OCCASIONAL PAPERS 
 ON THE HISTORY OF 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE’S 
 BEACON HILL CONNECTION 
 
 Rev. Charles F. Donovan, S.J. 
 University Historian 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/bostoncollegesbeOOdono 
 
The smallest and oldest building on the Chest- 
 nut Hill campus of Boston College is the resi- 
 dence at 223 Beacon Street, tucked between 
 Campion Hall and the Service Building entrance. 
 Long tradition at Boston College has held that 
 the house was built as a gate house by a previous 
 owner of the property, Amos Lawrence, and that 
 for its construction he had obtained stones from 
 the famous Hancock House on Beacon Hill when 
 it was dismantled. On the basis of this tradi- 
 tion the modest building at 223 Beacon Street 
 has in recent decades been designated as Han- 
 cock House in official university directories and 
 maps. 
 
 However, since no documentation is found 
 in University records to substantiate the tradition, 
 a bit of architectural sleuthing was undertaken. 
 Frederick Detwiller,‘ architectural historian and 
 Newton resident, became the University’s pro- 
 ficient sleuth. Before presenting the results of 
 Detwiller’s research, it is appropriate to com- 
 ment on the significance of Beacon Hill’s Han- 
 cock House and the reasons why a connection 
 between it and Boston College is worthy of the 
 community’s attention. 
 
 The Hancock House, which stood on the site 
 of the west wing of the State House on Beacon 
 Street, was built by Thomas Hancock, described 
 in Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston^ as an 
 opulent and public-spirited merchant, who first 
 kept a bookstore, ‘Stationers’ Arms’, and after- 
 ward dealt in general merchandise, acquired a 
 fortune and became one of the leading commer- 
 cial persons in New England. His residential 
 property roughly embraced the land now bound- 
 ed by Beacon, Mt. Vernon, Bowdoin, and Joy 
 Streets,^ really most of Beacon Hill. In 1737 
 he began construction of a magnificent home, 
 Boston’s first stone residence,'^ on a scale befit- 
 ting his financial standing. The stone for the 
 walls came from Braintree (now Quincy) but the 
 artistic finish and the quoins and window caps 
 were of Connecticut freestone from Thomas 
 Johnson’s quarry. ^ Since it is the Connecticut 
 stone that is pertinent to Boston College’s Han- 
 cock House, detailed information about it is 
 necessary. 
 
 In an article entitled “Notes on the Hancock 
 House, Boston,” that appeared in the January, 
 
1927 issue of Old-Time New England^ Donald 
 Millar cited an agreement found among the 
 Thomas Hancock papers in the Boston Public 
 Library which read in part: 
 
 Agreement between Mr. Thomas Hancock 
 and Thomas Johnson of Middleton in the 
 country of Hartford and colony of Connec- 
 ticut in New England, stone-cutter to supply 
 and Furnish the said Thomas Hancock with 
 so much Connecticut stone as shall be suffi- 
 cient to Beautify and build Four corners, One 
 Large Front Door, Nine Front Windows and 
 a Facie for the Front and back Part Over the 
 Lower Story Windows of a certain Stone 
 House which the said Thomas Hancock is 
 about to Erect on a certain Piece of Land 
 Situate near Beacon Hill in Boston aforesaid . . . 
 Johnson’s agreement was in response to Han- 
 cock’s detailed specifications which read as 
 follows: 
 
 140 Stone for Quines for the 4 Corners of the 
 house 20 Inch Long 8 high & 12 wide. 
 
 14 Stone for the Door 20 Inch Long 8 high. 
 
 12 Ditto about 12 Inch & 8 high. 
 
 5 Kee Stone for the tops of the Door of about 
 two feet the Exact Dimensions to be given 
 hereafter. 
 
 108 Stone 8 Inch high 6 wide for ye windows. 
 90 Ditto 10 Inch Long 8 high 6 wide for Ditto. 
 54 Kee Stone for the tops of nine windows the 
 Exact Dimensions shall be given hereafter. 
 180 feet stone for a water table round the 
 House. 
 
 72 feet for stools for ye windows & Door. 
 
 Your Humb: Ser 
 
 Thos. Hancock^ 
 The significance of these stones in Boston 
 College’s attempt to establish a relationship of 
 the cottage at 223 Beacon Street to the 1737 
 Hancock House will appear shortly. Thomas 
 Hancock was as meticulous in dealing with Lon- 
 don suppliers for the inside finishing of the 
 house* and once the house was completed he 
 set about providing for natural beauty around it. 
 The following excerpt from an order to a nursery- 
 man in England shows Hancock’s contentment 
 with his new abode: “My Gardens all Lye on 
 the South Side of a hill, with the most Beauti- 
 ful Assent to the Top & it’s Allowed on all hands 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
the Kingdom of England don’t afford So Fine 
 a Prospect as I have of Land and water. Neither 
 do I intend to spare any Cost or Pains in making 
 my Gardens Beautiful or Profitable . . 
 
 Gilman attests that Hancock was not alone 
 in his enthusiasm for his mansion. He writes: 
 “. . . there seems to be little doubt that Han- 
 cock’s doings on his fine estate created a great 
 stir of admiration, and that the new stone house 
 was thought to be a very grand and famous 
 affair in the infant metropolis of New England, 
 in the year 1737.”io 
 
 In 1927 Donald Millar gave a subtler reason 
 for contemporary admiration of Thomas Han- 
 cock’s house: “The Hancock House was the 
 talk of the Colonies and influenced the archi- 
 tecture of the time in ways not easily under- 
 stood in our age of photographs and varied arch- 
 itectural styles.”*' 
 
 Thomas Hancock died in 1764 and left his 
 fortune and estate to his nephew and adopted 
 son John, the revolutionary patriot and first 
 governor of Massachusetts in the federal 
 period. Thomas Hancock’s wealth and ambition 
 gave his house architectural splendor and 
 uniqueness; John Hancock gave it a place in 
 American history. The younger Hancock used 
 his inherited wealth ostentatiously, but while 
 one might have expected him, because of his 
 position, to sympathize with the Tories, he was 
 implacably anti-royalist. Winsor’s Memorial 
 History describes John Hancock’s flamboyant 
 lifestyle: “Among his own townsmen the rich 
 Bostonian dearly loved to make himself of im- 
 portance. ‘King Hancock’ was the sobriquet 
 which he earned, and was a constant butt for 
 Tory wits. In the Pennsylvania Ledger for 
 March 11, 1778, ‘a gentleman from the east- 
 ward’ says: ‘John Hancock of Boston appears 
 in public with all the pageantry and state of 
 an Oriental prince; he rides in an elegant char- 
 iot .. . attended by four servants in superb 
 livery, mounted on fine horses richly capari- 
 soned . . .’”'2 
 
 The same author in Winsor’s History gave this 
 summary impression, including a reference to 
 Hancock’s home: “Everything about him is 
 picturesque from his bold handsome signature 
 [first on the Delcaration of Independence], 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
which gave him an assured immortality, to his fine 
 house which appears in the pictures of the day 
 as the ‘Seat of His Excellency, John Hancock’. 
 His position, wealth, and name made him val- 
 uable to the real movers of the Revolution, when 
 men of his stamp were almost without exception 
 on the side of the Crown; and it was this that 
 made such a man as Sam Adams cling to and 
 advance him . . 
 
 The Hancock House became a center of rev- 
 olutionary meetings. Washington was a visitor; 
 Lafayette often lived there. During the dark 
 days when Boston was occupied by the British 
 and many of its buildings were razed and burned 
 as firewood. General William Howe of the 
 British Army took Hancock House as his head- 
 quarters, and legend has it that from a window 
 of the principal chamber Howe’s staff, using 
 Thomas Hancock’s old telescope, caught sight 
 of the entrenchments thrown up by Washington 
 overnight on Dorchester Heights, a sight that 
 persuaded the British to evacuate Boston on 
 March 17, 1776.15 
 
 Once the Republic was established, John 
 Hancock spent all but two of the last thirteen 
 years of his life (1780-1793) as governor of 
 Massachusetts and Hancock House served as 
 the governor’s mansion. Two years after Han- 
 cock’s death, Charles Bulfinch built his stunning 
 State House on land formerly part of the Han- 
 cock estate, immediately to the east of Hancock 
 House. In 1855 the Massachusetts Senate ap- 
 pointed a committee to negotiate the purchase 
 of the Hancock homestead with a view to pre- 
 serving it as a memorial but the negotiations 
 fell through. 16 In 1863, despite what was one 
 of Boston’s first preservation protests,i^ Hancock 
 House was torn down. Historian of Boston’s 
 architectural past, Jane Holtz Kay, quotes this 
 somewhat sad description of the destruction of 
 Thomas Hancock’s proud mansion: “‘I . . . used 
 to sit at the window of my play-room and watch 
 the men slowly pry off one block of stone after 
 another, for the masonry was so solid that it 
 could be accomplished in no other way,’ a 
 character in the novel The Chippendales de- 
 clared.”!* Were some of those pried off blocks 
 of stone destined to wind up on Amos Law- 
 rence’s and Boston College’s property? 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
Some years later marble wings were added 
 to Bulfinch’s State House. The west wing was 
 built on the land formerly occupied by Han- 
 cock House. The Commonwealth has placed a 
 plaque on the west lawn of the State House 
 which reads: 
 
 HERE STOOD THE RESIDENCE OF 
 JOHN HANCOCK: 
 
 A PROMINENT AND PATRIOTIC 
 MERCHANT OF BOSTON, THE FIRST 
 SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF 
 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, AND 
 FIRST GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 UNDER THE STATE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 ERECTED 1737. REMOVED 1863. 
 
 Antiquarian and historical interest in Han- 
 cock House did not end with its dismantling. 
 In 1893 Massachusetts built a replica of it at 
 the Chicago Exposition.’^ A permanent replica 
 of Hancock House was built in Ticonderoga, 
 New York (where it serves as a museum and 
 library of the New York State Historical Asso- 
 ciation ). 20 In his article “Notes on Hancock 
 House, Boston” Donald Millar wrote: “Scat- 
 tered about in museums, from Salem to Phila- 
 delphia, are carved capitals from its two prin- 
 cipal rooms, balusters from it stairs, sections of 
 stair rails etc. The writer of this article has for 
 twelve years been collecting measurements of 
 such bits of woodwork, descriptions of the 
 house, illustrations, etc.”2‘ The front door of 
 the Hancock mansion is preserved by the Bos- 
 tonian Society,22 and we are told the knocker 
 from the front door was presented to Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes, who put it on the door of his 
 famous Cambridge house. 2 ^ The front steps were 
 transferred to Pine Bank, Jamaica Pond,2'^ and 
 the interior staircase found its way into a house 
 in Manchester.25 To these treasured relics of 
 Thomas Hancock’s grand Beacon Hill abode may 
 now be added the corner stones or quoins of 
 the small house at 223 Beacon Street. In his 
 research at the Society for the Preservation of 
 New England Antiquities Frederic Detwiller 
 came across this letter26 from Amos Lawrence’s 
 son. Bishop William Lawrence, to the vice- 
 president of the above-named Society: 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
Jan. 15, 1917 
 
 Boston, January 14 
 Dear Mr. French: 
 
 When the Hancock House was being torn 
 down my father was building a Lodge at the 
 gate of his Farm which is now Boston Col- 
 lege. He brought one or two loads of stone 
 which he built into the Lodge. The corner 
 trimmings I think — that is all. 
 
 If you drive out some day over Beacon 
 Street by the Reservoir Pumping Station to 
 the beginning of the Boston College grounds 
 you will see the Lodge on the right standing 
 close to Beacon Street. 
 
 The interior is of no interest. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Wm. Lawrence 
 
 A similar confirmation, possibly based on the 
 Lawrence letter, is found in an unpublished 
 manuscript at the American Antiquarian Soci- 
 ety in Worcester. It is written by a Boston 
 architect, Henry Ayling Phillips, about 1920 
 according to Detwiller, and is titled “The Han- 
 cock House . . .” In it Phillips wrote: “. . . for 
 some of the quoins see the small gate lodge at 
 the southeast corner of the Boston College 
 grounds, on Beacon Street adjacent to the 
 Chestnut Hill Reservoir park.” 
 
 Frederick Detwiller has examined Boston 
 College’s Hancock House and after careful 
 measurement concluded that the stones at the 
 corners of the house are the same as those 
 ordered 245 years ago by Thomas Hancock 
 from Thomas Johnson in Connecticut: “108 
 Stone 8 Inch high 6 wide for ye windows — 90 
 Ditto 10 Inch Long 8 high 6 wide for Ditto.” 
 (Complete order cited above.) Detwiller says 
 that some quoins are rough and may have been 
 larger corner stones cut down to the smaller 
 size, and he concludes: “. . . I would certainly 
 be willing to have my judgment cited attesting 
 to the authenticity of the Hancock-Lawrence 
 freestone quoins.”^* So the long oral tradition 
 at Boston College is validated. 
 
 By a happy coincidence Amos Lawrence was 
 building his lodge in 1863, on the future site of 
 Boston College, the same year Father John 
 McElroy obtained a charter for the College. 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
Our Hancock House thus precisely spans the life 
 of the University, and it also relates Boston 
 College in a remarkable way to some of the 
 memorable early days of Boston and Beacon 
 Hill. 
 
 Hancock House may be the smallest but it 
 surely is the most venerable structure on the 
 Boston College campus. Its significance deserves 
 notice in bronze. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 •Frederic C. Detwiller graduated from Prince- 
 ton University with a bachelor’s degree in Archi- 
 tecture. At Columbia University School of 
 Architecture he did graduate study in the Pro- 
 gram in Restoration and Preservation of His- 
 toric Architecture. He has served as architectural 
 historian of the Society for the Preservation of 
 New England Antiquities and is currently writing 
 a book tentatively titled Boston’s Other Revolu- 
 tion: “Architecture, Engineering, and Planning, 
 1750-1800”, which will include a consideration 
 of Hancock House. 
 
 2 Justin Winsor, ed.. The Memorial History 
 of Boston (Boston: Ticknor and Son, 1881), 
 Vol. II, p. 434. Also Arthur Gilman, “The Han- 
 cock House and Its Founder,” The Atlantic 
 Monthly, 2 (June 1863), 695. 
 
 ^W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock (Cam- 
 bridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), p. 76. 
 
 "•Douglass Shand Tucci, Built in Boston 
 (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978), 
 p. 3. 
 
 ^Walter Kendall Watkins, “The Hancock 
 House and Its Builder,” Old-Time New England, 
 17 (July 1926), 8, 10. 
 
 ^Donald Millar, “Notes on the Hancock House, 
 Boston,” Old-Time New England, 17 (July 
 1927), 121. 
 
 ^Watkins, p. 10. 
 
 ^Millar, p. 122. 
 
 ^Gilman, p. 700. 
 
 '••Gilman, p. 692. 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
••Millar, p. 124. 
 
 •2\Vinsor, Vol. Ill, p. 171. 
 
 •^Winsor, p. 201. 
 
 •‘♦Gilman, p. 707. 
 
 •5 Herbert S. Allan, John Hancock (New York: 
 The MacMillan Company, 1948), p. 29. Also 
 Gilman, p. 707. 
 
 •^Allan, pp. 396-7. 
 
 •2 Jane Holtz Kay, Lost Boston (Boston: 
 Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), p. 56. 
 
 •^Baxter, p. 77. 
 
 20Allan, p. 397. 
 
 2^Millar, p. 121. 
 
 22Baxter, p. 77. 
 
 23Winsor, p. 202. 
 
 24Frederic C. Detwiller, letter to the author 
 September 15, 1981. Boston College Archives. 
 
 25\Vatkins, p. 16. 
 
 2^Detwiller, letter to the author October 20, 
 1981. Boston College Archives. 
 
 22Detwiller, September 15, 1981 letter. 
 
 28 Detwiller, October 20, 1981 letter. At- 
 
 tached drawings by Frederic Detwiller show 
 the stone quoins (shaded) of Boston College’s 
 Hancock House and the parts of the original 
 Hancock House from which they were taken. 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
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