228 Marlborough is located on the south side of Marlborough, between Exeter and Fairfield, with 226 Marlborough to the east and 230 Marlborough to the west.

228 Marlborough was designed by architect William Whitney Lewis and built in 1879-1880 as the home of Dr. William Fiske Whitney, Jr. He is shown as the owner on the original building permit application (with Woodbury & Leighton as builders) dated November 25, 1879, and on an amended application (with Standish & Woodbury as builders), dated February 19, 1880. The house appears as 224 Marlborough in the 1880 City Directory but was renumbered as 228 Marlborough by 1881.

The house was completed and had become William Whitney’s home by the 1880-1881 winter season. He previously had lived at 90 Charles.

On October 25, William Whitney entered into an agreement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to purchase the land at 228 Marlborough. On December 8, 1879, he entered into a party wall agreement with Dr. Clarence Blake, who had contracted to purchase the land at 226 Marlborough. And on July 10, 1882, he purchased and took title to the land from the Commonwealth, after after the house had been completed.

Click here for an index to the deeds for 228 Marlborough, and click here for further information about the land between the south side of Marlborough and Alley 426, from Exeter to Fairfield.

William Whitney was trained as a physician and pathologist, and from 1879 was curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum of Harvard Medical School. He also served as medical expert for the state in numerous murder trials.

He married in April of 1888 to Louise Elliott.  She was a concert singer.  After their marriage, they lived at 228 Marlborough. They also maintained a home, The Hut, in Marblehead.

The Whitneys’ two sons, Lyman Fiske Whitney and William Elliott Whitney, were born and raised at 228 Marlborough.

He died in March of 1921.  Louise Whitney continued to live at 228 Marlborough with their sons, both of whom were engineers with Comstock & Westcott, Inc.

William Elliott Whitney married in June of 1923 to Rosalie Jones. After their marriage, they lived in Watertown and later in Philadelphia.

Louise Whitney and Lyman Fiske Whitney continued to live at 228 Marlborough and in Marblehead.

In the early 1920s, they were joined by Louise Whitney’s  niece, Mary Louise Elliott Littlehale, the daughter of James Merritt Littlehale and Gertrude (Elliott) Littlehale. She was born in 1908 in San Francisco and raised in Stockton, California; her mother had died in 1915 and her father in 1918.

Lyman Fiske Whitney married in 1931 to Mrs. Eunice Elizabeth (called Elizabeth) (Dalton) Rounsevelle.  After their marriage, they lived in Newtonville.

Louise Littlehale attended Bryn Mawr College and Yale Law School, continuing to make her Boston home with Louise Whitney. In 1939, she was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. She married in December of 1939 to Donald Bruce Mansfield, whom she met at Yale.  He was a lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington DC and later would become president of the Ohio Edison Company in Akron.  After their marriage, they lived in Washington.

Louise Whitney died in March of 1942.  228 Marlborough was inherited by Lyman and William Whitney.

228 Marlborough was shown as vacant in the 1943 and 1944 City Directories.

From about 1945 it was the home of Miss Mary F. Duffy. She had been a maid and later a cook in the Whitney household from 1920, and probably before, and had continued to live at 228 Marlborough until Louise Whitney’s death, after which she may have become housekeeper for Lyman and Elizabeth Whitney, who lived in Cambridge.

By 1947, Lyman and Elizabeth Whitney had made 228 Marlborough their home. He continued to be a research engineer and she was executive secretary of the Boston Committee on Alcoholism, of which she was a founder. Mary Duffy continued to live at 228 Marlborough as their housekeeper until her death in August of 1948.

Lyman Whitney died in May of 1957.  Elizabeth Whitney continued to live at 228 Marlborough until about 1959. She subsequently moved to South Duxbury.

On August 25, 1959, 228 Marlborough was purchased from Elizabeth Whitney and William Elliott Whitney by Jordi Folch-Pi and his wife, Willa (Babcock) Folch-Pi. They previously had lived in an apartment at 7 Exeter.

Jordi Folch-Pi was director of research at McLean Hospital and, from 1956, was Professor of Neurochemistry at Harvard Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the founders of chemistry of complex lipids and a pioneer in the development of neurochemistry. Willa (Babcock) Folch-Pi was a curator of manuscripts at the Francis Countway Medical Library and later served as associate academic dean of Tufts University in Medford.

Jordi Folch-Pi died in October of 1979.

On September 9, 1980, 228 Marlborough was purchased from Willa Folch-Pi by Theodore Monacelli, an architect specializing in urban design, and his wife, Dana  (Tolles) Monacelli. In August of 1980, prior to conveying the property, Willa B. Folch-Pi applied for (and subsequently received) permission to convert it from a single-family into three units.  With the application, she provided an affidavit indicating that she had entered into a purchase and sale agreement with the Monacellis and that it was their intention to “use the premises as a multi-residence dwelling and will occupy one unit themselves.”  Theodore Monacelli was shown as the architect for the remodeling.

On July 31, 1985, the Monacellis converted the property into three condominium units, the 228 Marlborough Street Condominium. The Monacellis sold the units and they subsequently changed hands.

On March 25, 2009, Kenneth Morris Attie and his wife, Heliana Tavares Attie, purchased Unit 1 of 228 Marlborough, on April 2, 2009, they purchased Unit 2, and on January 4, 2010, they purchased Unit 3. On September 28, 2012, they removed the condominium status for the building, returning it to a single-family dwelling.

228 Marlborough was assessed as a single-family dwelling in 2024.