Hubbard-French District

Set on Sudbury Road in Concord, this small district preserves part of a farm that shaped the Hubbardville neighborhood from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth. Its centerpiece is a hip-roofed Georgian farmhouse built in 1787-88 for Thomas Hubbard Jr., with quoins, a dentiled cornice and paneled interiors. Next door stands the 1879 Queen Anne studio of sculptor Daniel Chester French, whose father, Judge Henry French, bought the farm and updated the house. The Judge also planted rows of Centennial Pines in 1875. Later owner Mary Ogden Abbott added a long north wing, a picket fence and garden sculpture in the twentieth century. A granite and fieldstone root cellar, with iron reliefs made by the young French on its door, is the earliest known outbuilding. The district was listed because of its link to French, one of the leading American public sculptors, and for its layered architecture and landscape.