Freeman Crossing - The Adams House
In the fall of 2009 Rosemont acquired 221-223 Freeman street, a structure built by Mathew Adams in 1886. The property is ideally located in the heart of Coolidge Corner in Brookline, a few doors down from the recently completed development at St. Aidans Church.
The Town of Brookline Preservation Commission file on the property contains the following comment:
“Mathew Adams was the first of the Adams's to settle in Brookline. He first appears in the 1871 Brookline Directory as a “laborer, working for H.S. Williams on Beacon, near Tappan St.” Then in 1873-74 he was a coachman for Augustus N. Loring. In 1875 he was a “farmer at Boylston, near Washington St.” From 1877 onwards he remained a coachman, working in Allston, but living in different areas of Brookline until 1886 when he settled into his new home. In 1905, at the age of 66, he was listed no longer as a coachman, but as a “choreman”. One assumes he was fairly content and prosperous for in 1910; he had built, directly in back of this house, a triple-decker, much in the same style as Harvey's across the street. Then in 1913, he built the even more ample three-apartment wooden building at 219 Freeman, next door, in 1913, the very same year that an identical building went up at 200 Freeman St., directly across the way. Which went up first? What sort of social rivalry would please the ego of a man of 73 and would prompt the hiring of an architect, Frederick H. Gowing to carry out his pretensions?”
Rosemont's redevelopment of this home was completed in 2011. | |