Building History

Historical Narrative

The Mount Pleasant Home was built in 1926 on a spacious empty lot on South Huntington Avenue in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. The two-story, U-shaped brick structure, designed by prominent Boston architect Arthur H. Bowditch, was built to house the Mount Pleasant Home for Aged Men and Women, an organization dedicated to the care of the elderly of both sexes, regardless of their religious affiliations and financial capabilities. The building has been used in the same capacity ever since.

First Steps

The Mount Pleasant Home was incorporated in 1901 and at that time, was unique in its mission. Most elderly care facilities around the turn of the century were associated with and supported by a religious institution, allowing only their followers or those who could afford it, to receive care. This left other members of the community to the custody of almshouses. The concerned group of individuals, who were already in the field of providing for the elderly, “came together to see what steps could be taken to save a score of aged people, who were not eligible for admission to any other home, from becoming public charges.”

In 1901, they purchased a large home at 3 Northern Avenue in Dorchester and converted it into the first Mount Pleasant Home, accommodating about twenty residents. In just under a decade, however, they had outgrown this facility.
In 1909 they purchased a large mansion on Elm Hill Avenue in Roxbury and converted it into the next Mount Pleasant Home. The main house, along with several outbuildings, was able to accommodate about forty people.

The New 1926 Building

In the early 1920’s, the Mount Pleasant Home Corporation determined that the facility on Elm Hill Avenue was not adequate due to the fact that the outbuildings were quite far from the main building. They believed their residents would do much better in a larger, consolidated facility. Discussions began and funds were gathered regarding either the purchase of an existing building or the construction of an entirely new building. One argument for new construction was that the organization had never had a new facility of its own; it had always purchased an existing structure and converted it to meet their needs. This process would get increasingly more expensive the greater and more specific their needs became. By 1925 the decision was made to construct a new building and a large undeveloped plot was purchased on South Huntington Avenue in a neighborhood of similar institutions.

Its neighbors at the time it was built included:

New England Home for Little Wanderers
Boston Nursery for Blind Babies
Trinity Church Home (for the Aged)
Vincent Memorial Hospital
Boston School of Physical Education.

A residential neighborhood has since grown up around the property, although its western edge is still bordered by the Jamaicaway. The property is still known today as the Mount Pleasant Home and serves its original function. The building represents an intact example of Arthur Bowditch’s institutional work.

Architect Arthur H. Bowditch

There was no information in the Annual Reports for Mount Pleasant Home that explained how Arthur H. Bowditch was chosen to design the building, but it was clear he was prominent and well-respected architect at this time. Arthur H. Bowditch began his successful career in the mid-1890 and continued working into the 1930’s. The variety of architectural styles Bowditch employed over his long career show great versatility and the talent to adapt to the ever-changing notion of what is in style and what is appropriate for different types of buildings. His earliest work consisted of large commercial buildings in Downtown Boston, designed mostly in the Classical Revival style and single-family dwellings in Brookline designed mostly in the Queen Ann and Shingle styles.

Bowditch designed several prestigious large-scale apartment buildings on Beacon Street in Brookline, including:

The Colchester (MHC# BKL.1425) in 1894
The Stoneholm Apartment House (MHC# BKL.1422) in 1907
Pelham Hall Apartments (MHC# BKL.1441) in 1926
His last notable design was the Paramount Theatre (MHC# BOS.2328) in downtown Boston in 1930, in the heyday of the Art Deco style, eleven years before his death in 1941.

Arthur H. Bowditch had a great deal of experience designing residential buildings, from single-family dwellings to large-scale apartment complexes, including other rest home facilities. In addition to the Mount Pleasant Home, Bowditch also designed the dorm and auditorium for what was once the Christian Science Benevolent Sanatorium (MHC# BKL.1390) in 1926, a Christian Science nursing care facility. This building was designed in the English Revival or Jacobethan style. Bowditch designed another nursing care facility for the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Concord, New Hampshire. This building, the Pleasant View Home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NR #84003222, 1984). This five-story U-shaped red-brick building, constructed in 1925, was designed in the Colonial Revival style and appears to be very similar, if only on a much larger scale, to Mount Pleasant Home. The details of Pleasant View Home include windows with straight brick arches and cast stone keystones, cast stone quoins, and engaged pilasters on the projecting pedimented pavilion.

Physical Description

The Mount Pleasant Home sits on the west side of South Huntington Avenue facing East. The two-story building is U-shaped in plan with the two short wings projecting eastward from the wide center section. The site drops off dramatically at the north and south sides of the building revealing a full basement at the sides and back of the building. Two one-story ells extend from the wings northward and southward. A pedimented two-story pavilion projects from the center of the back of the building. The basement story extends even further from that pavilion, creating a patio on its roof. The building is constructed of red brick with cast stone trim. The corners on all facades of the building are articulated with cast stone quoins and cast stone spheres atop the parapet wall. All of the windows have black shutters, cast stone sills, straight brick arches with cast stone keystones. The windows at the first story are nine-over-one sashes while the windows at the second story are six-over-one sashes. Immediately above the second-story windows, a slightly projecting cornice runs the entire perimeter of the building. Above the cornice is a brick parapet wall with cast stone coping and copper flashing. The parapet wall also continues the cast stone quoins from below the cornice.

A brick walk, flanked at the sidewalk by two brick piers topped by cast stone caps and spheres, leads up to the main entrance centered in the east façade. The central connecting wing has three windows at each story on either side of the entrance. Two concrete steps lead to the monumental cast stone classical entrance expressed by details such as engaged pilasters, quoins and a broken pediment. The original wood frame entrance contained narrow sidelights and a tri-part transom. There is one window above the door with an entirely cast stone surround. This is the only window that does not have a brick flat arch lintel. The parapet wall above this entrance steps up into a shallow arch at the center, beneath which is a decorative cast stone panel. There are also two cast stone spheres on either side of the arch where the parapet wall first steps up.

The north and south facades of the wings that form the courtyard, or inside of the “U,” each have three windows per story. One window on each story is smaller than the other two and probably corresponds to a bathroom. The east façade of the south wing contains three bays. The two windows on the first story flank a secondary entrance with a rounded arch. The arch is brick except for cast stone details at the keystone and springing points. On the second story, the two windows flank a door that opens onto a narrow wrought iron balcony. The space above each window on the first story is filled with two decorative cast stone panels. The straight parapet wall steps up and then back down at the center of the east facades. In the center of these raised portions is a decorative cast stone panel. The fenestration and detailing is identical on the east façade of the north wing.

The south façade contains three windows at the first story and basement, and six windows at the second story. The first story ell extends from the western end of this façade. The east and west façades of the ell contain large openings in the brick for six 10-light windows on the first story above two basement windows. The south façade of the ell has three separate window openings in the first story and basement. The roof of the ell contains a wrought iron railing around its edge. The north façade is a mirror image of the south façade in fenestration and detailing.

The west façade contains six windows per story on either side of the pedimented pavilion. The pavilion extends far enough to contain one window at each story. The basement projects even further, to contain two windows beyond the pavilion on the north and south facades and three windows on the west façade. The pavilion contains three bays with two windows flanking a door on the first story, and three windows on the second story. Between each of the bays is an engaged double-height column leading up to the simple classical pediment. There are decorative cast stone panels at the spandrel level between the two stories in all three bays. The door in the first story leads out onto a patio that is the roof of the basement projection.