Titcomb Street & Brown Sq.
MACRIS NWB.O · area form, 1973
Brown Square lies between Green Street and Titcomb Street. The survey says it was laid out by Moses Brown, a merchant who imported molasses and distilled rum, and who built a three-story brick house on its west side. That building later became a boarding house, then the Brown Square Hotel in 1884, and finally the Garrison Inn.
City Hall on the square was finished in 1851, and a Baptist meeting house went up on the corner of Green Street in 1847. In 1893 a statue of William Lloyd Garrison by David M. French was placed on the green, which the form notes was used for public ceremonies for about 125 years.
On Titcomb Street, land for a meeting house was sold on 6 April 1768. Its brick replacement is the Central Congregational Church. A wooden house at the corner of Titcomb and Merrimac Streets, fitted up as a hotel in 1840, burned in 1972.
Summarized from the Massachusetts Historical Commission's area form. See the MACRIS record ↗
Titcomb Street
MACRIS NWB.AR · area form, 1980
This part of Titcomb Street, between Pleasant and Washington Streets, has a few Greek Revival houses, but the survey finds its overall character vernacular Victorian, with many buildings dating from 1850 to 1890. Residents were middle class, from blacksmiths to owners of shops on State Street.
16 Titcomb Street was a two-and-a-half-story Greek Revival house with its gable to the street. From 1851 to 1884 it belonged to Moses Stockman, a pump and block maker on Brown's Wharf at the foot of Green Street. In 1872 Benjamin F. Carter lived in the house now numbered 19–21 Titcomb Street; he and Sylvester B. Carter sold insurance and pianofortes at 33 State Street. That house mixes Greek Revival features with later Victorian brackets.
The other houses are vernacular, from about 1900. Late 1800s residents included blacksmith Luther Haskell, insurance agent William Bradstreet, druggist Charles M. Hodge, and G. W. Clark, who kept a book and stationery store at 35 State Street. The North Congregational Church stands at the corner of Titcomb and Pleasant Streets, facing Brown Square.
Summarized from the Massachusetts Historical Commission's area form. See the MACRIS record ↗
