272 High Street

History

Thomas Emery built this house shortly after he purchased this parcel of land in 1796.

Built as a Federal Style residence along High Street in Newburyport, well known for its intact assemblage of Federal Style architecture, this house has a three-story form with a hipped roof, small windows on the third floor, and a simple, classically inspired cornice and window lintels characteristic of the style in Newburyport. The front portico and entrance represent Greek Revival embellishments made to this house before 1840, a practice so common in Newburyport homes in this period that such details have blended into the popular perception of “Newburyport Federal."

This main house block has a rear ell on the northeast side, partly original to the house, which is five bays in length over what is now a concrete foundation, and represents what appear to be two construction periods. The three-bay portion of this ell closest to the house seems original, while the two northernmost bays appear to have been added c. 1820. A modern one-story porch constructed c. 1980 stands in the angle.

Windows on the west, south, and east sides of the house are graduated in keeping with the Federal Style and framed in wooden ogee moldings with slightly projecting lintels and sills. Lintels on the south front facade of the house have more elaborate lintels, topped by a projecting molding cornice that echoes the treatment of the entrance portico. Windows on the rear north side are framed in simple wooden surrounds. All 6/6 wooden sash windows on the house are modern replacements with salvaged period glass panes from the area and are part of a 2004-2005 restoration project that replaced deteriorated windows and several that did not fit the frames properly. In the same project, interior pocket shutters have been restored in their original tracks, and all later exterior wooden shutters have been removed. In addition, a few odd-sized windows, as noted below, have been replaced with different pane configurations, based on historical evidence.

The south front facade rises three stories and is five symmetrical bays wide, with a central entrance and wood clapboard sheathing above a fieldstone and granite foundation, capped with stuccoed brick. The hipped roof is sheathed in composite shingles and pierced by one corbelled brick chimney on the east side and a smaller corbelled brick chimney on the west rear side. The small rectangular windows on the third story have six panes and no lintels. White-painted corner posts frame each corner. A plaque on the front right side reads: ‘James Parton, prominent American biographer, journalist, and social crusader of the 19th century, occupied this house from 1885 until he died in 1891. Author, editor, and translator of over 30 volumes, Parton is “The Father of Modern Biography.” Built in 1797 by Thomas Emery.'

The Greek Revival-style entrance consists of a single wood-paneled door with sidelights beneath a hipped-roof portico supported by paneled, squared columns. The roof sits atop a deeply projecting cornice of molding underlined by a row of simple modillions above a planar frieze and architrave separated by a single wooden bead. The portico stands on an elevated brick stoop with three brick steps ascending to the landing.

Two small shrubs line the front foundation on either side of the portico, behind a small lawn of mown grass. Along the brick sidewalk, and curving around the corner to extend the full length of the house and ell on the east side, is a white Federal Style wooden fence of alternating-height spindles interspersed at regular intervals by square pilastered wooden posts with urn finials. This style, found on a few other Federal-period High Street houses, is among the most elaborate in Newburyport and is believed to date from the Federal period to the 1840s.

The east and west facades of the main house are three stories in height with wooden sash windows framed in simple ogee moldings. The west facade is two bays in width. The east facade has three narrower bays, possibly reflecting smaller rooms and service areas such as the buttery and kitchen built in tandem with the ell, with an enclosed, single-story, hipped-roof entrance porch and door projecting from the lower northeast corner of the east facade. This porch, which appears to have been constructed with the 1820s addition, has two 12/8 replacement sash windows (formerly 20th-century replacement 4/4 wooden sash) on its north and south sides, and is reached by granite steps extending to the sidewalk. On the grass embankment between the sidewalk and the street, and thus on City land, but probably original to the house, is a set of granite steps with granite stringers.

Windows on the first and second stories of the east facade are 6/6 wooden sash, except for the second-story window in the right bay, which now has a 9/6 wooden sash replacement window. On the west side, two bays of 6/6 replacement sash windows are located on all three stories. A painted sill board sits above the stone foundation, which has some brick infill around a central three-pane basement window.

Three bays on the right side of the rear north facade contain 6/6 wooden sash windows, all similar in size and with simple wooden enframements and slightly projecting sills. Three 6/6 sash windows are evenly stacked to form the westernmost rear bay, while a single, unevenly ranked 6/6 sash window on the third story forms the second bay. Two windows, on the second and third stories respectively, form the third bay. The modern porch addition obscures the first story from the exterior.

Extending from the rear northeast side of the house is a two-story, five-bay, wooden clapboard, end-gabled ell, with four bays containing 9/6 wooden sash windows and one bay with no window on the west side, second story, and five bays of evenly ranked, shuttered, 9/6 windows on the east side. The middle 9/6 wooden sash window on the first story of this ell, where the frame height was 2” shorter than the four 9/6 windows flanking it, has been replaced with the only combination that fits the frame, a 12/12 wooden sash window with 6” by 8” glass panes. The wooden enframements on the east side of the ell windows match those on the east side of the main house. A break in the gutter line and corresponding peak in the roofline between the third and fourth bays appears to indicate where the c.1820 addition was constructed. A shed roof portico supported by scrolled wooden brackets covers a single “cross and bible” door set within a simple wooden frame on the west side of the c.1820 section of this ell. Simpler wooden enframements on the west-side ell windows match those on the rear windows of the main house. Two brick steps on concrete, and one wooden step at the sill board level, ascend from ground level.

The north wall of this ell has a wooden sash window, with a louvered upper sash over a 6-pane lower sash, located in the gable peak. A single 9/6 wooden sash window sits to its lower right on the second story. A single 8/4 wooden sash window, believed to be original to this location, overlooks the rear yard on the first story from the left side of the facade.

Extending from the northwest side of the house and the west wall of the ell is an enclosed one-story, shed-roofed porch built c.1980, with a small louver in the angle, comprising pairs of sliding glass and screen doors with multi-pane interior muntins, with clapboard sheathing above and between. The porch is supported by a concrete foundation and trimmed with a sill board that matches the house's height.

The early 19th-century wooden clapboard carriage house/garage, entered through two carriage/garage doors on the east side, is two stories in height, with an end-gable roof and clapboard sheathing. Wooden 6/6 sash windows are placed at irregular intervals on the south facade, and stacked in a single bay on the west side. At the southwest corner of the building is a single wooden plank door in a simple wooden frame. The north side is windowless. Above the two carriage doors on the east facade is a single wooden plank door on a side hinge, set in simple wooden framing.

A mature garden in the rear north yard between the main house and the carriage house is surrounded by a more straightforward and lower extension of the front fence, which curves around to the north and encloses the narrow east yard. Young deciduous trees also frame the garden at its north end and flank the carriage house. Mown grass comprises much of the west side yard, where three air conditioning units and a stone slab bench sit next to the west facade, and a row of tall evergreens backed by more of the low fencing edges the western property line. On the east side, a few deciduous shrubs sit between the house and the fenceline, and mature deciduous trees line the sidewalk along Oakland Street.

Thomas Emery, born in Newbury in 1771, purchased this parcel of land at the northwesterly corner of High and Oakland Street from Moses Moody shortly before his marriage to Elizabeth Hale in November 1796. He built the three-story Federal home shortly thereafter. At that time, the property was not in Newburyport, but just across the boundary line in what was then the Belleville section of Newbury, and North Street, which would later become Oakland Street, was not built along that line until 1815. Emery’s first wife died in 1803, but he remarried and lived in the house until he died in 1860. By that time, Belleville had become part of the city of Newburyport.

His son, Capt. Flavius Emery, born in 1797, married Elizabeth Emery in 1826, and they had two sons. Flavius died in Newburyport in 1830, a few days after his one-year-old second son, Flavius. His first son, Rufus, born in Newburyport in 1827, became a minister and served churches in Southport and Stonington, CT, where he married a Connecticut woman, Adelaide Brainerd, in 1858. By 1860, when Thomas Emery’s estate was left to his grandson, they had moved to Newburgh, NY. Apparently, Rufus Emery did not live in the house in Newburyport. Still, he remained in Newburgh, where his mother died in 1880, and his wife in 1891. In later life, he became something of an antiquarian, publishing works on the historic burying grounds in Newburgh and on the genealogy of the Emery family of Newbury before he died in 1913. In 1886, Rufus Emery, of Newburgh, New York, sold this house to James Parton.

James Parton was born in Canterbury, England, in 1822, and emigrated to America with his mother following his father’s death in 1826. After attending school in New York City, he later taught school in both New York and Philadelphia. Parton became a regular contributor to the Home Journal in the 1840s and, in 1855, published a biography, The Life of Horace Greeley. It was such a success that Parton devoted the rest of his life to literary efforts. He contributed articles to the New York Ledger and, in 1857, published The Life and Times of Aaron Burr. He later wrote biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire.

Parton married Sarah Payson (Willis) Eldredge, a widow with two children, in Hoboken, NJ, in 1856. Following her death in 1872, Parton moved to Newburyport in 1875, where in 1876 he married Ellen Willis Eldredge and lived in the recently built house at 270 High Street, on the easterly corner of High and Oakland. In 1886, he bought and moved into the house at the western corner of 272 High Street, where he lived until he died in 1891. Parton published many volumes while in Newburyport, and became one of the city’s prominent citizens, often called upon to speak at public occasions such as the 1885 250th anniversary of Newbury. He lectured at the Newburyport Athenaeum and, in 1890, assisted in the formation of the City Improvement Society.

The house remained in the Parton family until 1935, when his son Hugo Parton of Manhattan sold it to John Edward Shaw of Newburyport. Shaw operated it as a rental property until 1966, when, after it had been vacant for several years, he sold it to the Channel Building Company of Andover. This company owned it for a year, during which time the rear lot line was adjusted, with a small portion of the adjustment going to the abutting property owner at 48 Oakland Street. In 1967, Channel sold it to Robert and Sally Webster of Andover, who sold it in 1968 to Harold and Virginia Cogger of Acton. The Coggers undertook restoration work on the property, including extensively rebuilding the Federal-style fence, before selling it to Lloyd and Suzanne Armstrong in 1976. In 1999, the lot was subdivided, and the western half was sold for the construction of a new Federal-style house. In 2002, Suzanne Armstrong sold 272 to Kemble Widmer.

After immediate repairs to severe leaks, the present owner has undertaken a project to restore numerous aspects of the property that underwent changes in the 20th century, based on historical evidence. In this project, deteriorated windows and several that did not fit the original frames properly have been replaced with new wooden sash windows, using salvaged period glass panes from the Newburyport area. In most windows, the pane configuration has remained the same. Still, a few odd-sized windows have been replaced with different pane configurations determined by internal and historical evidence, e.g., working from the original frame size and known dimensions of panes in the area and period. In the same project, later exterior wooden shutters have been removed, and interior pocket shutters have been restored to their original tracks. Paint scraping and analysis have been used to determine the original colors for repainting.