“Beautiful and classic, exactly what Beacon Hill embodies,” is how the listing describes an impeccably preserved Federal-style home in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood that’s just hit the market for $10.75 million.
The 1827-constructed property at 28 Chestnut Street was built by a “housewright” (what we now call an architect) named Jesse Shaw, who was reportedly a relative of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the Union army officer who led the first all-Black regiment in the Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.
The Shaw family was known in Boston as a prominent abolitionist family, and one of the listing’s features makes testament to this fact: a bunker, accessed through the property’s full basement, that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.