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Shepherd Brooks Estate

Historic house museums in MassachusettsHouses in Medford, MassachusettsHouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Medford, MassachusettsMuseums in Middlesex County, Massachusetts
MedfordMA ShepherdBrooksEstate MainHouse
MedfordMA ShepherdBrooksEstate MainHouse

The Shepherd Brooks Estate is an historic property at 275 Grove Street in Medford, Massachusetts. The 82-acre (33 ha) property is owned by the city of Medford, and managed by a trust established to preserve the property. Its principal feature is the manor house constructed in 1880 by Shepherd Brooks, a member of a prominent Medford family, and is the only major 19th-century estate to survive relatively undeveloped in the city. The grounds are open to the public daily from dawn to dusk, and tours of the house are available during the summer. The estate was developed by Brooks, a member of the locally prominent Brooks family that dominated West Medford for many years, as a summer estate and gentleman's farm. The manor house was designed by Peabody & Stearns, and is a large red brick house, with Queen Anne styling. It has a complex roofline with many gables, and there is a port cochere. A carriage barn stands near the main house. The estate originally included a second summer house called Point of Rocks, which had been built by Peter Chardon Brooks III in 1859, but this was demolished by the city in the 20th century. The city acquired the 82-acre remnant of the Brooks estate after the death of Shepherd Brooks' wife Clara in 1939. After the Second World War the city used the estate to provide housing for veterans, and in the 1960s and 70s it was used as a nursing home. From the 1970s through the late 1980s the Manor building was used as a group home for mentally-challenged adults. The proposal in 1992 to erect a cellphone tower near the Shepherd Brooks Manor created a firestorm from local residents. The Brooks Estate Preservation Association, a citizen-led group, was formed to change the City of Medford's lack of leadership. A four-year effort to preserve the Brooks Estate in perpetuity was successfully completed with the passage of the Conservation and Preservation Restriction in 1998, which permanently protected the Manor, Carriage house and 50-acres of land from development and cemetery expansion. Local conservationists then worked to permanently protect the property.The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Shepherd Brooks Estate (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Shepherd Brooks Estate
Grove Street,

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Latitude Longitude
N 42.433333333333 ° E -71.139444444444 °
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Brooks Estate

Grove Street
02474
Massachusetts, United States
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MedfordMA ShepherdBrooksEstate MainHouse
MedfordMA ShepherdBrooksEstate MainHouse
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Mystic Dam
Mystic Dam

The Mystic Dam (and its gatehouse) are a historic dam and gatehouse between Lower and Upper Mystic Lakes in the suburbs north of Boston, Massachusetts. The dam was built in 1864–65 by the Charlestown Water Commission (Charlestown then being separate from Boston) as part of a water supply system. It was located at a narrow point between the Lower and Upper Mystic Lakes, with its west end in Arlington and its east end in Medford. The water system it was a part of eventually merged into the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), predecessor to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).As built, the dam was over 1,500 feet (460 m) long and 16 feet (4.9 m) high, with most of that length (about 1,000 feet (300 m)) consisting of earthen embankments lined with riprap and puddle clay. Near its center is a spillway area consisting of a series of square columns constructed of granite blocks and a masonry apron. These columns are grooved on their inner faces to facilitate the installation of stop logs. A wooden walkway with a plank railing ran across the top of the dam. A wooden fish ladder was built, but removed at a later date. A gatehouse on the Medford side was used to connect the upper lake to a brick-lined aqueduct that delivered the water to Charlestown. The lake area impounded by the dam is 186 acres (75 ha).The dam and gatehouse were each listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. By the early 2000s, the dam was known to not be in very good condition, with failing spillway masonry, erosion, and other damage to the dam's stonework. A major storm in 2006 flooded portions of the surrounding area, and highlighted the potential inability of the dam to handle a significant high-water event, leading to catastrophic flooding of downstream areas. Between 2010 and 2012 major work was undertaken to improve the dam's condition. A new spillway was constructed to the east of the old spillway, which received a new spillway apron. Work was done on the embankments and the shores near the upper areas of the dam, and a new fish ladder and bridge were built. The historic gatehouse was also rehabilitated, and modern controls were added, enabling improved control over the water levels behind the dam.