Dr. John C. Warren constructed his Gothic Revival cottage of Roxbury puddingstone near the site of his family's seventeenth-century farmhouse. His father and uncle played major roles in the American Revolution; and Dr. Warren established the New England Journal of Medicine, founded the Massachusetts Medical College, and cofounded Massachusetts General Hospital (WE3). In 1846, the year he built this cottage on the family farm, Dr. Warren and his son performed the first surgery using ether as an anesthetic. The Warren Cottage replaced the seventeenth-century farmhouse and provided a rural retreat for the doctor in the last ten years of his life. The modest ornamentation on the house reflects its original appearance, apart from a missing balustrade on the porch roof, as a simple country cottage.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the large estates in this area, including the Warren farm,