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A house as distinctive as its original owner, this is a virtuoso performance of Queen Anne design, the variety of materials, massing, and textures providing extremely lively animation. Succeeding his father in the potato business in Maine, Henry Kimball invented a heating system for railroad cars that revolutionized the transportation of potatoes and made his fortune. He later organized the pioneering Van Choate Electric Company. The same inventive spirit inhabits this house with its dramatic tower, which an 1898 history of Chelsea claims Kimball designed.