Fairlawn

Fairlawn is a two-and-one-half-storey brown sandstone mansion at 189 May Street in Worcester, built in 1893-1894 for James A. Norcross. Norcross managed the business of Norcross Brothers, a masonry and contracting firm that built for H. H. Richardson and other leading architects. The house shows few references to the revivalist styles of the 1890s. Instead its heavy rock-faced stonework and unusual details dominate, including a central three-storey semi-circular bay with a porch on slender stone columns and a domed cupola, plus semi-circular corner bays and a complex slate roof. Contemporary accounts suggest the design responded to the hilltop site. A sandstone stable with jerkinhead gables survives to the rear. Norcross lived here until his death in 1903, and his heirs sold the estate in 1922 to Fairlawn Hospital. The house became the hospital's central section, with brick wings added in 1951 and around 1970 and set apart from it by connecting hallways. The nomination finds that these additions do not damage the original house's important features.