Isaac Royall House
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Isaac Royall House
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_facade.JPG)
East (front) facade, built by Isaac Royall, Sr. over the original farmhouse
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| Location | Medford, Massachusetts |
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| Coordinates | 42°24′43″N 71°6′44″W / 42.41194°N 71.11222°WCoordinates: 42°24′43″N 71°6′44″W / 42.41194°N 71.11222°W |
| Built | 1732 |
| Architect | Unknown |
| Architectural style | Georgian |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000786 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | October 9, 1960 |
The Isaac Royall House is a historic house located at 15 George Street, Medford, Massachusetts. It is a National Historic Landmark, operated as a non-profit museum, and open for public visits between June 1 and the last weekend in October.
The Royall House is notable for its excellent preservation, its possession of the only surviving slave quarters in Massachusetts, and its American Revolution associations with General John Stark, Molly Stark, and General George Washington. Among the historic objects on display is a tea box, said to be from the same batch that was dumped into Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, and a very small painting by John Singleton Copley of Isaac Royall, Jr.
Governor John Winthrop built a house on the site about 1637. Around 1692, that house was replaced with a more imposing brick structure standing 2½ stories high and one room in depth, with exceedingly thick walls. On December 26, 1732, Isaac Royall, Sr., a slave trader, rum distiller, and wealthy merchant of Antigua, purchased the house and 504 acres (2 km²) of land along the west bank of the Mystic River in what was then Charlestown, an area annexed to Medford in 1754. He remodeled the house extensively between 1733 and 1737, adding a third story, encasing the east facade in clapboard, and ornamenting the exterior with architectural details and continuous strips of spandrel panels. Royall also constructed outbuildings in 1732, including the only known slave quarters that survive in New England. After this construction, Royall brought 27 enslaved Africans from Antigua, which doubled the enslaved population of the community.
Isaac Royall, Jr. (1719–1781) came into its possession of the property in 1739 following the death of his father. He greatly enlarged it between 1747 and 1750. He more than doubled the depth of the main building, greatly extended the brick end walls correspondingly, and at either end of the house constructed great twin chimneys connected by parapets. Other features he added include the false ashlar siding on the new western facade and great Doric pilasters inserted at the corners. The interior was redone in Georgian wooden paneling, trim, and archways of a quality possibly unsurpassed by any surviving house of the period. Several of the major rooms that survive are original.
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