Osgood Hill

Osgood Hill is a 153-acre country estate rising from the shore of Lake Cochichewick in North Andover. Built between 1884 and 1886 for woolen manufacturer and later congressman Moses T. Stevens, it consists of a gatehouse, a brick main house, a stable, a carriage house and a gardener's house. The Boston firm Hartwell & Richardson designed the buildings in Romanesque Revival and Shingle styles that recall the work of H. H. Richardson, while landscape architect Ernest W. Bowditch laid out the siting, roads and paths. The fieldstone gatehouse closely resembles a Richardson gate lodge in North Easton. The main house combines red brick, brownstone bands, slate roofing and a chapel-like porte-cochere, and its interior retains richly finished oak and mahogany paneling. Boston University later used the property and added a dining room in the late 1950s. The town bought the estate in 1994 to prevent subdivision, and the property is now used as a function and conference center. It is described as the town's last intact 19th-century gentleman's country estate.