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On the corner of Walcott Avenue and Racquet Road, stands a house, actually three houses, that look both old, even Victorian, and new. One of these three buildings is in fact the original house built in 1889-1890 by Lt. John Van Benthuysen Bleecker and his wife, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Stearns Bleecker.
On February 28, 1889, the Bleeckers purchased 16,700-square-feet of land from John T. Cottrell for $1,160. The deed included a hand-drawn map of the property. Lizzie Bleecker selected her brother, John Goddard Stearns, architect and founder of Peabody and Stearns, to design the summer cottage, taking advantage of the beautiful views of the bay. The house was in fact a box, 30 feet by 30 feet by 30 feet, with a hip roof and large center chimney, but without the typical Victorian ornamentation. It became known as “Bleecker’s Box.”
The Bleecker photo album in the JHS collection captures photos of friends and family at the Box in the 1890s.
The Box stayed in the Bleecker family, passing to their children, John Stearns Bleecker and Elsie Bleecker Waymouth in 1922. Mr. and Mrs. John S. Bleecker spent summers there and were listed in the Jamestown Directory 1922-23 at “The Box cottage off Walcott.”
In 1945, Richard Smith Chew and Mary Smith “Skip” Chew bought “The Box” and much of the contents. Their son, Bill, spent summers chopping back the invasive brush surrounding the house, leading Skip to rename the cottage “Brushwood.”
Three generations of Chews enjoyed “Brushwood,” but in 2013, the house was sold to the Geoffrey Tuff family. In 2021, the Tuffs began a full-scale renovation, removing additions, lifting and shifting the house south, blasting out rock, and installing a full foundation. Once the original house was moved onto the new foundation, two new 30-foot-square boxes were built. Over the next two years, the individual boxes were connected on the exterior to visually read as one home. Like most siblings, they have unique interior personalities.
While the town lists the building as “custom, year built 2021,” the original Box is alive and well with the stone on Walcott Avenue reading “Brushwood.”
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