The oldest purpose-built artists' studio in Boston, Fenway Studios was developed by a committee of artists with the financial backing of a group of their patrons. The artists asked for uninterrupted northern light (assured by the site adjacent to the railroad), a range of studio sizes, and a rent structure appropriate to their incomes. Each of the tall four-story levels on Ipswich Street actually represents a two-story studio space with two levels for kitchens and bedrooms behind, entered from common corridors at the upper-level rear. The clinker brick and stucco exterior documents the influence of the recently established (1897) Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston. Fenway Studios provided working residences for many leading artists in the early twentieth century, including painters William Paxton and Joseph De Camp and sculptors Katherine Lane Weems and Amelia Peabody, and still serves its original function.