16 BROAD STREET
052-059
HD Map# 58
Overview of Historic District and Source of following text.
58. Hildreth House, 16 Broad Street, c.1875. Contributing building.
A well-preserved example of a connected New England farm building, 16 Broad Street consists of a 2 1/2-story, gablefront dwelling with a lateral ell connecting to a gablefront attached barn. The clapboarded main house is outlined by pilaster cornerboards which are decorated by recessed arched panels. The projecting eaves end in cornice returns with a plain frieze. The sidehall entrance is capped by a flat-roofed door hood supported by curvilinear brackets with knobs and pendants. Adjacent to the entrance is a two-story, three-sided bay window containing segmentally arched windows containing 1/1 sash. The corners of the bay window are decorated by turned work. Above the entrance and in the attic there are 2/2 windows.
The east side of the main house is fronted by a single-story porch supported by chamfered posts adorned by arches with spandrel panels decorated by cutout foliate designs. Extending to the east of main house is a long 1 1/2-story lateral ell with an offcenter gable wall dormer containing 2/2 sash. The ell is fronted by a porch which echoes that on the east wall of the main house.
An additional room was built onto the east end of the ell in 1956 to serve as the business office of the Hollis Telephone Company and was used as such until 1971.
The facade of the barn is clapboarded while the east elevation is sheathed in vertical boards. On the facade there is a diagonal board door with inset 3 x 2-light window. A vertical board loft door is located above, as is a 6/6 window. Remaining fenestration on the barn consists of small 3 x 2-light windows. There is a lower level ramp on the east side.
This house was constructed about 1875 for James Clarence Hildreth, on land which he purchased in 1875 from Leonard W. Farley. Hildreth reportedly built the ell first and later added the main house. When James Hildreth’s son, Albert, married he occupied one part of the house as did Albert’s son, Henry, when he married. When there were not two generations of Hildreths in the house, one tenement was often rented. From 1890 until about 1895 the Read sisters - Abbie, Mary Lizzie and Nellie Read Worcester lived in the house after they left the farm.
James Hildreth established the Hollis Times on October 14, 1886. In 1892 he bought the store and post office at 22 Main Street and assumed the office of postmaster. The duties of the position forced him to give up printing the Times in Dec. 1892 although he later gave up the store and resumed publishing the Times in 1899, a year before his death. His son, Albert, continued the shop and paper and also established the Hollis Telephone Company in 1902. From 1902 until 1956 the Hollis Telephone Company was headquartered in a former schoolhouse on the property. James Clarence Hildreth had moved the building here in 1879 initially for use as a printing office. (The building was moved to 55 Broad Street in 1976.)
When James Hildreth died in 1900, ownership of the homestead property passed to his widow, Mary.
After Mary’s death in 1920, the property was owned by her son Albert and his wife Ellen. When Ellen died in 1970, it became the property of Henry Hildreth and his wife Hilda. In 1999, Henry’s widow, Hilda, conveyed the property to her four grandchildren, Anna, Joseph, Sarah and Quincy Birch.