Here is another lovely Queen Anne house which dates from 1886 and another abode that housed visionaries. There is quite a collection that lived in this little area! Sumner Hill really does have one of the finest collections of Queen Anne houses in the Boston area and here is another great example. It’s asymmetrical (the entrance is on the side) and the opposite side has a typical Queen Anne feature – a rounded two-story tower with a conical “candle snuffer” roof. There are contrasting service textures (clapboards, shingles on the decorative elements). The chimney has terra cotta trim and rises up to bisect the gable on the roof – running right between two windows.
Between 1918 and 1921 this house was the final home of Judith Winsor Smith (1821-1921) who was an active reformer. She was an abolitionist and also a suffragist. In fact, she started working on woman’s suffrage in the 1840s and was able to see it through to the successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She voted for the first time in 1920 at the age of 99 and was called “the oldest suffragist of them all.” In April of that year, the Globe quoted her as saying, “For 70 years I have been in the fight for woman’s suffrage, and I want every woman to go to the polls the first election they are allowed to vote. Vote as you can, but vote anyway, whether it rains or not.”
She lived here with her daughter, Zilpha Smith. Zilpha was general secretary of Boston Associated Charities and a leader in the “scientific charity organization” movement. She established training classes for charity workers who went out to conduct home visits to poor families in 1888. Eventually, she became Associate Director of the newly founded Boston School for Social Workers (established by Simmons College and Harvard College) in 1904. It is now the Simmons Graduate School of Social Work, the oldest one in the country.