historic house and making it available to people through functions you can rent it out as weddings and as a great example of clone your old revival architecture i couldn't find a very good photo of it so you're going to have to all go up in and take a take a tour of it soon so the belmont historic commission has its roots in one nine hundred sixty eight in one thousand nine hundred sixty six the national preservation act really was the energy that created historic commissions throughout the country and belmont  italianate style house on the opposite side of the street or a hill boarding school and one thing i want you to notice are really the attention in the care that has been given to most of these houses in the district that the people who buy these houses really love historic houses and they really love the character of being in the district and i think that's something important to remember when we're thinking about historic districts i know a lot of people don't want to be told what to do with their private property but sometimes when you have historic resources you really have to guide people to be responsible for doing changes and that's what the historic commissions do the historic commission doesn't want to prevent change from happening but they want to make sure it's done with care so that the character of our town is still preserve so we move a little further to concord out of there and then when we move up conjured up a new this wonderful building that was also known as the beehive because all the activity that used to go on  then back to pleasant street this is the albert higgins house a very nice colonial arrival house with a wonderful beech tree in the front lawn on some of the street library now the school building the home or house the thomas play cows another just very ambitious italianate style house with a wonderful tower here are the houses that had been on more the more subdivision and moved the telly have been up on the upper side of pleasant street the captain james home or house this was on an episode of this old house that someone in this beloved buildings in the district the james perry house we're heading towards the intersection now at the traffic light your littered street just before the intersection second here and then one of the earliest houses in the district of the stephen frost house so if you think and then on the opposite side we have a federal style have in the so we move on to more time in life to the wellington station and there are probably people here that remember when the wellington station was moved to its current location the wellington station had many locations in its history it was built in eight hundred forty near current location as a train station soon after it was moved to the underwood est it was used as a school room schoolhouse there it was used as an artist gallery in studio hundred eighty underwood family donated it back to the historical society and had it moved to its current location historical society owns the building and the town of belmont owns the land that it's  and has everyone i hope been inside the wellington station and if you're not if you have not please go we have a new station master that i know will be happy to welcome you but inside it just has a lovely display of artifacts related to tr development and it has the original town scale kind of hidden away in the cupboard and it does not include the lions club but that's not to say that the lions called is not protected the lions club in one thousand nine hundred nine received a grant from the state it's a mess massachusetts preservation project grant and as part of that grant a and this is the interesting part of belmont history the commons constructed in one nine hundred eighty you may wonder why this is part of a preservation story this was kind of a different way to think about development and this property was preserved it was the h o underwood house and to preserve that house it was converted into condominiums and three new buildings were constructed in a cluster to allow for the preservation of open space around did so allowed for the essence of the context of that estate to survive but still the owners capability to develop it with units was achieved and i mentioned this old house this old house did not have one project but two projects in belmont early on this is over near of the former our lady of mercy church just before  behind that the house on the left a single style house and then just a few years ago near golden three in school street this house was was featured on this old house so it's nice to know that belmont was featured not once but twice on a national platform for television or historic preservation and then the town hall complex i think it's important to highlight that this property was preserved even though it's in a historic district there was a thought that the town hall and or the complex the annex would be demolished and that was something that members of the historic commission other members in town really rallied efforts to draw attention to the important the architectural importance of the town hall building and the annex but also the importan historic preservation where you know preservation you know might just throw everything away and start over again you know it's a great way to reuse buildings and buildings can be reused and made viable and i think this complex today's a nice example of that they're handicapped accessible they're large rooms has plenty of parking and it and it preserves the character of our town and who doesn't love to come down concord avenue and be greeted by the turrets of the town hall so it's really just one of the greatest part of the belmont and it's a really nice memory of the commitment that people in belmont had the pride they had in our town to donate the money and to do the effort to do these interesting buildings that represent our town and in the towns institutions this project i should also mention a required massachusetts preservation project fund and it also protected by preservation another large project preservation project in belmont happened in one thousand nine hundred nine when an agreement was made between the mclean hospital and the town of belmont to preserve the open space to preserve the historic landscapes and historic buildings at mclean in return obviously there was an development in return but it could have been a much different and being if citizens did not get involved to ensure the preservation and it's wonderful to see these buildings  stables and this one cottage that were completely derelict that now are probably the most interesting parts of the new development at mclean so it's just again another achievement that we can really be proud of that without years this was not did not happen overnight years of work and years of negotiation with the state and with town officials to see that mclean was preserved and it's still a wonderful place to visit and it's still a functioning hospital which makes it even a better success story and also as part of mclean the rock meadow preserve wins when  other preservation thoughtful projects you know a lot of towns when they have buildings that they no longer need they'll sell them and they don't really care about what will happen to them in the future bellman had the condominiums and they're probably very popular you know whenever they come on the market which is rare they sell very quickly and it's just again another nice story they were able to preserve restore the kubel at the top the slate roof with all of its different colors and textures are all recreated here the belmont fire station in government center also sold by the town with a preservation easement and they've kept the essence of the of the doors which kind of have that idea that there could be a fire truck on the other side but instead you can go there and enjoy a nice dinner very dedicated to his wife barbara who was very involved with historical society and i think barbara got david involved and then after barbara passed away and david carried on her interest in the community and in the historical society and when i was on the board of the historical society david often mentioned wouldn't be great to have a preservation award so we started it handing out presentation awards in two thousand and seven he and i worked very carefully on the criteria and he had a lot of ideas he didn't always agree with me but we were able to figure something out but then after his death we named after him in honor of his commitment to preservation he lived in the former cushing farmhouse on  and that was something he was very proud of his wife barbara are very proud of they often hosted historical society events at the house so it's a nice way that in addition when we give out these are words we're recognizing historic preservation remembering david and his wife barbara commitment to preservation involved community preservation act this is something i know new taxes are never popular with people  but hopefully this one's a little more palatable because you can really see what your your money is going towards and in most cases in town at least a third of it goes to historic preservation and what you see here you see two projects that probably wouldn't be possible without this fund the wellington group which looks wonderful and victoria thank you for assuring that project a lot of the the process of when you have to use town funds and hire contractors isn't very easy and victoria didn't pull all your hair out a survey graduations and that the doors at the town hall were restored the wonderful doors which were kind of for lauren looking at always kind of dingy now they just pop when you drive by that building you did a wonderful job the friends of the benton library to make sure that it didn't close that it would still be open even though as a private library for that area the community and not only does it preserve this historic building which was constructed  as a chapel for a private school that was located here but it was donated by the benton family to the town to be used as a library and that that tradition could be carried on because of the work that elizabeth and the friends of the of the library  congratulations again on that that was  and the plaque program in twenty thirteen there was often when i was on the historic commission we would have many people asking us how could i get a historic plaque for my project or for my house and you probably remember there were plaques and many historic houses in town but the historical society decided why don't we create a plaque program and that again with many hours of time trying to figure out the criteria getting committees together to to award them and  decide to do the research on something that's been very successful in that people really look forward to and i just have a number down of how many plaques we've given out i should mention we gave out forty preservation awards since the of their other restoration of it and you know it's very family friendly as you can see that this is it's former city so they were very anxious and very proud to get a  thirteen and you know it's a tool that is used by towns in massachusetts to not prevent demolition but hopefully have a chance to work with developers when significant houses are are going to be demolished are being proposed for demo it started out that this was just a six month delay for residential houses twelve months for commercial buildings and you probably remember this was the rectory of the former our lady of mercy church which was demolished before the bylaw within the place but it's just one of the preservation tools that we have in our preservation tool box that we can use hopefully to work with developers to just say did you think about  instead or did you think about doing this instead and sometimes ultimately the buildings will be lost but at least it gives us a pause if not to find another solution but to have time to document the building which is important  we're getting near the to the present day i had the good fortune of working with lydia old will be and her family to create the richardson farm historic district which was formally established in two thousand and thirteen and the land had been preserved by a conservation easement but the ogleby family decided that they want to protect the historic buildings in the historic district was one way to do that and you probably are familiar with with the farm and its location and we fast forward to present day to our newest historic district that has crossed historic district and this house and i know for years and years the date was wrong and it was constructed in eight hundred twenty seven when today and athena thank you for for your work to preserve this and  thank you so much john thank you all of you for being here today there are refreshments in the back and we have some time so we don't have to run out of here we can visit and socialize with one another and if anyone wants to see pictures or you one maybe the