Rawson Estate

Set on a prominent site above the intersection of Park, Vernon and Tremont Streets in Newton Corner, this Italianate house dates from about 1860. Boston boot and shoe merchant Daniel A. Rawson evidently built it, and he represented a new kind of Newton Corner resident: the Boston commuter. The Rawson family owned the estate for nearly a century, with relatives living there until the mid-1940s. The house follows a symmetrical, end-gabled plan with a center gabled entrance pavilion, round-headed gable windows and a full-width front veranda with ornate bracketed wood trim. Its most unusual feature is a rear corner tower capped with iron cresting, and much of the interior woodwork remains original. Asphalt siding was added in the twentieth century. Carved stone posts marked with the letter R survive at the entrance to the former formal drive leading to the carriage house on Tremont Street. The property was listed for its architecture and as an example of Newton Corner's mid-nineteenth-century estates.