Seth Adams House
building in Massachusetts, United States

The Seth Adams House is a historic house at 72 Jewett Street, in the Newton Corner village of Newton, Massachusetts. Probably built in the mid-1850s, it is a well-preserved example of Italianate architecture. During the 1870s it was home to Seth Adams, one of Newton's wealthiest residents. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
Description and history
The Seth Adams House stands in a residential area on the northwest side of Newton Corner, at the northeast corner of Pearl and Jewett Streets, on a small lot with a low stone retaining wall on the street-facing sides. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, with a gabled roof and clapboarded exterior. It is oriented facing south toward Pearl Street, but its main facade is largely obscured by mature plantings. The eaves and gables are adorned with evenly spaced Italianate brackets, and the front windows have bracketed sills and lintels. The main facade is three bays wide on the first floor and four on the second, with entrance at the center, framed by sidelight and transom windows. A single-story porch extends across the front, supported by latticed square posts.
“Seth Adams House” enters the record as building in Massachusetts, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Seth, Adams and House can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7456425. Authority coordinates are 42.359, -71.191. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seth Adams House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.