Chateau Fairmount
A stone castle on Belvidere Hill in Lowell, Massachusetts. Built in 1883, a rest home for half a century, rescued from foreclosure in 2011 — and open to the neighborhood every Halloween.
The modern name of an old house
Chateau Fairmount is what its present owner calls the Arthur Bonney Estate: a Chateauesque stone mansion built in 1883 for the Lowell machinist and inventor Abel T. Atherton[C-001, C-002, C-006], and known for most of the twentieth century as the Battles Home[C-023].
The 1981 state survey called it the earliest of Lowell’s great stone houses and the most elaborate example of its style in the city: rock-faced ashlar, cross gables, tall chimneys, a round tower, a porte-cochère, stained-glass transoms and carved sandstone panels, with oak and Minton tile inside[C-006, C-007].
The house is privately owned, lived in, and still being restored. This site keeps to what the records show, and says so where they fall silent.
Owners of the hill, 1880 to today
Every date below comes from a deed, a state survey or a newspaper in the archive. The full history page, with sources, is being prepared.
- 1880–82Abel T. Atherton assembles the hillside lot in three purchases.[C-003]
- 1883The stone house is built; the date is carved on a sandstone plaque.[C-001]
- 1887Sold to Arthur P. Bonney, lawyer and Lowell city solicitor.[C-009]
- 1896Bonney dies; his daughter and son-in-law, Judge Charles S. Lilley, stay on.[C-013]
- 1925The family sells to textile manufacturer Charles Brooks Stevens.[C-016]
- 1957Purchased by The Battles Home, a Lowell charity founded in 1901.[C-020]
- 1957–2004A private rest home for about eleven residents at a time.[C-023]
- 2009–10Foreclosure; the house stands empty and stripped of fixtures.[C-030]
- 2011Bought by the current owner; restoration begins.[C-031]
Halloween, every year since 2012
On October 31 the drive is lit by twenty-two hand-built candelabras and the neighborhood comes up the hill — on a good night, one to two thousand people in two hours[C-044].
A note from the owner
People stop at the end of the driveway to take pictures, and when they see me they ask about the house. This site is my answer. I bought it because I could not stand to watch it fall down. I have tried to keep the history to what can be documented, and to label the legends as legends.
If you lived here, worked here, or visited the Battles Home, I would be glad to hear from you — and if you have an old photograph, even more so.
— Perry Chaffee
Sources
Bracketed codes refer to the Chateau Fairmount historical claims register. Principal documents: Massachusetts Historical Commission Form B no. 494 (1981); Middlesex North Registry of Deeds, Books 157:155, 191:291, 724:271, 1010:7, 1160:232, 1366:553 and 28668:20; The Lowell Sun, 2001 and 2011. The attribution of the design to the Lowell architect Otis A. Merrill rests on a June 1883 architectural journal and the state building inventory and is still being confirmed.