32 Lowell Road

This house, like all of the houses on Lowell Road with the exception of the pre-development 8-10 and 12-14 Lowell, was built by Maurice Dunlavy and designed by Royal Barry Wills.

Theodore and Virginia Klumpp, the first residents of 37 Lowell Road, only lived here for one year. Theodore Klumpp, a physician, was a 1928 graduate of Harvard Medical School. The Klumpps moved to New Haven, Connecticut after living in Brookline. The 1930 U.S. Census listed the residents as: Theodore Klumpp, 27, physician, born New York; Virginia Klumpp, 25, born New York; and Mary C. Klumpp, <1.

From 1933 to 1937, Hamilton and Katherine Heard were listed at this address. Hamilton Heard (born 1906) was at various times a teacher, a lawyer, an investment counselor, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and administrative vice president of Northeast Airlines. He died in the 1960s.

The next owners of 32 Lowell were Irving and Shirley Saunders. They had lived briefly at 33 Somerset Road in Blake Park a few years earlier. Irving Saunders (1903-1979) was a hotel owner and real estate developer who, at various times, owned the Lenox Hotel, the Copley Square Hotel, and the Park Plaza. He was was also involved with commercial and residential properties and the development of shopping centers.

Saunders, in a newspaper interview, said that the family real estate business began when his father Jacob, who came to Boston from Lithuania and in the 1880s, began buying buildings in the South End. “I grew up in that area,” he said, “and I would collect rents for my father. I always carried tools with me to do repairs as I went along.” The family business was taken over by Irving Saunders' sons after his retirement.

The Saunders lived on Lowell Road until the early 1960s. Irving Saunders died in 1979. Shirley, born in 1907, died in 2000.