James Blake House

The James Blake House, formerly located on Cottage Street, is one of only three known mid-seventeenth-century buildings to survive in Dorchester into the early twentieth century. On the basis of dendrochronological evidence, the house, with its elaborately chafered frame, dates to 1661. At two-and-a-half stories in height and with two rooms per floor and a central chimney, the building was one of the larger houses of its time. The roof frame of principal rafters at the bays with common rafters tenoned into purlins is the type of frame used in the handful of surviving houses in the Boston area from before the mid-1670s. Originally, facade gables lighted the attic. The house retains rare examples of wattle and daub wall fill. The Dorchester Historical Society acquired the house and razed early-eighteenth-and nineteenth-century additions when they moved it to Edward Everett Square in 1896. Over the next decade it was partially restored by Charles Hodgdon, a well-known Dorchester architect. The recent restoration has maintained the form and material established by Hodgdon.