The transformation of the Roxbury Highlands neighborhood from an early farming community to a suburb began in 1825 when a group of five Boston merchants, known as the “five associates” (Benjamin F. Copeland, David A. Simmons, Thomas Simmons, Supply Clapp Thwing and Charles Hickling), purchased a 26-acre parcel of land through which Highland Street and Fort Avenue were laid out. The five associates set out to establish a residential community around the Roxbury High Fort, located on their land, and they began by building several houses on their property. Fort Avenue was not immediately developed, and few buildings were constructed on Highland Street until the mid-1830s. Wealthy estate builders and upper-middle class businessmen were drawn to Roxbury following the extension of Tremont Street as a free road through Roxbury in 1832 and the arrival of the Boston and Providence Railroad in 1834. The Metropolitan Horse Railway linked the area to Boston via service along Tremont and Washington Streets in 1856, bringing an additional influx of middle class residences. Many of the single-family, detached homes, which comprise about half of the contributing residential buildings in the National Register district, were constructed before Roxbury’s annexation to Boston in 1868.

 

The William Lloyd Garrison House was constructed ca. 1855 as the home of Boston druggist Joseph Warren Hunnewell, who purchased the vacant lot from merchant Benjamin Perkins for $4,000 in December 1854. Joseph W. Hunnewell was the brother of John L. Hunnewell who was among the first druggists to sell drugs, paints and oils in Boston and the creator of the Universal Cough Remedy. Their father, Joseph Hunnewell, Sr., also a druggist, began a business on Commercial Wharf in 1837 at which both sons worked off and on during the 1830s. John L. Hunnewell established his own business in 1846 and made his brother junior partner in 1847. It appears that Joseph W. took over his father’s business by the 1850s, with Eleazer F. Pratt as his partner. The company sold various drugs, medicines, paints, oils, dyes, and other products, including John L. Hunnewell’s famed Universal Cough Remedy, Tolu Anodyne, and Eclectic Pills.  Joseph W. Hunnewell’s commercial success seemingly led to his purchase of the lot on Highland Street in 1854, and the subsequent construction of his home on the site. Hunnewell’s house was designed as a transitional building representing the Italianate and Greek Revival styles of architecture, both of which were dominant styles in American house construction at the time.

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Hunnewell sold the Highland Street property to the family of famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in September 1864 at the cost of $8,000. The deed was conveyed to a trust comprised of William Lloyd Garrison’s three eldest sons, George Thompson, William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and Wendell Phillips Garrison, established in 1849. William Lloyd Garrison himself did not legally own the property until it was conveyed to him in November 1875, despite being the head of the household since 1864. The Garrison family lived in the house on Highland Street during the last years of The Liberator and into William Lloyd Garrison’s retirement, the same month that Garrison ceased production of The Liberator.

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The property on Highland Street remained in the Garrison family until 1900, when Francis J. Garrison sold it to the Rock Ledge Improvement Association, an organization of African-Americans formed to preserve the house in Garrison’s memory. The deed was conveyed to organization member Hallie A. Pickering, a stenographer (or court reporter) employed at Boston City Hall on School Street. In 1902, Pickering subsequently transferred ownership to Samuel Hodges, a trustee of the Rock Ledge Improvement Association. Very little information is available about the Association and its activities other than that it owned the Garrison property for a brief period and had “other financial interests in the West.”

 

At a regularly scheduled meeting of the Rock Ledge Improvement Association held on March 28, 1904, the eight members present unanimously voted to sell the Garrison property to the Episcopal Sisters of the Society of Saint Margaret (the Society of St. Margaret) for $6,900. The Society of St. Margaret is an Episcopalian religious order of women founded in Sussex, England in 1855 to care for the poor and ill in the surrounding countryside. In 1871, three sisters of the of the Society were sent to Boston to assist in the management of the Boston Children’s Hospital, at the time a nine-bed hospital on Washington Street. The Society of St. Margaret’s Convent was installed in 1873. Ten years later in 1883, the group moved to three townhouses on Louisburg Square in Beacon Hill, which functioned as a small hospital, convent, and chapel. In 1888, the Society of St. Margaret established a nursing home for chronically ill African-American women named St. Monica’s Home for Sick and Colored Women and Children (St. Monica’s).  It was one of the few local benevolent organizations to admit African-Americans in the early 1900s. For example, a quarter of Boston orphanages denied access to black children in 1910, and those that did admit blacks did so in limited instances. It was through St. Monica’s that the religious order expanded their nursing and evangelical teachings to reach those community members in need.

 

St. Monica’s was first located in Beacon Hill at 79 Phillips Street before relocating to a larger facility at 45 Joy Street in 1891. A few years later, the home expanded to an adjoining house at 47 Joy Street.  For some years leading up to the acquisition of the Garrison property in 1904, the Sisters of St. Margaret understood that their present facilities were not adequate for St. Monica’s Home. In the June 1904 “St. Monica’s Leaflet” the Sisters used an old proverb to express their delight in acquiring the Garrison House at a relatively low cost: “All things come round to those who will but wait.”

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The Sisters considered the Garrison property to be ideal for the needs of St. Monica’s Home, noting the “fresh air and sunshine which [were] so essential to successful work and so impossible for [the patients] to obtain in their own homes.” Furthermore, the structure was considered to be a “well built, old fashioned house very easily adaptable to [their] purpose, and 17,000 feet of land giving plenty of room for future enlargement.”

 

Although later additions and acquisitions were made, the only plan for expansion in 1904 was for a new heating plant and a model ward for the patients with tuberculosis. The initial remodel and renovation of the home was generously funded by members of Boston’s African-American community. Monetary support was provided for new furnishings and painting, and several men in the painting and carpentry trades donated their time and labor. A number of women who were unable to donate funds offered to assist with cleaning and painting.

 

Following the completion of the renovation of the Garrison House for St. Monica’s Home, a celebration was held by the Sisters of the Society of St. Margaret on June 10, 1904. The gathering marked the dedication of the William Lloyd Garrison Ward, the former drawing room which had been converted to a large apartment. The Garrison House was further divided into three other wards: The Darley Ward, a nursery; the Wendell Phillips Ward, the former bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Garrison, converted into a sitting room for elderly women; and the Hallowell Ward, a newly constructed room opening to a large porch, intended for patients suffering from tuberculosis.

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The footprint of the Garrison House was slightly enlarged by 1912. An oriel window was introduced above the front porch, and a rear porch was added. A single-story glass enclosed porch was added to the south elevation most likely in the 1920s. By 1925, the building was divided to accommodate the needs of both patients and staff. The ground level featured offices, a kitchen, a dining room, and living rooms. The second floor was divided into four wards, each holding a maximum of five patient beds. Above the patients on the third level were the sleeping quarters for the cooks, attendants, and maids. The nurses were housed in a separate three-story row-house adjacent to the property at 131 Highland Street (acquired by 1915, demolished in 1996). A carriage house located southwest of the Society of St. Margaret property was acquired by the society in 1947. The nursing home was enlarged with the construction of a large addition northwest of the Garrison house in 1962. The Society of St. Margaret purchased additional land along Highland Street in 1963, once occupied by four row-houses attached to 131 Highland Street.

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St. Monica’s functioned as a nursing home run by the Society of St. Margaret until it closed in 1988. The organization’s headquarters, the Mother House, then moved from Beacon Hill to the property on Highland Street in Roxbury. St. Monica’s facility was adapted for its new use as the religious order’s center for operations. The 1962 addition and the carriage house were renovated between 1991 and 1992, the latter for use as an apartment. In 1992, the Society of St. Margaret built a new, modern chapel that connected to the 1962 addition (a two-family frame dwelling at 18-20 Cedar Park was razed to accommodate the new building). The relocation of the organization’s headquarters to Highland Park Street finally occurred in 1992.

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The convent served as the administrative center for the Society of St. Margaret and as a resident hall, conference center, meeting place, library and office for the Order until it was sold to Emmanuel College in 2012. The Society of St. Margaret, unable to maintain the property, moved its convent to a new location in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The entire complex, including the Garrison House, was renamed Emmanuel College’s Notre Dame Campus and opened at the start of the 2014-2015 academic year. It serves as a residence hall for around 30 upper-class students who have committed to a different college campus experience--one that focuses on community service, social justice and a more reflective life, giving them a deeper sense of Emmanuel's mission and their role in the larger Boston community.

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