8 Partridge Road, Lexington offered at $879,0000. SOLD: $905,000. Contact us to request private showings or with any questions.
Photos by Lara Kimmerer. Exterior twilight shot by John Tse. Click any to enlarge and view as slide show.
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- Main level
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- Lower level
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- Detached garage
First offering of this meticulously maintained Mid-Century-Modern gem in five decades. Located across from the recently refurbished, beloved Paint Rock Pool, and a stone’s throw from the 2015-new Estabrook school, this bright five-bedroom, three-full-bath, 2,488 s.f. home will not last long. Sited back from the road and striking a handsome profile on a 30,871 s.f. lot, this house has central air, a master suite with en suite bath, and a detached two-car garage. The living room has soaring ceilings and accesses a front-to-back screened porch. The semi-above-grade lower level of this split-entrance floor plan features a family room with a second fireplace, a full bath, and two of the bedrooms. There is a deck off of the kitchen overlooking the backyard, with woods beyond. Picture yourself enjoying the country-club-like swimming pool without having to worry about maintenance.
- Oil-fired hot air heat
- Centrail air
- Hardwood floors under first floor carpet
- Built in 1961
- Pool optional $550/season, plus one time $100 capital fee
The architecture and the neighborhood
Built in 1961-1962 by Holiday Homes of Wayland, A.K.A. a builder named Eugene C. Roberts, the design of 8 Partridge Road was from the Architectural Planning Associates at 152 Newbury Street, Boston. The principals of that firm were Sandford R. Greenfield and Paul J. Carroll. Later, it seems that they had a firm called Carroll and Greenfield, Architects, before going off on their own. The house is similar in layout to a Deck House, but is less rustic and is more finished than most Deck Houses. Indeed, it has much in common with some of the TAC-designed homes in Five Fields, and has a significantly more substantive feel than most Techbuilt houses, which were modular and light by design.
The land for the Turning Mill neighborhood was purchased by the Techbuilt Corporation. Most people in Lexington know the area as Turning Mill, but it started out being referred to as Middle Ridge. Though it is now a large area of eight or nine streets, it started around Demar Road, with Techbuilt houses designed by Carl Koch, before growing further north and west and incorporating other modern designs, most notably, the Peacock Farm-style house plan designed by Walter Pierce, who along with Danforth Compton founded Lexington’s Peacock Farm neighborhood on the other side of town. This design was licensed out to other developers, as was the case here in Turning Mill. There have also been some Deck Houses built. The expanded part of the area is now referred to as “Upper Turning Mill.”
Residents love the area due to its proximity to Estabrook Elementary school (adjacent) and because it offers membership in the country-club-like Paint Rock swimming pool. It also borders the vast Paint Mine conservation area, with beautiful walking trails. The Lexpress bus runs through. And a quick zip takes you down backroads to Whole Foods, Staples, Super Stop & Shop, Marshall’s, and so on in Bedford, or back the other way into the center of Lexington. And it is not far from Route 128.
Here is the swimming pool from 2012:
Research in part via Lexington Historic Survey, which notes:
The fourteen houses constructed as part of Section IV, are all located on Turning Mill Road. The dwellings were for themost part constructed in 1960 and 1962 with three houses constructed in 1965-6. Building department records indicate that the houses were all constructed by Eugene C. Roberts of Wayland (also known as Holiday Homes). The houses in this area were built according to several basic models, designed by Architectural Planning Associates (152 Newbury Street, Boston).
Several of the houses in this area, including 19 Turning Mill Road and 26 Turning Mill Road are chalet-like dwellings with symmetrical gablefronts, sheathed in vertical red cedar siding with second story balconies. Building plans describe this as “Turning Mill House No. 3″. Many of the houses in this section consist of elongated Raised Ranch-style dwellings with overhanging eaves and cantilevered canopies suspended over the entrance. Several houses within this area were designed by other architects including 18 Turning Mill Road, a cedar and concrete residence designed in 1960 by Henneberg and Hejineberg of Cambridge… The house at 28 Turning Mill Road was built according to plans by Scholz Homes of Toledo, Ohio… The plan is dated 1957 and is described as a California Contemporary, plan 11063. The…house at 30 Turning Mill Road was designed in 1961 by Lucy Rapperport of Lincoln.
My own observation is that the term, “raised ranch,” is misleading in the above remarks. That descriptor now generally refers to a house that might have a facade like a colonial, but built on a slab, so that one enters on the lowest level. Kitchen, living, and dining rooms are generally found on the second and highest floors. Like 8 Partridge, there are quite a few houses in this neighborhood that look like a “ranch” house that had been “raised,” but the entrances are “split,” so that you can take a few steps up to the main floor, or a few steps down to the lower level. So it is more accurately described like the Peacock Farm split-entry style, or more simply, “a split.”
