8 Fairfield is located on the east side of Fairfield, between Beacon and Marlborough, with 347 Beacon to the north, across Alley 417, and 10 Fairfield to the south.

8 Fairfield was designed by Sturgis and Brigham, architects, and built in 1879-1880 by Weston & Shepard, builders, one of two contiguous houses (8-10 Fairfield) designed as a symmetrical pair with stepped (curvilinear) Dutch-style gables. Henry Lee Higginson, an investment banker, is shown as the owner on the original building permit applications for both houses, dated November 12, 1879; he did not own the land on which the houses were built and it is unclear why he is shown as the owner on the permit application.

The land on which 8-10 Fairfield were built was owned by shipping merchant and real estate investor John Lowell Gardner.  He and his wife, Catharine Elizabeth (Peabody) Gardner, lived at 182 Beacon.  John L. Gardner had acquired the land on October 1, 1879, from retired druggist William Gardiner Prescott. William Prescott also had owned the land where 12 Fairfield would be built, which he sold to Georgina Lowell on the same day. In her deed, he specified an easement for a ten foot strip of land at the rear of 12 Fairfield to be “forever kept open and unencumbered for the benefit of air, light, and prospect to and from the estate of said Gardner and shall never be built upon in any manner whatsoever without the consent of said Gardner, his heirs and assigns.”

All three lots were part of a larger parcel originally purchased from the Boston Water Power Company on February 16, 1863, by Daniel Davies, Jarvis Dwight Braman, and Grenville Temple Winthrop Braman. Grenville Braman was treasurer of the Boston Water Power Company, Jarvis Braman was his brother (and later president of the company), and Daniel Davies, a housewright and master carpenter, was Grenville Braman’s father-in-law.

Click here for an index to the deeds for 8 Fairfield; click here for more information on the land at 277-279 Marlborough and 8-10-12 Fairfield; and click here for further information about all of the land between the north side of Marlborough and Alley 417, from Exeter to Fairfield.

On December 3, 1880, 8 Fairfield was purchased from John L. Gardner by James Jackson. In the deed, John Gardner also provided an easement for a ten foot strip of land behind 10 Fairfield (which he still owned) connecting with the comparable strip behind 12 Fairfield, to give 8 Fairfield access to Marlborough Street.

James Jackson and his wife, Rebecca Nelson (Borland) Jackson, made 8 Fairfield their home. They previously had lived at 302 Berkeley with his mother, Sarah Ann (Boott) Jackson, widow of Francis Henry Jackson.

James Jackson was a broker with the investment banking firm Lee, Higginson & Co. (Henry Lee Higginson’s firm). He previously had been a real estate and mortgage broker in partnership with his father (who died in July of 1873).  Rebecca Nelson (Borland) Jackson’s sister, Julia, was the wife of Francis Lee Higginson, Henry Lee Higginson’s brother and business partner.

James and Rebecca Jackson’s three children – Madeline Jackson, James Jackson, Jr., and Rebecca Borland Jackson – lived with them.

Madeline Jackson married in November of 1898 to George Cabot Lee, Jr., of 264 Beacon, an investment banker with Lee, Higginson & Co. After their marriage, they lived in Chestnut Hill.

In September of 1899, the Jacksons purchased a second home in Manchester, Massachusetts.

James Jackson died in April of 1900.

In December of 1900, Rebecca Jackson and her daughter, Rebecca, traveled to Europe for an extended stay. James Jackson, Jr., was a student at Harvard.

During the 1900-1901 winter season, 8 Fairfield was the home of Richard Codman, an interior designer and decorator. He was a recent widower, his wife, Susan Williams (Sargent) Codman, having died in October of 1898. Three of their five children lived with him: Susan Sargent Codman, Alfred Codman, and Margaret Codman. Their son, Richard Codman, Jr., was a lawyer in Colorado and later an orchard owner in Fair Oaks, California, and their daughter, Lucy, was married to Rebecca Jackson’s brother, William Gibson Borland, a banker, and lived in New York City.

The Codmans’ usual residence was on Cottage Avenue in West Roxbury.  According to Jeffrey Karl Ochsner’s H. H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works, after buying the house in 1868 the Codmans commissioned H. H. Richardson to design a new home for them. The “resulting design cost about twice what Codman had hoped” and, instead, Richard Codman “abandoned plans for a new house and added to the existing one following a design of his own.”  In the 1920s, the property became the site of a new building for the Roxbury Latin School.

Susan Codman married in April of 1901 to her first cousin, John Sturgis Codman of 57 Marlborough, an electrical engineer, the son of Richard Codman’s half-brother, Charles Russell Codman and his wife, Lucy (Sturgis) Codman.  After their marriage, John and Susan Codman lived at 841 Boylston.

Alfred Codman, a stockbroker, married in September of 1901 to Lydia Eliot of 185 Beacon. After their marriage, they lived in an apartment at the Grosvenor at 259 Beacon and then at 3 Fairfield.

By the 1901-1902 winter season, Richard Codman and his daughter, Margaret, had moved back to West Roxbury.

Rebecca Jackson resumed living at 8 Fairfield and also continued to maintain a home in Manchester and later in Bar Harbor.

Her daughter, Rebecca, married in October of 1902 to Robert Haydock Hallowell, an electrical contractor.  After their marriage, they lived at The Beresford at 845 Boylston and then in Medford.

James Jackson, Jr., graduated from Harvard in June of 1904 and married that same month to Rachel Brooks. After their marriage, they lived at 136 Beacon.

Rebecca (Borland) Jackson lived at 8 Fairfield until the early 1930s. She continued to be listed there in the Blue Books for 1934 and 1935, which noted she would spend the winter season at the Hotel Victoria at 273 Dartmouth and the summer in Bar Harbor. 8 Fairfield was shown as vacant in the 1935 and 1936 City Directories.

On March 6, 1936, 8 Fairfield was purchased from the Jackson family by real estate dealer John Hamilton Morse, and on March 31, 1936, it was acquired from him by Mary Ironside (Hammond) Taylor, the wife of William Davis Taylor. They previously had lived in an apartment at 276 Marlborough.

William Davis Taylor was treasurer of the Boston Globe.  The newspaper had been acquired by his grandfather, Charles Henry Taylor, in 1873 (one year after it was founded), and William Davis Taylor’s father, William Osgood Taylor, was the publisher.  William Davis Taylor succeeded his father as publisher after his death in July of 1955.  He remained in that position until his retirement in 1978.

On April 8, 1937, Mary Taylor transferred 8 Fairfield into joint tenancy with her husband, and on February 28, 1941, they transferred the property into a trust, with Francis T. Leahy as trustee.

Mary Taylor died in May of 1947.  William Davis Taylor married again, in November of 1947, to Ann Caroline Macy, and they moved to 133 Mt. Vernon.

On October 30, 1947, 8 Fairfield was purchased from Francis Leahy, trustee, and William Taylor by real estate dealer Howard Stephen Cosgrove.  In November of 1947, he applied for (and subsequently received) permission to convert the property from a single-family dwelling into five apartments.

On April 21, 1949, 8 Fairfield was purchased from Howard Cosgrove by Edward S. Lebowich.

On April 2. 1951, 8 Fairfield was purchased from Edward Lebowich by Dr. Julia Gordon Arrowood, a physician and chief of anesthesia services at Massachusetts General Hospital. She lived in one of the apartments.

In August of 1953, she married Charles James Mason, an insurance underwriter. After their marriage, they lived at 8 Fairfield until about 1955, when they moved to Brookline.

On April 1, 1955, 8 Fairfield was purchased from Julia (Arrowood) Mason by Melvin Joseph Dangel, an attorney, and his wife, Phyllis (Coley) Dangel, trustees of the Coley Trust. They lived in Newton.  Melvin Dangel died in April of 1976.

On March 1, 1977, 8 Fairfield was purchased from Phyllis C. Dangel, individually and as trustee of the Coley Trust, by Elizabeth E. Laing and Evelyn Houston, trustees of the 8 Fairfield Street Realty Trust. Elizabeth Laing, an attorney, died in May of 2000.

On May 10, 2006, 8 Fairfield was purchased from Evelyn Houston, surviving trustee of the 8 Fairfield Street Realty Trust, by the Fairfield Trust Properties, LLC (Simcha J. Weller, manager of record).

The property was assessed as a four-to-six family dwelling in 2022.