1886, Shaw and Hunnewell.
If early essays in a given style are more typically tentative, this first Back Bay house of the Renaissance Revival is uncommonly well developed and utterly self-assured, for all its learning and restraint. Its broad (forty-foot-wide) limestone facade encompasses all the features (rusticated base, pilasters, swag panels, lion masks, modillion cornice, and urnfinial parapet balustrade) that would come to characterize the idiom. The shadow play of the masonry's contrasting textures is especially pleasing, employing vermiculation below the high water table, while the first-floor cornice repeats in a finer scale the fluting of the pilasters it supports.