165 Beacon is located on the south side of Beacon, between Berkeley and Clarendon, with 163 Beacon to the east and 167 Beacon to the west.

165 Beacon designed by Charles Amos Cummings (of the firm of Cummings and Sears) and built in 1868-1869 for John Haldane Flagler and his wife, Anna Harper (Converse) Flagler. He was a manufacturer of boiler iron and tubing, and founder of the National Tube Company.

Anna Flagler purchased the land for 165 Beacon on May 9, 1868, from real estate dealer Henry Whitwell. The land was part parcel with a 78 foot frontage that Henry Whitwell had purchased on October 21, 1861, from shipping merchant and US Congressman Samuel Hooper. The parcel had been acquired from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on September 10, 1859, by George Goss and Norman Carmine Munson, the contractors responsible for filling the Commonwealth’s Back Bay lands. On the same day, they had sold it to banker Franklin Haven (one of the three Commissioners on the Back Bay responsible for the sale of the Commonwealth’s land), who then sold it on December 17, 1859, to Samuel Hooper.

Henry Whitwell subdivided the 78 foot parcel into a 19 foot 6 inch lot at 161 Beacon, an 18 foot lot at 163 Beacon, a 20 foot lot at 165 Beacon, and a 19 foot lot at 167 Beacon, leaving an additional one foot six inches at the western boundary of his land. He sold the lot at 161 Beacon in August of 1863 to architect James Hovey Rand, who already was building a house on it. After it was completed, he offered it for sale at public auction and Henry Whitwell purchased it and made it his home.

Henry Whitwell retained the lot at 163 Beacon. In February of 1865, he sold the lot at 167 Beacon to Arthur Devens, and in November of 1865 he sold him the additional one foot six inch strip of land (which Arthur Devens sold that same day to Paul Wallis, who combined it with the land where 169 Beacon was built). Henry Whitwell sold the lot at 165 Beacon to Anna Flagler in May of 1868. In June of 1870, after the Flaglers had built 165 Beacon, he bought back the lot at 167 Beacon, and subsequently built houses at 163 Beacon and at 167 Beacon.  When the houses were completed, he moved from 161 Beacon to 167 Beacon and sold 163 Beacon.

Click here for an index to the deeds for 165 Beacon, and click here for further information about the land between the south side of Beacon and Alley 420, from Berkeley to Clarendon.

On June 9, 1868, the Boston Herald reported that John Flagler had filed a Notice of Intention to Build at 165 Beacon.  Neither the Herald article nor Bainbridge Bunting’s Houses of Boston’s Back Bay attribute the house to a specific architect. However, a January 2, 1869, Boston Post article on new buildings in Boston during the previous year describes it as “a four-story brick dwelling, with freestone trimmings, 20×60, by John H. Flagler, costing about $30,000” and indicates that it was designed by “Cummings, architect.”

John and Anna Flagler lived at 85 Marlborough. After 165 Beacon was built. It was purchased from Anna Flagler on September 23, 1869, by her father, dry goods commission merchant James Cogswell Converse. He was a widower and lived in Southborough.

On December 1, 1869, 165 Beacon was purchased from James Converse by dry goods merchant Southworth Shaw, Jr. He and his wife, Abby Atwood (Shurtleff) Shaw, made it their home. They previously had lived at 13 Bowdoin.

Southworth Shaw died in January of 1875.  Abby Shaw continued to live at 165 Beacon with their unmarried children: Henry Southworth Shaw, Abby Shaw, Franklin Allerton Shaw, and Adela Shaw.

Henry Shaw, treasurer of the Pemberton Company and the Stevens Linen Works, married in June of 1880 to Louisa Stuart Towne and moved to 339 Commonwealth. Abby Shaw married in June of 1883 to Thomas Parker Proctor, a lawyer, and moved to Jamaica Plain.  Franklin and Adela Shaw continued to live at 165 Beacon with their mother until her death in September of 1886.

By 1887, Franklin Shaw had moved to 203 St. Botolph Street.  Adela Shaw moved soon thereafter to 396 Marlborough to live with her sister, Sarah (Shaw) Davis, the widow of Samuel Crafts Davis, Jr.

165 Beacon was not listed in the 1889 Blue Book.

On April 1, 1889, Southworth and Abby Shaw’s eldest son, Dr. Benjamin Shurtleff Shaw, a physician, purchased his siblings’ interests in 165 Beacon. He and his wife, Amelia Copeland (Tribou) Shaw, lived at 28 Marlborough.

165 Beacon became the home of Benjamin and Amelia Shaw’s son-in-law and daughter, banker William Endicott, III, and Helen Southworth (Shaw) Endicott, who married in June of 1889. They also maintained a home at Hospital Point in Beverly.

Benjamin Shurtleff Shaw died in May of 1893, and Amelia Shaw lived with the Endicotts during the 1893-1894 winter season. She then moved to 80 Beacon. By the 1896-1897 season, she had resumed living at 28 Marlborough.

The Endicotts continued to live at 165 Beacon in 1908, but had moved to 180 Beacon by 1909.

On May 1, 1908, 165 Beacon was purchased from Helen Endicott (who had inherited it from her father) by Mary Agnes Kenney. In June of 1908, she married Dr. John Taylor Bottomley, and they made it their home. Prior to their marriage, he had been a lodger at 139 Beacon and she had lived in Roxbury with her parents, James W. Kenney, a brewer and real estate dealer, and Ellen Frances (O’Rourke) Kenney.

John Bottomley was a physician and surgeon.  He was surgeon-in-chief at Carney Hospital from 1910, succeeding Dr. John Cumming Munro, who lived at 173 Beacon and died in December of 1910.

The Bottomleys raised their five children at 165 Beacon: John Kenney Bottomley, James William Bottomley, George Taylor Bottomley, Ellen Mary Bottomley, and May Kenney Bottomley.

John Bottomley died in December of 1925.

During the 1926-1927 winter season, Mary Bottomley and her five children traveled to Europe. Her father had died in June of 1925 and her mother joined them on the trip.

While they were abroad, 165 Beacon was the home of Alfred Curtis and his wife, Helen G. (McCarthy) Curtis, whose daughter, Mary, was a debutante that season. Their usual residence was their farm in Concord, Massachusetts.

The Bottomleys and Ellen Kenney returned in the spring of 1927. Ellen Kenney lived at 165 Beacon during the 1927-1928 winter season but the Bottomleys lived elsewhere or possibly traveled abroad again (Ellen Kenney was listed at 165 Beacon in the 1928 Blue Book and the City of Boston Lists of Residents, but Mary Bottomley was not). By the 1928-1929 season, Ellen Kenney had moved to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at 15 Arlington and the Bottomleys were living at 165 Beacon once again.

Ellen Bottomley married in January of 1942 to Arthur Fiedler, the noted conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Prior to their marriage, he had lived in an apartment at 235 Commonwealth. After their marriage, they lived in Brookline.

George Bottomley, a physician, married in October of 1944 to Lydia Fuller of 150 Beacon, the daughter of former Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller and Viola (Davenport) Fuller.  After their marriage, they lived in Rye Beach, New Hampshire (he was stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital).

John Bottomley, an insurance executive, married in November of 1945 to Helen Catherine Oehmann.  After their marriage, they lived in Brookline.

James Bottomley, an accountant and later bursar of Boston University, married in November of 1948 to Mary Bernice (Harrington) Rolf, the widow of Carl Francis Rolf, a Springfield, Massachusetts, police officer killed in November of 1938 during a vice squad raid. After their marriage, they lived in Jamaica Plain.

Mary Bottomley continued to live at 165 Beacon until her death in May of 1963.  Her unmarried daughter, May, lived with her until the mid-1950s, when she moved to New York to become a hospital administrator.

On March 16, 1964, 165 Beacon was acquired from Mary Bottomley’s estate by Rose Rochelle, trustee of the Rochelle Realty Trust.

Rose Rochelle (Goldberg) Levin Glazer Bornstein was the former wife of Reuben Levin and Max L. Glazer. She was a retired pianist and entertainer who performed as (and legally changed her name to) Rose Rochelle. She had married in the early 1960s to Morris Bornstein, after which she was known as Rose Bornstein. He died or they separated by 1965. She owned and lived in an apartment house at 273 Beacon, and also owned several other apartment buildings and lodging houses in the Back Bay and South End. In 1965, she would briefly own 163 Beacon.

In June of 1964, she applied for (and subsequently received) permission to convert 165 Beacon from a single-family dwelling into ten apartments.

On July 8, 1964, 164 Beacon was acquired from Rose Rochelle by John N. Anderson and Leo H. Berube, Jr., doing business as Berson Associates.

On December 31, 1968, 165 Beacon was acquired from Berson Associates by Aldo G. Fioravanti and Luca J. P, Fioravanti, trustees of the Grilli Investment Trust. On September 22, 1978, it was acquired from them by Jacques A. deSpoelberch.

On September 22, 1978, 165 Beacon was acquired by Joseph J. Hoffman, and on July 21, 1980,  it was acquired from him by Beacon Development Associates, Inc., of which he was the president and treasurer. On the same day, it converted the property into ten condominium units, the 165 Beacon Street Condominium.

On June 6, 2011, the condominium owners amended the master deed to reduce the number of units from ten to eight.