624-626 Central Street

Picture of the front of 624-626 Central Street, two and half story house.

  • Historic Name: None
  • Uses: Residences
  • Date of Construction: Circa 1888
  • Style/Form: Queen Anne
  • Architect/Builder: Unknown
  • Foundation: Stone and concrete
  • Wall/Trim: Vinyl siding
  • Roof: Pyramidal
  • Major Alterations: Unknown
  • Condition: Good
  • Included in Hengen survey? No
  • Related oral interview? No
  • Portuguese owned? Yes (by 1961)
  • Recorded by: Gregory Gray Fitzsimons and Marie Frank
  • Organization: UMass Lowell
  • Date: July 2023

Description

This 2-1/2 story wood-frame building was originally a four-family residence with front and rear entrances. It has Queen Anne elements with projecting bays, flanking the two front doors and features ornate woodwork and a pedimented roof above the front entrance that faces Hosford Square. The pyramidal roof has three pyramidal-roof dormers and two brick chimneys. The building rests on a stone foundation. Although the interior was subdivided to create a series of apartments and vinyl siding was added, the building retains much of its original appearance. It contributes visually to the historic character of Hosford Square.

History

Until the late 1880s, a large lot on Hosford Square, at the corner of Central and Mill streets, remained undeveloped. Dr. James J. McCarty, a well-known Irish-American physician whose practice was downtown and the owner of a house on an adjacent lot facing Hosford Square (614 Central Street) acquired this lot, as well as adjoining properties on Ames and Mill streets. McCarty had a builder construct a large four-family house on the vacant lot next to his residence. The builder’s design included a number of Queen Anne elements in contrast to the Second-Empire style Samuel Wood mansion on the opposite side of Mill Street.

McCarty sparked considerable controversy by constructing a building on this lot because a state commission had chosen this site as the location of an armory. McCarty led neighborhood opposition to the commission’s decision and, with the aid of Democratic political support especially among several Irish-American politicians in the city, McCarty thwarted the state’s action. (In the end, the state built the armory on the corner of Westford and Grand streets in what would become the Hale-Howard section of Lowell.) McCarty, who served as head of the city’s board of health, later purchased the Hosford House and lived there with his family until 1920 when he relocated to Chicago. (He died in 1928.) McCarty sold the property to Kate Winn in 1919, but by the mid-1930s the Lowell Institution for Savings held title to it. Prior to the 1930s, most of the residents in the four-family dwelling were Irish Americans. But by the mid-1930s two Portuguese families lived at 624 Central Street. One was headed by Frank Agrella, a loom fixer, and the other by Manuel Gonsalves. Other Portuguese immigrants lived at this address in the post-World War II period, including Antonio Lima, who immigrated from the Azorean island of Graciosa in the mid-1960s and settled in Lowell. The Agrella family owned the property by 1961.

Sources

  • Lowell Atlases, 1882, 1896, 1924, 1936.
  • Federal Census, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1940.
  • “The New Armory Site,” Lowell Sun, August 25, 1888.
  • “The Amory to Go to Ward 4,” Lowell Sun, January 5, 1889.
  • Property deed, James J. McCarty to Kate Winn, et al, August 4, 1919, book 607, pages 489-491, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Armand Santos, Jr. to Rose Agrella, et al, August 11, 1961, book 1524, page 387, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Obituary of Antonio Lima, Lowell Sun, December 28, 1974.
  • Lowell city directories for 1888, 1892, & 1920.