Landscape Transformation and Use at the Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston's West End

John M. Kelly

Landscape Transformation and Use at the Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston's West End

Year: 2016

Summary

The Harrison Gray Otis House, owned and managed by Historic New England, was built in Boston’s West End in 1796, and is significant for being the only surviving free-standing, late eighteenth century mansion in the city. PAL recently completed excavations in the extant yard space for the Otis House and 14 and 16 Lynde Street, formerly the site of two circa 1840 townhouses. The feature complex uncovered during fieldwork illustrates the increasing complexity and fragmentation of the West End as it transitioned from an elite enclave in the late eighteenth century to a densely populated, largely immigrant and working-class neighborhood beginning in the mid nineteenth century to the twentieth century. The features and recovered artifacts also illustrate how the residents of the Otis House and Lynde Street properties understood and negotiated issues such as privacy and domestic space within the larger context of the rapid urbanization of Boston’s West End.

Cite this Record

Landscape Transformation and Use at the Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston's West End. John M. Kelly. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434654)