Apartment Building - Brown Terrace

Seaverns avenue and Brown terrace 2007



That's enough of churches for a while - I thought I'd move on to secular real estate for a change. When I was growing up in Jamaica Plain, I always wondered who lived in the brick buildings. None of my friends did, so they were alien to me. If you look closely at the corner window on the first floor, you can see a box with an Apartment to Let sign just above the window. There's an electrical conduit running up to the box, so I assume the sign used to light up when there was an available apartment. The map below shows the site before the buildings went up.



Boston Daily Globe May 11, 1902

Real Estate.


A new apartment house trust has been formed in Jamaica Plain, to be known as the Jamaica Plain real estate trust, with Messrs R.S. Barrows, Henry W. Hart and Hon Arthur A. Maxwell as trustees. They have just bought the estate on Seaverns av, corner of Brown pl, Jamaica Plain, formerly owned and occupied by Ex-Alderman Alfred S. Brown, consisting of the Mansion house and 15,000 feet of land, taxed for $12,000; also 6200 square feet of land of the west side of Brown pl, taxed for $4200. The deed for the large part is given by the institutions for Savings in Roxbury, and for the smaller lot by William J. Miller. The taxed value of the property purchased is $17,000.

The new buildings to be erected will cost about $70,000.

Brown pl will be widened to 40 feet, and will hearafter be known as Brown terrace. It is proposed to erect six high-class apartment houses, three stories each, with seven-room suites, besides hall and bath rooms, making 18 suites in all.

There will be four houses on the Brown estate and two on the westerly side, facing Seaverns av. Brown Terrace will be in the form of a court with granolithic walks, lawns and shrubbery and it is proposed to make it very attractive. The buildings will be of red face brick, with light Cincinnati hewn stone trimmings.

No pains or expense will be spared to make them complete in every appointment. It is expected the houses will be ready for occupancy in September. John P. Campbell is the architect and R.S. Barrows was the promoter of the trust.



Seaverns avenue and Brown place (terrace)
Richards, L.J. 1899 (copyright © 2000 by Cartography Associates)
David RumseCollectiony

A Forest Hills Puzzler

This post card shows the Forest Hills Elevated station looking from near Hyde Park avenue and Woodlawn street. Notice the brick building in the background to the left. It's over on the far side of the railroad tracks, on what was St Ann street. I'll give a jelly donut to anyone who can tell me about that building. I have a foggy memory of the building as I would have seen it looking from South street and the streetcar line. The problem is, I have no memory of it being there in the late sixties when I was a teen, so it would have to have been torn down between 1960 when I lived on Spalding street and 1967 when I began spending time on South street again.


1/09/08 - with the help of some fire insurance maps, I've figured this one out. The building in question was Arborway Court. It was owned by Joseph J. Lannin, who also owned the still-surviving Fordham Court on South street. Lannin owned the Red Sox as well, as told in this Jamaica Plain Historical Society article.