Revere Street was originally named Virginia Avenue. One of the Greenough daughters married into a family from North Carolina so many of the street names of Sumner Hill reflect this Tidewater affiliation (Newbern, Carolina). But as the Civil War made those names less desirable some streets got new names.
This house dates from 1880 and is considered one of the finest examples of the Queen Anne Style (with stick style surface treatments) in the Boston area. It was designed by the architects Ware and Van Brunt who are best known for their design of Memorial Hall at Harvard University, their alma mater. In 1865, William Ware founded the MIT School of Architecture, the first in the United States. The residents of Sumner Hill brought in the biggest names in Boston architects to build their houses.