Architectural History

Adapted from works by Robert H. Nylander

The house that Jason Russell built had two rooms, one above the other, with the chimney and stairs at the north end. In order to have at least part of the front face south, in the New England tradition, it was necessary to place the house with its end toward the Concord Road. There was a barn to the southwest of the house and an ell, probably at the back.

Perhaps five or ten years after the southern part was built Jason Russell doubled the house by adding two more rooms at the north side of the front door. This was as much to accommodate an increasing family as it was a sign of prosperity, although Jason Russell is also said to have been a fairly prosperous farmer. By this addition, he turned his house into a characteristic New England farmhouse: across the front are five windows, with the door in the center and the large chimney in the center of the pitched roof. Within are four rooms, and instead of the more usual rear lean-to, Jason Russell's house had the large one-story ell, although his descendants added a lean-to later.

The southern rooms were used as the kitchen and children's bedroom. The kitchen had a large fireplace on the north wall, a window and a door to the farmyard on the south wall, and two windows on the front. The outside walls may have been plastered originally, but in 1924, when the house was restored, wood sheathing was installed. The original floor was replaced with the present one in 1863.

The most outstanding feature of the room is the unplastered ceiling, which is whitewashed and has black sponge painting. This form of decoration is generally considered to be the earliest form of interior painting in New England, dating from before 1725. Some bills in connection with the Province House in Boston, however, for "whitewashing and spotting kitchen" in 1737, 1738, and 1739, show that it was still popular for such rooms when Jason Russell built his house. The "Old Adams House," which stood in Arlington center until 1855, also had a form of sponge painting in the front entry, which was brought up to date probably in the 1750's or 1760's. The house itself was a century older.

The room above is simply sheathed and has a whitewashed, unplastered ceiling. There is nothing else to distinguish it except the scribblings of generations of Russell children on the panels over the fireplace.

The stairs and entry are simple. The stairs rise in three wide runs with just a handrail and no balusters. There was originally a cellar door leading from the first-floor entry, but it has been closed perhaps by Jason Russell himself, in favor of the one in the kitchen. On the second-floor level is a "secret closet" with sliding door under the attic stairs.

The two north rooms, originally the best room and a bed chamber, have paneled fireplace walls with handsome bolection moldings and the ceilings are plastered, and the second-floor room has no wooden baseboard. The window embrasures are deep, and are somewhat larger than the actual window. They were plainly finished at first. Both rooms have ample closets beside the fireplaces. Throughout the house the framing is fairly heavy and reflects earlier building trends, as did many houses in Menotomy. The kitchen summer beam has a bold chamfer, but elsewhere, when beams were finished at the corners, a crude bevel was used. Until well into the nineteenth century, the southern rooms were unplastered. The north rooms were plastered and the corner posts cased in, from the start.

An interesting example of Yankee ingenuity is apparent in the roof framing. The original, two-room house had a roof which consisted of four principal rafters, a single purlin between each, and a series of common rafters. When Jason Russell doubled the house, he did away with the purlins and the old common rafters and spaced the four principal rafters not quite equally across the entire house. The spaces between were then filled with new common rafters, pegged at the top (there is no ridge pole), and the purlins were omitted. This also made the gables the same height at each end. Most Menotomy houses that grew in this manner ended up with one gable slightly higher than the other.

The old ell is framed similarly to the main house. It has been so changed that it is impossible to determine its original appearance, or even original location, with any certainty. From the placement of the studs, it is apparent that it had windows about the size of the attic windows on the main house.

It was doubtless about 1814 that an enclosed porch was added at the front door, that the Federal-period moldings were added to the original window frames in the north rooms, and that mantel shelves were installed over the fireplaces. The woodwork in the north rooms was painted olive green at the same time. Later, perhaps after Noah died, in 1824, the kitchen was modernized. A new overmantel with cupboards, was installed in front of the original one, new doors and door frames were put in, and the whole room was replastered, including the ceiling.

Sometime later in the nineteenth century a lean-to and a large ell, with a front door facing the main street, were added to the west of the house, the lean-to probably about 1850 and the ell about 1863. The old south door to the farmyard was sealed up in one of these alterations. Most of the present exterior finish on the original house dates from this period, although the window frames are of the eighteenth century . Federal moldings were applied to these frames about 1814 and they have been resashed. There is one small patch of Jason Russell's original clapboards on the south wall. At the time of the last of these alterations the house was painted white, the only color it is known to have been painted while the Russell family was living in it. (Jason Russell probably did not painted it) and green blinds were hung at the windows.

Through the settling of the estates and through sale, Jason Russell's original farm had been reduced in size. In 1883 Lydia Teel divided the remaining land, "Jason Russell's orchard" as she called it, among her children, giving the old house to her son Thomas Russell Teel. She also had a road laid out in front of the house, and this was accepted by the town as Jason Street in 1884. Mrs. Teel died in 1886

Russell Teel tore down the old barn and further altered Jason Russell's original ell. Part of it was used for a while as a smokehouse. At his death, in 1896, the house passed out of the family, and a subsequent owner moved it partly off its original foundations to install a furnace. The original chimney was lost in the process of moving and part of the 1863 ell, but otherwise the house was retained intact. In 1923 this and several other houses in Arlington were endangered by demolition threats, and the Arlington Historical Society wisely chose to purchase and save Jason Russell's house over the less preserved of the threatened houses.

Take an online tour of the Jason Russell House.