St. Botolph Club (Beebe House)

St. Botolph Club (Beebe House)

St. Botolph Club (Beebe House) Richard W. Longstreth

St. Botolph Club (Beebe House)

1890, McKim, Mead and White. 199 Commonwealth Ave.

Long occupied by the St. Botolph Club, the former Beebe House bears a debt to Alexander Parris's Appleton and Parker Houses at 39–40 Beacon Street (BH11). Borrowing from those dwellings of 1817–1819, the red brick double-bowfront facade with its marble trim continues Greek Revival elements with a Federal Revival feeling. The recessed entrance porch with its Ionic columns in antis replicates Parris' work unmistakably. Architects McKim, Mead and White were at this time producing increasingly academic designs, and there is a learned, albeit provincial, quality about the Beebe House that says much about Boston attitudes at the close of the nineteenth century.

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