29 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.

29 Lowell Road, one of the last two houses built on Lowell Road, was the home initially of Walter and Maud Haker. Walter Haker, born in Ohio in 1884, came to Massachusetts some time before World War I and got into the real estate business. (His draft registration card from 1917 or 1918 shows him working as a building superintendent for Harry Squires, who moved to 61 Blake Road couple of years after the Hakers moved here.)

Living with the Hakers as a lodger at this address for much of the time they were here was Henry Klous, head of a wool manufacturing firm in Lawrence, MA from about 1885 until about 1941. (He was probably Maud Haker's father.) Klous, like Harry Squires, was involved, perhaps as a middle man, in some of the complicated real estate transactions that led to the transfer of ownership of the Blake Park properties to the Interurban Estates after the collapse of the Inter-City Trust.

The Hakers were in the Street List at this address from 1930 to 1938. Klous was listed with them in 1931 to 1933 and again in 1937 and 1938. The 1930 U.S. Census listed the residents as: Walter H. Haker, 42, real estate broker, born Ohio; Maud Haker, 42; Henry Klous, 66, (lodger), wool manufacturer; and Harriett McLain, 19, servant, born Canada. The house was valued at $16,000.

Following the Hakers and Klaus at 29 Lowell were Louis K. and Flora K. Diamond, previously at 93 Toxteth Street. Louis Diamond (1902-1999) who the New York Times called "a pediatric legend" when he died, was a pioneer in the treatment of blood diseases in children, earning him the sobriquet "father of pediatric hematology."

Diamond was born in the Ukraine and came to the U.S. at the age of 2. Growing up in Manhattan, he came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard (Class of 1923) and the Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1927). He was for many years professor of pediatrics at Harvard and assistant chief of staff at Children's Hospital. From 1948 to 1950, he was on leave as medical director of the American Red Cross' National Blood Program.

Diamond and his wife Flora (1906-1998), a teacher and linguist, had two children. Their son Jared (1937- ) is a physiologist and a biologist and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) and other books.

The Diamond family lived on Lowell Road until 1968 when Louis Diamond retired from Harvard and took a position as adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of California in San Francisco.