George Ruggles, a Jamaican planter who married into the Vassall family, bought this property in 1764 and probably erected the elegant house at that time. Under a hipped roof with two interior chimneys, the five-bay clap-boarded facade rises three stories, the top windows much shorter than those below. The columned and pedimented entrance porch and the sympathetic twentieth-century fence at the street provide visual richness. Patriot Thomas Fayerweather traded his Boston property to Ruggles, a Tory, and allowed its use as a military hospital. In 1827 William Wells converted the house into a boys' school; a later owner sold most of the forty-five acres for development.