The Hilma C. Olsson Two-Family House is one of many two- and three-family houses constructed on Fenwood Road and Francis Street at the foot of Boston’s Parker Hill at the turn of the nineteenth century by Jeremiah C. Spillane, a real estate developer. Spillane acquired a large parcel of land in this area in 1897 and quickly laid out streets and building lots, thereafter constructing more than twenty multifamily houses in addition to several masonry apartment houses within a span of eight years. The majority of buildings constructed in the area were substantial wood-frame, two- and three-family houses. Building permits usually list Spillane as the architect and builder of these residences, but no evidence of Spillane’s architectural training or experience has been uncovered. Other permits for buildings constructed by Spillane list individual architects; however, the similarity of the buildings’ plans and decoration suggests that architects were engaged primarily to produce drawings necessary for obtaining building permits more quickly than could be done by a single office, and to individualize some of the building details, perhaps to the specifications of initial buyers.
The initial owner of the house is identified as H. C. Olsson on the 1905 Atlas of the City of Boston. The 1905 Boston directory records Hilma C. Olsson as living at this address, although no occupation or other descriptive information is listed. In 1910, the building was occupied entirely by renters: Mary E. Slattery (age 45), a widow with her “own income” lived here with her brother John W. Baldwin (age 45), a single man who worked as a wine clerk in a hotel. Mary Slattery was born in Maine to Irish parents. Also renting here was Isaac Solomon (age 65), born in Germany, who worked as a clerk for the City of Boston. Isaac Solomon lived here with his wife Annie (age 58), born in England to German parents, and their three single children: Alexander (age 25), a stenographer, Ruth (age 20), no occupation given, and Oscar (age 17), no occupation given. In addition, the Solomons’ servant, Anna Hall (age 30), a single woman, lived here. By 1915, the property was owned and occupied by Mary M. Scott.
No architect has been identified for the Olsson Two-Family House, although it possesses a plan that is essentially the same as those of two-family houses at 44, 55 & 57 Fenwood Road, with which it also shares a number of ornamental details. Typically, two-family houses in the area contained a six-room apartment on the first floor and a ten-room apartment on the upper two floors. Apartments in both two- and three-family houses usually contained a parlor or double parlor, dining room, kitchen, pantry and between three and five bedrooms each. Initially purchased by upwardly mobile working-class and middle-class families with a high proportion of immigrants and first-generation Americans, two-family houses, such as the Olsson House, cost between $5,000 and $6,000. Apartments in the Olsson House and neighboring buildings were mostly owner-occupied by an extended single family or a family with two or three lodgers.
Jeremiah Spillane was active in the real estate business from 1899 to 1913, and was directly responsible for the construction of twenty of the houses in this area, including 11, 15, 19, 32, 35, 36, 40, 43, 44, 49, 54 & 56 Fenwood Road, and 12, 16, 22, 32, 34, 36, 38, 44, 50 & 52 Francis Street. At least eight professional architects are recorded as working in the Francis Street and Fenwood Road District. Most were local firms well-known for producing high-quality, one- and two- family houses and three-deckers in Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Brookline. The most prolific of the designers in the district was Samuel Rantin and Son of Roxbury, who designed 30 and 73 Fenwood Road, 40 Francis Street, 733 Huntington Ave (the Harmon Commercial Block) and 24 St. Albans Street. Frederick W. Mahoney of Roxbury designed three buildings, at 32, 36 & 44 Francis Street. Architects P. J. Cantwells, Timothy Desmond, Cornelius Russell, J. Schwartz (the Avondale apartments at 777-779 Huntington Ave.) and R. H. Watson are also represented in the district. The Boston Landmarks Commission Inventory Form for 170 St. Alphonsus Street notes that “Samuel Rantin and Son… were responsible for designing during the 1890’s through the 1910’s, many triple-decker houses of unusually high quality—in the Parker Hill, Highland Park, and Hyde Square (Jamaica Plain) areas.” A collection of architectural drawings by Rantin and Son is contained in the archives of Historic New England.
By the 1960s, Francis Street and the adjacent streets developed by Spillane had suffered deterioration and abandonment due to the migration of former residents to Boston’s suburbs. Much of the area was acquired by Harvard University. Most buildings in the area were subsequently transferred to the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard, a tenants’ cooperative that renovated the buildings by subdividing most apartments into smaller units. Original interior finishes were nearly entirely removed in the 1980s; however, notable exterior features remain in a rich variety of composition ornament and an unusually well preserved variety of mortar joints, including lined-out, tinted and beaded mortar joints preserved on foundations throughout the district. Once common, these methods of finishing mortar joints have been forgotten as evidence of them has weathered away.
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