History / Timeline
Every date below comes from a deed, a survey, a contemporary newspaper or an inscription, and says how sure we are. Choose the short story or the full list; filter by era or theme; link to any event.
Belvidere was Lowell’s hillside of merchants’ and manufacturers’ houses above the Concord River. Between 1880 and 1882 a Lowell machinist assembled three parcels on Fairmount Street into one building lot.
Three purchases make the site: from Mary E. Wing (October 1880), from Susan B. Butters and others (May 1881), and a twelve-foot strip from Samuel G. Wyman (December 1882) on which, the deed says, no building shall ever be erected.[source]
DocumentedAbel T. Atherton
The stone house went up in 1883, the year carved on its sandstone plaque. Four years later its builder sold it, subject to four mortgages, to the lawyer whose name the state inventory still uses for the property.
The date is carved on a sandstone plaque on the house. The 1981 state survey records rock-faced ashlar walls, cross gables, tall chimneys, a round tower, a porte-cochère, stained-glass transoms and carved sandstone panels, with oak and Minton tile inside.[sources]
DocumentedAbel T. Atherton
What is uncertain: One later compilation gives a construction period of 1883–1887; no source in hand supports a four-year build.
The American Architect and Building News prints a heliotype plate: "Stable for Mr A. T. Atherton, Fairmount St, Lowell — Merrill & Cutler, Architects". A stone stable with a conical-roofed round tower, it is today’s carriage house at 222 Fairmount Street. No published design for the house itself has been found, so the architect of the house remains unrecorded.[sources]
DocumentedOtis A. MerrillAbel T. Atherton
What is uncertain: Whether Merrill & Cutler also designed the house is plausible but undocumented; the 1981 survey left the architect blank.
U.S. Patent 305,654 is granted to Abel T. Atherton of Lowell. The survey describes him as a machinist in business with William Whitehead on Howe Street — the industrial world that paid for a stone house on the hill.[source]
DocumentedAbel T. Atherton
Georgiana Atherton, with her husband’s consent, conveys the estate "with the buildings thereon" to Arthur P. Bonney, lawyer and former city solicitor. The deed is subject to four mortgages. The state inventory still calls the property the Arthur Bonney Estate.[sources]
DocumentedAbel T. AthertonArthur Perkins Bonney
What is uncertain: A later compilation says Atherton’s business failed; the mortgages are consistent with financial pressure but do not prove it.
Arthur and Emma Bonney, their daughter Clara, her husband Judge Charles S. Lilley, and the granddaughter who inherited the house: thirty-eight years in which the family’s weddings and funerals were held in these rooms.
The Bonneys’ only child marries the lawyer Charles Sumner Lilley, who had trained in her father’s office. Lilley’s 1921 obituary gives the date as 14 April 1891; a library account, citing the Boston Globe, places the ceremony in the drawing room on Fairmount Street.[sources]
DocumentedClara (Bonney) LilleyCharles Sumner Lilley
What is uncertain: Three dates are in print — 4, 14 and 15 April 1891; the 1891 newspapers are not online.
Arthur Bonney’s wife, born Emma (or Emeline) Augusta Call in 1828, dies. Her dates are carved on the family monument at Lowell Cemetery.[sources]
DocumentedEmma Augusta (Call) Bonney
Governor William E. Russell names Lilley — who had read law in Bonney’s office and served in the state senate — to the Massachusetts Superior Court. The Lowell Sun printed a long profile on 23 November 1893.[source]
DocumentedCharles Sumner Lilley
Three months after the birth of her daughter, Clara dies at her home on Sherman Street "after a long and painful illness". The funeral is held from her father’s house on Fairmount Street. The Sun called her "sympathetic and generous to a rare degree".[source]
DocumentedClara (Bonney) LilleyClara Bonney (Lilley) Dunbar
What is uncertain: The cause of death given in modern accounts (pyaemia, a form of sepsis) has not yet been checked against the certificate.
Bonney dies "at his home on Fairmount street", aged 68. His only descendant is his infant granddaughter, Clara Bonney Lilley. His son-in-law stays on; the house remains in the Bonney estate.[sources]
A bronze figure by Frank Edwin Elwell, "New Life", in a granite surround by the architects Brite & Bacon, is set up over the family lot at Lowell Cemetery. Lorado Taft’s 1903 history of American sculpture lists it as "property of Hon. Charles Sumner Lilley, called the Bonney Memorial, 1899"; the architectural press published it in January 1901.[sources]
Richards’s atlas of Lowell shows the parcel — 247,170 square feet — still in Bonney’s name ten years after his death, with the house, its curved drive and the carriage house near Whitman Street.[sources]
Documented
The city’s published tax lists show Charles S. Lilley at 236 Fairmount Street and the property assessed to Bonney’s heirs — the judge living in a house held for his daughter.[source]
AttributedCharles Sumner LilleyClara Bonney (Lilley) Dunbar
What is uncertain: Read from newspaper tax columns; the probate and deed chain for 1896–1925 has not yet been pulled.
Bonney’s granddaughter, a Wellesley graduate of 1915, marries a Boston lawyer "at the home of the bride", given away by her father Judge Lilley. The house "was decorated in an artistic manner".[source]
Charles Sumner Lilley dies at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston after a brief illness, aged 69. The Sun writes that he had "lived a secluded life among his books" since his wife’s death. On 20 April "many jurists" attend the funeral "at the late home, 236 Fairmount street". Burial is in the family lot at Lowell Cemetery.[source]
DocumentedCharles Sumner Lilley
Three owners in thirty years. The deeds record the sales and the division of the land; what daily life in the house was like in these decades is not yet documented.
"Bonney L. Dunbar, wife of Philip R. Dunbar, of Newton" conveys the property to Charles Brooks and Edith Ames Stevens of Tewksbury. Stevens was a textile manufacturer; whether the family ever lived here is not established.[sources]
DocumentedClara Bonney (Lilley) DunbarCharles Brooks Stevens
The 1931 city directory lists three households at 236 Fairmount Street — a company president, a purchasing agent and a third family — and later directories four to six. The owner, Charles Brooks Stevens, lived in Tewksbury. The 1981 survey’s "mid-20th century" conversion was in fact complete by 1931.[sources]
DocumentedCharles Brooks Stevens
What is uncertain: When the division began — under Stevens after 1925, or earlier — is not known.
The deed to Grace L. Murphy of Lowell describes two portions of "Lot 2" on a new plan — the first recorded division of the original estate. The 1946 directory lists Thomas J. Murphy, salesman, and Grace at 236 Fairmount: owners who lived in the house. They mortgaged it in 1949.[sources]
DocumentedGrace L. Murphy
The Herrons, of Rye, New Hampshire, hold the house for six years.[source]
Documented
For nearly half a century the house was a rest home run by a Lowell charity founded in 1901. It is the period most living people remember, and the one the archive documents least.
Mary Battles conveys her house at 15 Belmont Street to trustees to found a home "for the poor, the aged and the friendless"; it opens in April 1902. By 1931 the city directory places the Battles Home for Aged Men at 93 Rolfe Street, where it stays until the move to Fairmount Street. For its first half-century it has nothing to do with this house.[source]
AttributedThe Battles Home
The Herrons convey the property to "The Battles Home, a Corporation duly established by law and located in Lowell". Newspaper accounts from 2001 and 2011 say the home moved in 1956; the 1956 directory still shows private tenants here and the home on Rolfe Street, so the move came late in 1956 or in 1957. By 1966 the directory lists the home, its officers and five retired residents at this address.[sources]
DocumentedThe Battles Home
What is uncertain: 1956 (press) versus 1957 (deed) for the move; not yet resolved.
The owner’s 2022 notes state that in 1957 the main staircase was removed, an elevator installed and new stairs built around it. The 1957 plans in the archive should confirm this; until then it is reported, not verified.[source]
Unverified
What is uncertain: Owner recollection; plans not yet examined.
A Lowell planning-department surveyor completes Form B no. 494 for the Massachusetts Historical Commission: "Arthur Bonney Estate", Chateauesque, "the earliest of Lowell’s major late 19th century stone mansions", present use "rest home". Its photograph is the oldest dated image of the house found so far.[sources]
Documented
The district (NRHP reference 95000656) has Fairmount Street as its spine. The house’s listing as a contributing property should be confirmed in the nomination.[source]
Attributed
After about 47 years at Fairmount Street, housing up to around eleven residents at a time, the rest home closes. The foundation that ran it dated from 1901 — which is how a "104-year" figure sometimes appears in print.[sources]
DocumentedThe Battles Home
Sale, foreclosure, two empty years, and since 2011 a private home under continuing restoration — open to the neighborhood one night each year.
Sold to private buyers around 2005–06, the house is foreclosed in 2009; the lender takes title by a deed recorded in January 2010. By 2011 fixtures, cabinets and lighting had been stripped and the building needed major repairs to be occupied.[sources]
Documented
Bought from the foreclosing lender with a rehabilitation mortgage, the house becomes a private home again. The owner gives it the name Chateau Fairmount; the 2011 condition is recorded in several hundred photographs.[sources]
Documented
From 2012 the house opens to the neighborhood on 31 October. Twenty-two nine-foot candelabras were built by hand in 2018–19; on a good night, by the owner’s count, one to two thousand people walk up the drive.[source]
Attributed
Dates are given to the precision the record allows: a day where a deed or newspaper gives one, otherwise a month, a year or a range. Nothing has been invented to fill a gap. Research notes →