{"nrhp_refnum":"88000426","name":"Wellington Farm Historic District","other_names":["Pierce, Thomas, House"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"487--500 Wellesley St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Weston","county":"Middlesex County","state":"MA","lat":42.33283200000005,"lon":-71.30629212942473,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1988-04-14","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Agriculture","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 35-acre farmstead in southern Weston, Massachusetts, divided by Wellesley Street, with a main house begun about 1760, a 1917 farmer's cottage, a barn complex, pigsties, a greenhouse and stone wall-lined fields.","why_significant":"It is a well-developed 18th-century farmstead with continuous links to Weston's agricultural history, and it also reflects the town's late-19th-century vogue as a summer retreat. It is described as a fine example of a New England farmstead that evolved over several hundred years, and as one of the few working farms left in a wealthy suburb. It meets Criteria A and C at the local level.","narrative":"Wellington Farm is a 35-acre farmstead in southern Weston, Massachusetts, split by Wellesley Street. Its main house began about 1760 as a five-bay, center-chimney dwelling attributed to Thomas Pierce. It was enlarged and reoriented around 1800-1820 under the Brown family, then raised to three stories with a gambrel roof around the turn of the 20th century, when wealthy Boston owners used the place as a summer residence. Across the street stands a red barn complex with cupolas and a silo, parts of which may be 18th-century. A 1917 farmer's cottage, designed by Joseph Everrett Chandler and assembled partly from older outbuildings, stands nearby, along with early-20th-century pigsties and stone walls that still define the fields. The Wellington family has owned the farm since 1907, raising horses and Guernsey cattle, and today it grows hay for boarded horses. It was listed because it survives as a rare working farm in a heavily developed suburb and shows how a New England farmstead changed over time.","period_of_significance":"ca. 1760 - 1937","architect_builder":"Unknown (main house); Joseph Everrett Chandler (farmer's cottage)","architectural_style":"Georgian, Federal, Colonial Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Still a working farm: fields are rotated for hay for boarded horses, and a modern greenhouse is used for hydroponic gardening.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:01.69964-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/32/7956/63795632/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/88000426.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88000426/3a248afba2-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88000426/3a248afba2-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"User:Magicpiano","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WestonMA_WellingtonFarmHD.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">User:Magicpiano</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WestonMA_WellingtonFarmHD.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63795632","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Farm_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7981394"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/middlesex-county/wellington-farm-historic-district-88000426/"}