Hancock's haunt

When I was a Ghost City Tours tour guide, I'd point out Boston's sole surviving ghost of John Hancock, a little-known landmark sequestered in the shadows of the city's oldest street pattern, the Blackstone Block, as the sole remnant of that pattern's period in history. The Ebenezer Hancock House, which John built in 1767 as the home and office of his younger brother, Deputy Paymaster-General of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, has an angular shape unusual for its time, being built within the confines of the skew lanes and cowpaths that defined it. Since it changed hands last month and has an iffy future, perhaps it's time to revisit its architecture, history and backstory.

What makes us stop and stare at it the most is that it thinks outside the box, having no right-angled corners – as well as a cropped corner, which John may have arranged to bring his brother more sunlight or to allow freer passage of cows and horses there. Its iron S-ties secured its structure at another corner, and the stringcourses in its Flemish-bond brickwork defined its floors. Its larger first-floor windows likely illuminated Ebenezer's disbursements of payments to troops during the Revolutionary War. But despite its less-than-erudite form (compared to brother John's manor, which I'll go into later), it can proudly boast that George Washington Slept Here when it was an inn later on, as well as Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

In 1778, the house stored a loan of 2 million French silver crowns from Louis XIV of France, negotiated by Benjamin Franklin as Minister to France and brought into Boston by Admiral Charles Henri Hector, Comte d'Estaing, as back payment to Washington's Eastern Continental Army. In 1798, Benjamin Fuller opened America's longest continually operating shoestore on the first floor.

William H. Learnard took over Fuller's shoestore in 1821, and ran it until 1886, but it miraculously remained in the building as a shoestore until 1963, as other enterprises in the house and the Blackstone Block came and went over the years, including the Marshall House restaurant, inn and tavern, which operated mainly in the 1890s and the 1910s.

By the early 1970s, the East India Trading Co. antique and souvenir shop was operating in that space. Over the years the house fell into disrepair, even though most of the original interior details remained amazingly intact, probably due to underutilization. I remember walking past it with my father around that time and noticing that its storefront was smashed; my father suspected a break-in. Later the house was "left vacant following a serious car accident in the 1970s, which nearly destroyed the storefront at the corner of the building,” wrote city archaeologist Joseph M. Bagley in Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them. Swartz & Swartz came to the rescue, acquiring it as their law office in 1974 and restoring it to its colonial condition, preserving as much interior detail as possible.

And look at what they did...

Of course, their intricate preservation of all those rooms in their original dimensions, materials and structural elements, from hand-hewn beams to brick walls to wrought-iron cauldrons and andirons, entailed considerable sacrifice of valuable space to conduct legal business. So Swartz & Swartz built an addition on the back in the parking area, careful to hide it from the view of Freedom Trail tourists and to distinguish its modern architectural style from the original. 

Incidentally, that parking area once contained a row of houses John Hancock had built on spec to abut Ebenezer's digs. Sadly, they did not survive past the 1950s, leaving the Ebenezer Hancock House as a "holdout" from Boston's Colonial-Revolutionary era:

Hancock Manor (1737-1863), Boston. Photo c.1859.

Engraving of Hancock Manor, Alexander Jackson Davis & Thomas Illman, 1832.

They don't compare in social standing, do they? More than a holdout, the Ebenezer Hancock House is the sole surviving building in Boston associated with its favorite son, due to not only the razing of his spec rowhouses but also the leveling of his own manor, which stood on Beacon Hill on Beacon Street by the site of the Massachusetts State House from 1737 to 1863.

View of Hancock Manor from the Boston Common by Christian Remick, 1768.

Built by Joshua Blanchard for John's merchant uncle Thomas Hancock and later willed to John, this brown Braintree granite and Connecticut sandstone manse was bedecked with corner quoins, a gambrel roof balustrade, and a Juliet balcony from a French window capped with baroque volutes, and it commanded a peerless view of the Boston Common's pastureland.

A view of Hancock Manor and the Boston Neck, Richard Williams, 1775.

As these drawings show, Hancock Manor had the advantage of being built on many acres of rural virgin land. This afforded it a full pasture and garden and a breathtaking view of the Boston Common that extended into the Boston Neck, which attached the town to the mainland by a narrow isthmus at the time, making John Hancock feel like master of all he surveyed. By contrast, the Ebenezer Hancock House had the disadvantage of having to conform to densely settled, firmly established urban street patterns, which hemmed it in considerably.

Hancock Manor staircase. Wood engraving from Ballou’s Pictorial
Drawing-Room Companion, March 26, 1859. Courtesy Bostonian Society.

Hancock Manor's lavish interior began with a paneled parlor with a bridal stair of carved twisted balusters leading up to a landing with a circular-headed window overlooking the garden of ornamental flower-beds, fruit-bearing box trees, mulberry trees and other exotic plantings. "As you entered the governor's mansion, to the right was the drawing or reception room, with furniture of bird's-eye maple covered with rich damask. Out of this opened the dining-hall [...] in which Hancock gave the famous breakfast to Admiral D'Estaing and his officers," reported Eliza G. Gardner, who lived in the Manor for many years.

John Hancock House, painting by Charles Furneaux, c.1859.

The house was occupied by Lt.-Gen. Hugh Percy during the British Army's 1775-1776 Siege of Boston, and then Gen. Henry Clinton set up his headquarters there, all while Hancock was in Philadelphia as President of the Second Continental Congress, and shortly before he inscribed his venerable "John Hancock" on the Declaration of Independence. After the Second Treaty of Paris concluding the Revolutionary War in 1783, Hancock entertained luxuriantly at his Manor, attracting the likes of le Comte d'Estaing, le Marquis de Lafayette, and, yes, George Washington, and Hancock lived there as the first and third Governors of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On his death bed he dictated his will to give his home to the Commonwealth but died before the will could be finalized in writing.

Protest sign calling for the preservation of Hancock Manor. Courtesy of Historic New England.

Following many failed attempts to preserve Hancock Manor – ultimately because the Legislature were too preoccupied with Civil War matters to agree upon the terms of acquiring the house – it was sold at public auction for $230 on June 16, 1863, and demolished, despite a rallying cry to preserve this icon of history. But its demise sparked one of the first historic preservation movements, which led to the salvation of Boston's Old South Meeting House (1729) and Old State House (1711).

Ultimately, we lost Hancock's historical treasure for nothing, for the fancy rowhouses that replaced it were removed for the construction of the State House's marble wings in 1916, leaving but a ghost of what once stood there and should still be standing there today, as well as a plaque marking its sad site:

Ebenezer Hancock House at night. Photo by Ryoko Sha.

So Ebenezer Hancock's old haunts are all the architecture we have left to memorialize John Hancock's immeasurable legacy in the growth of our city, the founding of our Commonwealth, and the declaration of our independence as a nation. Now that the house is under new ownership, it'll be interesting to find out what ghost will haunt it now, and how well it'll preserve the ghosts of the past...

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

A West End wonder

Photo by Alexander Tang.

Boston's West End is notorious for being bulldozed into a memory in the 1950s and 1960s, displacing an entire immigrant community with the big-box high-rises of Charles River Park. However, a low-rise gem hides behind a near-jungle on Cambridge Street as a paradigm of how pure geometry can define, shape and organize a quiet study space.

The West End Branch of the Boston Public Library, built in 1968 from an unusual hexagonal design by Eugene Kennedy of Maginnis, Walsh & Kennedy, also presented the hexagon as a considerable exterior space saver and interior space economizer, allowing the placement of books along its perimeters so that they left an open-concept central space for many different kinds of library activities at once, all within a small footprint.

Now, with proposals in the offing to replace the West End Branch Library and top it with 119 units of housing, I had to revisit it before it went the way of the West End.

Its footprint yields acreage for not only parking, but also a peace garden to introduce the entrance with a calming intimation of the peace and quiet one expects in a library.

The garden, the path from the street, the ceiling-high window walls, and the open porch all present us with a very friendly gesture of welcome to the library, giving us an external indication of the generous sitting space and reading light we're in for when we pass the book-sale carts in the vestibule and enter the main room.

Interior, West End Branch, BPL. Photo by Rachel Moon.

Sure enough, the room is one open, bright, fluid atmosphere with light (natural and fluorescent) extending to all, in-the-round displays of over 20,000 books of all subjects extending space to all, a myriad of seating options. and a deluge of activities open to all. These include exercise and tai chi classes, movie discussions, story hours, technology instruction, and origami, LEGO and construction clubs.

Interior, West End Branch, BPL. Photo by Rachel Moon.

Kennedy wisely designed the interior as a hexagon within a hexagon. This created a smaller hexagonal central space with a slightly dropped ceiling installed with circular "moon" lights. Picking up on a mode of lighting in Alvar Aalto's Baker House dormitory at MIT, this scheme shed extra light on the office-reference desk below. The open shelves pick up on the hexagon theme to create mini-hexagon study spaces.

Interior, West End Branch, BPL. Photo by Alexander Tang.

This open-access concept was mirrored in the librarians' accessibility when school paper assignments brought me to the West End Branch Library, a short walk from my Beacon Hill home. For a biology report on hibernation of bears and social studies papers on U.S. westward expansion and Sudbury's colonial settlement, the librarians helpfully supplied me with the books I needed to get an A each time.

Old West Church (1806) as West End Branch Library, c.1920.

Interestingly enough, the modernism of the West End Branch originated in the classicism of the Old West Church, when it was a library from 1896 until the "urban renewal" of the West End forced its closure in 1960. Designed by Asher Benjamin in a Federal style with pilasters, panels and a cupola-crowned clock tower, it was built in 1806 for a Congregational fellowship to replace a church damaged by British forces in 1775. Rev. Charles Lowell, who commissioned the new church, was a major abolitionist who desegregated seating in the church, sheltered renegade slaves in the Underground Railroad before the Civil War, and provided Sunday school for people of all economic backgrounds. In 1887, the congregation dissolved, and Andrew Wheelwright purchased the church to preserve it and turned it over to the city for library use, for which its column-supported open space (below) served it very well – as sort of a model for the columned hexagonal central space of its successor. 

Old West Church, West End Branch Library interior, c.1930.

Jewish Book Weeks and immigrant literacy services were offered at the library for West Enders, courtesy of Fanny Goldstein, its head librarian from 1919 to 1957 and Massachusetts' first Jewish librarian. Shortly before the building's reconversion to a church – this time with a Methodist congregation – John F. Kennedy cast his ballot there on the eve of his historic presidential election in 1960.

The one-story height and generous setback of the West End Branch Library's new home made it a polite neighbor for Cambridge Street's extant historic West End structures, the First Harrison Gray Otis House (1796, Charles Bulfinch) and Old West Church, by virtue of its lowly deference to its elders. By contrast, the library-housing tower proposals for the site look rather corporate and would add to the skyscraperization of the West End by dwarfing its landmark next-door neighbors and making them look even more like "holdouts" from urban renewal. So I'm not too thrilled about it, aside from its provision of much-needed affordable housing in our housing crisis. 

I would preserve the West End Branch Library as a modernist landmark, for its use of innovative geometrics to create a model of the free-to-all inclusiveness that befits a public library design.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Co-op vs. condo

This stately 17-story residence (actually 16-story, not counting the missing 13th floor that would have spooked the superstitious away from buying it) on Park Avenue in New York was built in 1925-26 from a Classical/Georgian Revival design by Henry C. Pelton, before he co-designed NYC's landmark Riverside Church with Allen & Collens in 1930. 

This was my second New York home, where I lived for seven years, from age 3 to age 10, when my family moved to Boston. Here we had it all: 

A green-canopied entry to a mirror-paneled lobby.

A uniformed doorman (Vito) who summoned taxis with the shrill of a whistle.

A superintendent (Mr. Johnson) and a maintenance man (Gus) who took care of everything.

Two elevators, one with an elevator man, until its push-button replacement made him go the way of the milkman.

A side-alley service entrance where gourmet groceries from Fraser-Morris were dropped off to the well-to-do.

Birthday and Halloween parties and musical recitals with great neighbors.

Short walks to school and shopping, movies around the corner, Central Park two blocks away.

This was a co-op.

This equally stately 5-story residence on Beacon Hill in Boston was built in 1911 from a Classical/Federal Revival design by Richard Arnold Fiske as floor-through French flats replacing an 1837 Mt. Vernon Street townhouse and a Pinckney Street rowhouse in the rear. The townhouse had marked the site of the c.1804 home of Jonathan Mason, one of the Mount Vernon Proprietors who had developed Beacon Hill (who also included Charles Bulfinch, architect of the gold-domed Massachusetts State House two blocks away, and the West Front of the U.S. Capitol).

This was my first Boston home, where I lived for two years, from age 10 to age 12 going on 13, when my family relocated to a rent-controlled apartment a block away due to major setbacks in my father's architecture career. Here we had a lot, if not all:

A gated front walk for me to play Catch, Dodgeball, and Red Light/Green Light with the neighbors' kids (one was my first crush).

A well-manicured front garden.

A vintage Otis caged elevator.

A courtyard patio that my father paved with bricks.

Two bedrooms for me.

A loyal, cooperative homeowners' association.

Frontage on what Henry James, who resided at No. 102, called "the most proper street in Boston."

Short walks to school and shopping, the Boston Common two blocks away, the Esplanade at the end of the street.

This was a condominium.

So what's the difference between the two? And which is the better choice for you?

In brief: A co-op involves collective shareholder ownership of the whole building. A condo involves individual ownership of a unit within a collectively maintained residential community and its shared areas and amenities. 

Each is a homeowners association (HOA) in which you share amenities with neighbors, and all are collectively responsible for upkeep of common areas, structural elements and exteriors, the payment of monthly fees to do so, and the minimization of conflicts that can impede the civil living with others under a common umbrella roof that characterizes both HOAs.

So, given each option's pros and cons, which is the better choice for you depends on what assets you're most comfortable with, what liabilities you can best put up with, the degree of autonomy you want over your unit, your long-term home ownership and investment goals, and a host of other considerations. Here's the scoop on each option:

Co-op

 

In a co-op you're not really a homeowner, but a shareholder who buys a share of stock in the corporate entity that owns the building. This grants you the right to occupy your unit according to the terms of a proprietary lease that accompanies the stock certificate you receive upon moving in.

So you don't actually own your unit as physical property, and you may have to get corporation approval to renovate it, depending on the co-op bylaws. 

But that's nicely balanced with other privileges that are unique to a co-op and not always found in a condominium. These include:

• A more streamlined way to pay monthly expenses: one lump-sum fee typically covers insurances, maintenance, salaries for hired staff (doorman, superintendent, etc.), property taxes, and sometimes the whole building's underlying mortgage.
• Potential election to the board that handles the co-op's operations and maintenance expenses, pays insurances and staff wages, and tries to keep the peace in the community.
• Having a say in how the organization is run and maintained, and who can join the co-op.

Which means you actually have a say in who your neighbors-to-be will be, in the framework of fair housing laws. You can cast a 'no' vote for an applicant with a substance abuse issue; a couple engaged in domestic violence; a candidate with an alimony, child support obligation, new car loan or other financial encumbrance; or whoever you have a gut feeling would default on the mortgage and/or monthly fee, spurn the cooperative attitude that defines a co-op, or make an Animal House out of the premises. Depending on what the co-op bylaws state about new occupant approval, anywhere from a majority of nay votes to a single dissenter can blackball undesirables from becoming your new neighbors.

Which could work against you, the applicant, even if your lender has green-lighted your mortgage. A co-op board's screening process for new members can be stringent. You may have to cough up multiple income tax returns, bank/asset statements, credit histories, previous homeownership and/or rental payment records, and other proof of your ability to handle monthly co-op expenses. The board may also look at your loan to determine your loan-to-value ratio (LTV), or the percentage of the co-op share's price the unit buyer may finance. Many co-op boards call for an LTV of under 75%; some may even demand up-front payment of the whole unit price, to ensure that you don't default and are free and clear to make the co-op fee every month. You may even have to have an individual interview with each resident to make sure everyone is comfortable having you aboard.

The board approval process could also stymie your sale of your co-op unit if you decide to move, since each new buyer of a share in the corporate entity must be rubber-stamped by the board. Which is one reason many homebuyers prefer the semi-autonomy of a unit in a...

Condominium

 

In a condominium you're still accountable to the HOA. But this time you're a homeowner, owning title to your unit plus a share of the common areas and amenities—grounds, lobby, gym, lounge, etc. Your ownership is limited to your unit's interior if the condo is a multifamily building, or your entire "house" if the condo is an aggregate of townhouses or freestanding homes. The monthly condo fee is set by the HOA board based on the amounts and costs of common services, e.g., maintenance of grounds, exteriors, gyms, decks and elevators; master insurance on the complex; water and sewer connections; and security, including concierge and doorman. A condo fee is usually lower than a co-op fee, because it doesn't include property taxes, which are individually levied on each unit.

The condo's HOA meets periodically to discuss such issues as expenses, maintenance, bringing a pet into a unit, or any problems anyone has with anyone else. The standard HOA has a board elected by the HOA members; it may include a president, VP, treasurer or comptroller, secretary for recording meeting minutes, etc. 

However, admission to a condo is contingent upon a lender's approval of the homebuyer's loan rather than HOA board approval, so the co-op privilege of picking your neighbors is less common in a condo. Moreover, condo unit owners may sublet their units, which gives you even less say over who you're about to abut. 

For the most control of who your condo neighbors will be, it's best to meet with members of the HOA of the condo you're considering before making an offer on a unit there. Important questions to ask them include: 

• How do you get along?

• How do you resolve conflicts?

• What kinds of conflicts tend to occur?

• How are decisions made on condo fee fund use?

• What is the makeup of the board?

• How often does it meet?

• How are members elected?

• What unit alterations are subject to board approval?

• Are pets allowed? What kinds, and how many?

• Are unit subleasing and guest parking allowed?

As with a co-op, you should also ask to review as many kinds of HOA documents as you can: board meeting minutes, HOA policies and bylaws, HOA rules and regulations, financial statements including invoices and tax audits, insurance policies, and anything else readily available to HOA members.

This review will help you see how issues are discussed, conflicts resolved, funds appropriated, money managed, services rendered and billed, etc., to decide whether a particular HOA is for you. (A section of a standard purchase-and-sale agreement [P&S] gives you the right to do this before going forward with a unit's purchase, and to terminate the P&S if you don't like any HOA policies.)

So which is the better choice for you?

Since I was just a kid when I lived in the aforementioned co-op and condo, I couldn't possibly say which was the better choice for my parents (ultimately neither, owing to my dad's career demise), though both had strong neighbor communities—particularly the condominium, where the neighborhood extended beyond the building to other residences on close-knit Beacon Hill, presenting great opportunities for Halloween trick-or-treating, Christmas caroling, babysitting for the neighbors, garden tours, and other activities. 

But what's best for you, the present homebuyer, depends on your long-term homeownership, investment and social goals. 

For one, keep in mind that interactions with co-op neighbors will probably be more frequent than those with condo neighbors, because the collective responsibility for a co-op's common services and the accountability toward the building-owning corporation demands more continual attention from everyone. 

In a condo, however, it's common to have monthly HOA meetings with your neighbors, say hi to them in the hall during the week, and retreat into the shell of your own unit. So co-ops are not for extreme privacy lovers. But in a co-op you're more likely to get along with your neighbors, since each was pre-approved by the others. And if you plan to stay for a long time, a co-op is a good way to make long-term friends and connections, which the more come-and-go nature of condos tends to impede.

Regarding investment, as I mentioned, in a co-op you do not possess physical property but purchase shares of the stock through which the housing cooperative owns the building. This may limit your unit's equity. 

Leasing co-ops, in which the corporate entity leases but does not own the property, give you no equity.

Limited equity co-ops, in which the board controls the price at which you may buy or sell shares in the co-op, give you just that—limited equity for the limits imposed on your unit's purchase or sale price. 

Market-rate co-ops enable you to buy or sell shares according to their market rates. 

So the appreciation of a co-op unit's value depends on that of its purchased shares of stock in the corporate entity, as well as the housing cooperative's degree of control over their prices. This may not assure you a lucrative sale of your unit if you relocate. (The value of shares could even drop.)

A condo unit, however, is more likely to appreciate in value according to real estate markets rather than stock markets. Besides, the unit can be subleased for rental income while waiting for its market value to rise enough to consider a sale – not an option in a co-op, because of its corporate and financial structure. 

Yet a co-op can stabilize real estate value during recessions or economic downturns by the powers of their boards to reject applicants not financially stable enough to maintain a co-op's fiscal solidity over time. 

This could help a co-op building evade bank foreclosure, allowing its economically viable residents to remain there in good and bad times.

So a co-op may be a better investment in a long-term community and stable housing stock, whereas a condo may be a better real estate investment. Either way, you get community and convenience in addition to the comforts of home. It's up to you!

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

"Co-ops vs. Condos. What's the difference?" The Gold Team at eXp Realty, https://www.thegoldteamny.com/co-ops-vs-condos-whats-the-difference/

Gassett, Bill. "What is a Condominium Homeowners Association (HOA)?" Maximum Exposure Real Estate, January 14, 2014, https://www.maxrealestateexposure.com/condominium-home-owners-association-hoa/#:~:text=A%20condominium%20HOA%20differs%20from%20a%20regular%20homeowners,for%20instance%2C%20shares%20the%20roof%20of%20that%20unit.

Gottlieb, Steven. "Condo, Townhouse or Co-op: Which is Right for You?" U.S. News and World Report, December 11, 2019, https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/condo-townhouse-or-co-op-which-is-right-for-you

HOA Manager. "Do Your HOA Board Members Know Which Documents are Open for Review?" Hignell HOA Management, January 24, 2015, https://blog.hignellhoa.com/do-your-hoa-board-members-know-which-documents-are-open-for-review

Mburugu, Charles. "Condo vs. Co-op: Which is the Better Real Estate Investment?" Mashvisor, April 24, 2020, https://www.mashvisor.com/blog/condo-vs-co-op-which-better-investment/

Novoryta, B.J. The Yellow Brick Road to Buying a Home. Sedalia, Colo.: Castle Pines Realty, 2019.

Palumbo, Richard, LLC. "Understanding the Difference Between Condos, Co-ops and HOAs in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut." Palumbo Law, August 19, 2020, https://richardpalumbo.com/2020/08/19/understanding-the-difference-between-condos-co-ops-and-hoas-in-rhode-island-massachusetts-and-connecticut/

Sager, Jeanne. "Co-op vs. Condo: What's the Difference Between These Types of Homes?" Realtor.com, November 6, 2017, https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/condo-vs-co-op/