House at 9 White Avenue

White Avenue is located northeast of downtown Wakefield, and is a short street in a residential area just east of Lake Quannapowitt. This house stands on the north side of the street, facing south on a lot that slopes west toward the lake. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, with a hip roof, with two gable-roof and clapboarded exterior. Its roof has dormers bracketing an oriel window in front, and a normal gabled dormer to the side; these gables are decorated with jigsawn Queen Anne woodwork. The house is three bays wide, with a center entrance sheltered by a porch supported by paired columns, with jigsawn valances. The porch extends to an open veranda to either side.[2]

White Avenue was originally part of a larger property owned by John Aborn, a shoemaker who lived in a house west of this one on Main Street. Aborn and his father-in-law John White owned a successful shoe factory. Aborn's heirs laid out White Avenue and adjacent Aborn Street in 1857, and the area was developed in the 1860s and 1870s as a residential area for local middle-class businessmen and tradesmen.[3] This house was built about 1903, and its first long-term owner was Edward Gleason, who moved here from Aborn Street. Gleason was a prominent local landscape and portrait photographer, who also kept an office in Boston. Gleason is credited with most of the photographs depicted in the 1893 book Wakefield; its Representative Business Men and Points of Interest.[2]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Wakefield, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Middlesex County, Massachusetts