30 Hudson Street

Exterior of Vernacular Cottage with Greek Revival and Queen Anne elements.
  • Historic Name: None
  • Uses: Single-family home
  • Date of Construction: Circa 1887
  • Style/Form: Vernacular Cottage with Greek Revival and Queen Anne elements
  • Architect/Builder: Unknown
  • Foundation: Rubble stone and concrete
  • Wall/Trim: Vinyl siding
  • Roof: Gable roof
  • Major Alterations: Most notable are new vinyl windows and shutters; and vinyl siding
  • Condition: Good
  • Included in Hengen survey? No
  • Related oral interview? No
  • Portuguese owned? Yes (1919)
  • Recorded by: Gregory Gray Fitzsimons and Marie Frank
  • Organization: UMass Lowell
  • Date: August 2023

Description

This 2-1/2 story wood-frame house rests on a stone foundation. It was one of four identical cottages erected around 1887 with the addresses 24, 26, 28, and 30 Hudson Street. This house, which is now 30 Hudson, was originally 24 Hudson. All four houses were the same size and contained Greek Revival and Queen Anne elements, with a projecting bay on the first floor, off-center front entrances, gable roofs with gable returns, and brick chimneys. Although altered with vinyl siding and windows, the house retains much of its 19th century form and styling.

History

Into the 1880s Hudson Street had a number of empty lots and appeared to be more of an alleyway. In fact, the city did not accept it as a public street until 1887 at which time eight cottages were under construction and an influential Back Central property holder, Thomas Knowles, successfully petitioned the Common Council to accept Hudson as a city street. The builder of four of the eight dwellings being constructed appears to have been Gershom C. Bassett (1845-1929). One of eleven children, Bassett was born in Orrington, Maine, and moved with his family to Dracut in the 1850s. His father, John S. Bassett, had been a farmer in Orrington, but purchased land in Dracut and settled there. At least three of the sons, including Gershom, became carpenters. The oldest, Jesse N. Bassett, moved to Lowell and worked in the Richmond Paper Mill on the Concord River. By 1860, John S. Bassett relocated to Lowell living on Wamesit Street and then Walnut Street on Chapel Hill, and engaging in the sale of agricultural tools. Jesse left the mill and, with Gershom, became a carpenter. By the 1880s the two brothers were well-known builders of houses in Lowell and both speculated in real estate in various parts of the city, including Chapel Hill. (Bassett Street, named for the Bassett family, was among the speculative real estate projects of the brothers.)

On Hudson Street the four Bassett-built cottages, when completed in 1887, were identical in appearance. Each had a projecting bay on the first floor and an off-center entrance, and each lot was about 1,880 square feet. The dwelling that would eventually have the address of 30 Hudson Street was sold by Gershom Bassett to James Ashworth (1841-1923), an English-born machinist who immigrated with his wife Elizabeth, also born in Manchester, England, to the United States in 1877 and settled in Lowell. The Ashworth family, which included eight children (all except one born in England) lived in the small Hudson Street cottage until 1892 when they moved to a larger house in the wealthier Highlands neighborhood. Ashworth sold the Hudson Street property to Patrick J. Byrne (1855-1916), who was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States in 1876. Byrne worked as the coachman for Eli W. Hoyt, the wealthy manufacturer of Hoyt’s “German Cologne,” and also invested in real estate. It appears he rented the Hudson Street house. (One of the tenants was fellow Irishman Patrick McEvoy, a house painter.) Byrne sold the property in 1898 to Michael Roarke (1851-1914).

Like Byrne, Roarke, who was also born in Ireland, rented out the Hudson Street house. Among his first tenants was a Portuguese family. (The family surname, Vice, was likely anglicized, with the head of the household named Frank—anglicized from Francisco. He was from the Azorean island of Faial and had immigrated to the United States in 1862, settling in Provincetown, Massachusetts, before moving to Lowell.) The younger members of the Portuguese family worked in various textile mills. By 1910 Michael Roarke, age 59 and retired, had moved into the Hudson Street house with some members of his family. He died in 1914, leaving his wife, Catherine, and six children. Catherine Roarke died five years later.

In 1919 Antonio Silva (1890-1953) bought the Hudson Street property (although the deed was recorded the following year). Born on the island of Madeira, Silva immigrated to the United State in 1909 and settled in Lowell. He met and married his wife Rita Bettencourt (1893-1981), who was born on the Azorean island of Graciosa in 1895, and had settled in Lowell with her family in 1903. When Antonio and Rita married in 1913 they were employed in a cotton mill. Prior to buying the Hudson Street property they lived in a tenement on Union Street. For a few years, after the death of Francisco Bettencourt, Rita’s father, members of the Bettencourt family, including Rita’s mother and two sisters, resided with the Silva family in the small Hudson Street cottage.

Rita and Antonio lived the remainder of their lives in the Hudson Street house. Rita gained some renown in 1940 when she appeared (with her photograph) in an advertisement for an over-the-counter laxative, produced in Baltimore, Maryland, providing personal testimony to the drug’s effectiveness. (That same the Federal Trade Commission took action against the company that produced Vendol for false advertising.) Of their seven children, Theresa (1926-2018), the oldest daughter, was well known in Lowell. In 1941, she graduated from the Butler Junior High School as valedictorian and was also a salutatorian when she graduated from Lowell High School in 1944. Her marriage in 1960 to Floyd Douglas Birdzell, the son of a federal judge and former member of the North Dakota Supreme Court, received considerable attention in the local press. (That Theresa Silva married someone who was not Portuguese Catholic was no longer a rarity for her generation.) Antonio, who died in 1953, had worked his entire life in Lowell in the textile industry, working his way up to loom fixer. He retired from the Newmarket Mills a few years before his death.

Sources

  • Sidney & Neff Map of Lowell, 1850
  • Lowell atlases, 1879, 1882 (revised 1888), 1906, 1924 & 1936.
  • Federal census, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1850, 1860, 1880, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 & 1950.
  • Lowell city directories, 1853, 1861, 1864-65, 1875-76, 1894, 1906, 1916, 1926, 1936 &1950.
  • Obituary of Michael Roarke, Lowell Sun, July 13, 1914.
  • Obituary of Patrick J. Byrne, Lowell Sun, April 4, 1916.
  • Obituary of Gershom C. Bassett, Lowell Sun, January 22, 1929.
  • Obituary of Antonio S. Silva, Lowell Sun, April 25, 1953.
  • “Never Thought I’d Feel So Good—Thanks Vendol,” Lowell Sun, May 23, 1940.
  • Federal Trade Commissions – Decisions, 1941, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), pp. 292-305.
  • “Theresa A. Silva Bride of Floyd D. Birdzell,” Lowell Sun, January 25, 1960.
  • Property deed, Bassett to Ashworth, November 14, 1887, book 193, pages 43-44, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Ashworth to Byrne, October 31, 1892, book 238, pages 228-229, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Byrne to Roarke, November 21, 1898, book 302, page 369, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Pinder to Silva, May 25, 1920, 1933, book 625, pages 407-408, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.