Location Chatham, Massachusetts NRHP Reference # 05000080 Added to NRHP 24 February 2005 | Built 1877 Opened 1877 | |
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Architectural styles Queen Anne style architecture, Italianate architecture Similar Monomoy Island, Chatham Light, Wellfleet Drive‑In Theater, Monomoy National Wildlife R | ||
The Mercelia Evelyn Eldridge Kelley House is a historic house at 2610 Main Street in Chatham, Massachusetts. The 2-1/2 story wood frame house was built in 1877, and has vernacular Italianate styling. It is significant for its association with the Eldridge family, who were major landowners in South Chatham and promoted its development. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Description and history
The Kelley House is set on the north side of Main Street (Massachusetts Route 28) in the village of South Chatham, just east of its junction with Morton Road. It is a 2-1/2 story wood frame house, with a front-gable roof, wooden clapboard siding, and a brick foundation. The main facade is three bays wide, with its main entrance in the leftmost bay, and the right two bays on the first floor taken up by a bay window. Three sash windows are asymmetrically arranged on the second level, with two above the bay window and one above the entrance. A round-arch window is set in the gable. The entry is sheltered by a hip-roofed scrolled hood with paired Italianate brackets, details also found on the bay window. Paired brackets are also found in the eave lines of the front and side elevations. There is a porch on the right elevation, running back to an ell extending to the rear. The porch has turned posts and geometric panels that are Queen Anne in style, along with Italianate-style brackets.
The Eldridge family were significant landowners and developers of South Chatham in the early 19th century. Mercelia Eldridge's father Levi operated a number of businesses on the Cape, was a bank president and Chatham town selectman, and held other prominent local posts. Mercelia and her second husband, Cyrus Kelley, built this house in 1877, on family-owned land. The house was not particularly elaborately decorated for the period, and was probably built using lumber from her father's lumber yard, and is one of the best-preserved of a series of houses built along Main Street after the American Civil War. The house remained in the hands of her descendants until 2002.