Title
Description
| Year Built: Permit Date: |
1935 1/9/1935 |
| Architect: | Private Plans (Earlier plans by Royal Barry Wills) |
| Builder: | Maurice Dunlavy |
| Cost to Build: | $7,300 |
| Owner (On Permit Date): |
Margaret J. (Mrs. John J.) Connolly, 675 Hammond Street |
| First Residents: | Benjamin & Ethel Waldstein |
One of the last houses built during the first phase of Blake Park's development, 484 Washington Street appears to have been based on a design by Royal Barry Wills. A building permit listing Wills as the architect and his regular Blake Park partner Maurice Dunlavy as the builder was issued in March 1933. The cost on that permit was $6,000, the same as the Dunlavy/Wills house built next door at 490 Washington that same year.
In fact, the designs of the two houses are almost the same, especially on the inside. But a second building permit was issued in 1935, with "private plans" written in in the space for architect, and this is apparently the one that ultimately led to the construction of the house. It's possible -- I'm speculating here -- that the owner asked for some changes to the design and that Wills was either unwilling or unavailable to make them. The changes could then have been made without him, and his name left off the new permit.
In any case, the first residents of 484 Washington Street were Benjamin and Ethel Waldstein, who had previously lived on Beaconsfield Road. Benjamin Waldstein (1895-1978) was a salesman of cotton waste. He and his wife Ethel (1895-1978), both children of Russian immigrants, had one son. They lived in this house until the early 1970s.