FORM a - AREA Assessor’S Sheets USGS Quad Area Letter Form Numbers in Area
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FORM A - AREA Assessor’s Sheets USGS Quad Area Letter Form Numbers in Area MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION ASSACHUSETTS RCHIVES UILDING M A B 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Town/City: Ipswich and Hamilton MA Photograph Place (neighborhood or village): Name of Area: Appleton Farms Present Use: Protected open space, dairy farm and community supported agriculture operation. Construction Dates or Period: 1638-1997 Overall Condition: Good Major Intrusions and Alterations: Rehabilitation of Old House for visitor center. Minor alternations to th barns to meet new agricultural codes. Loss of 19 century family summer homes. Acreage: 917 acres Recorded by: Lucinda Brockway Organization: The Trustees Date (month/year): April, 2017 Locus Map See next page X see continuation sheet 1 INVENTORY FORM A CONTINUATION SHEET IPSWICH APPLETON FARMS MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area Letter Form Nos. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 2 INVENTORY FORM A CONTINUATION SHEET IPSWICH APPLETON FARMS MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area Letter Form Nos. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 X Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION Describe architectural, structural and landscape features and evaluate in terms of other areas within the community. Introduction Appleton Farms is the oldest continuously operating farm in New England and perhaps in America. Farming activities here can be document under continuous operation from 1638, at the time of the original land grant to Samuel Appleton, to the present day. Samuel Appleton’s earliest residence on the farm remains on land near the Ipswich River that was sold out of the family in the early 20th century to family relatives, but the remains of his land grant, and his son’s farming operations are contained within the boundaries of Appleton Farms today. Its 917 acres are one of the largest agricultural open spaces in Ipswich and Hamilton, Massachusetts and includes the largest ecological grassland habitat in the region, with cultivated fields, pasture, woodland and wetland dating back to the seventeenth century. The majority of agricultural buildings and residential dwellings date to the period of the farm’s most productive era, 1857-1904, under seventh generation owner Daniel Fuller Appleton. Appleton Farms has been a leading survivor of Northeast Massachusetts agricultural economy, an area replete with rural and small village community character. Most of the farm’s contemporaries were significantly renovated as country summer homes in the late 19th century, renovated as year-round elite homes in the 20th century, or subdivided into smaller farms and eventually sold to meet the rising residential demands of a burgeoning commuter population. Though Appleton Farms experienced the impact of its own summer home era, it was not transformed, but instead amended, by that movement. Here, the Appleton family’s agricultural legacy was upheld over nine generations and continues today under The Trustees, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation and preservation of natural, historic and scenic places across Massachusetts for the public enjoyment. The agricultural legacy that began with Samuel Appleton’s settlement in Ipswich in 1638 has continued, uninterrupted, to the present day. Acreage was bought, sold, inherited and gifted to family members over almost four centuries. Economic cycles of low farm income were augmented in the 18th century with income from local civil service, small home manufacturing and milling incomes. In the 19th century these economic deficiencies were supported with more substantial income from Daniel Fuller Appleton’s Waltham Watch Company. During this period, Daniel Fuller Appleton transformed the farm into a progressive scientific farming operation, its practices were held up as a model for the Massachusetts Agricultural Society. These progressive farming practices were continued throughout the 20th century by Daniel Fuller Appleton’s son and grandson. In 1893, the farm produced the world’s best butterfat producer, a large Jersey cow named “Eurotissima;” followed almost a century later by “Blandina,” New England’s top milk producer.1 For the Appleton family, the farm was a birth right and a responsibility that was obligatory. Its tenacity, family legacy and fertile soils combined to build a cultural landscape intricately linked to its owners, and to this place, for more than 375 years. The property consists of forested deciduous and coniferous woodlands, pasture, upland meadow, cultivated fields and wetlands. Large stands of white pine screen the MBTA commuter railroad line that runs north/south through the center of the farm. The gently undulating topography rises to a maximum elevation of 90’ (Pigeon Hill) in the central western portion of the farm. To the north and east, the land descends from Pigeon Hill across gently undulating pastures and hay fields, drained by Long Meadow Brook. To the south and west, the land drops across deciduous woodlands crisscrossed with grassy horseback riding trails and sinks into low herbaceous wetlands drained by Long Causeway Brook. Harvard Forest owns and operates the deciduous forest south of the Farms, across Cutler Road. The Great Pasture, which was 1 Cynthia Marquand. “Century Farms; the Appleton farm, Ipswich, Massachusetts.” Christian Science Monitor Nov. 21, 1984. 3 INVENTORY FORM A CONTINUATION SHEET IPSWICH APPLETON FARMS MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area Letter Form Nos. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 cleared in 1886 and smoothed in the 1930s, covers the northeastern slopes of Pigeon Hill. It is drained on the east by Runaway Brook, a tributary of Long Causeway Brook. The three brooks that drain the farm are tributaries of the Miles River located east of Appleton Farms. The Ipswich/Hamilton town line almost bisects the property east to west, with the more fertile upload soils, farm and residential buildings are situated in Ipswich and the low wetlands and wooded grass rides lie in Hamilton. The core of Appleton Farms’ vernacular building styles date to the mid to late 19th century (1857-1904), with some earlier and later structures completing the building inventory. There are 31 buildings on the property today, and visible evidence for at least 6 former building locations. The earliest buildings date to 1820, though there are core bits of the Old House that date to 1794. (the area in the vicinity of the Old House has been a residence since 1688). There is only minimal extant evidence for the seventeenth century buildings that started Appleton Farm. Samuel Appleton’s original farmhouse (1638) was burned and rebuilt as a summer home for a descendant in 1889. It was situated closer to the Ipswich River, on land no longer within the current Appleton Farms boundaries. The “Old House” located at the core of the present 917 acres can be documented to 1794 but its core timbers may be earlier; this building has undergone several significant periods of renovation by later generations as it was expanded and updated to meet the demands of the family. In 2009 it underwent a deep energy retrofit and renovation as it was transformed into the Appleton Farms Center for Agriculture and the Environment. There were three major building campaigns on the farm: 1820s, 1880s and 1945-1950. Most of Appleton Farms buildings today date to the 1880’s, the most prosperous period in the farm’s history. Often, in the spirit of Yankee thriftiness, buildings were moved and renovated into barns, outbuildings, or ells to larger family homes. The family left behind a substantial archival record that continues to prove instrumental in understanding the farm’s architectural and land use history. Locations of buildings and foundation sites were documented through field and archival study, and details on the renovation, removal, moving, building, or remodeling of structures was tracked through the family archives when possible. The buildings remain a rich potential source of study; their structural analysis can deepen and further our understanding of this complex property. The Farm has always supported more than one family unit, and the interrelationship between building nodes and the use of the lands immediately surrounding each settlement node represents a cultural landscape that mirrors the agricultural priorities as they have shifted over four centuries. In many ways, Appleton Farms is a family neighborhood or district, with building sites interconnected by meandering lanes off town roadways. In the late 19th century, the pastoral qualities of the farm enticed children to return for the summer where they renovated former farm residences or built new summer homes on the property. Farm roads were upgraded for horseback riding and shaded with allees of maple trees. Designed gardens and horticultural specimens enhanced each summer home. Just as farm crops shifted with market demands, the Appleton’s summer homes faded into foundational ruins as Frances Appleton Jr. gathered the 20th century farm operation under a single owner whose residential needs were few and the cost of maintaining large 19th century summer homes too expensive for a 20th century farm. Today the core of the farm buildings is located in close