Elizabeth Boit House
The Elizabeth Boit House is a historic home at 127 Chestnut Street in Wakefield, Massachusetts. It sits on a small estate built by Elizabeth Boit, the co-founder of Harvard Knitting Mills. The estate also includes two other houses at 88 and 90 Prospect Street, along with formal gardens, a playhouse, and a greenhouse.
All three houses were designed in the English Cottage style by Wakefield architect Harland O. Perkins. Built between 1910 and 1913, they are stucco with red tile roofs, recessed entries, exposed purlins, and irregular window layouts. The main house at 127 Chestnut Street is two and a half stories tall with an angled, three-part design that faces a courtyard formed by the three buildings.
The Elizabeth Boit House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 for its architecture and its association with Elizabeth Boit, one of the first highly placed women in the U.S. textile industry. She pushed for improvements in worker conditions, including health care for factory workers and bonuses based on company profits.
The compound she built at Chestnut and Prospect Streets is the only surviving estate of Wakefield’s leading business executives. The home was listed for sale in September 2021 for $1.99 million and sold in November 2021 for $2.75 million to Marc Trachtenberg, a technology and real estate entrepreneur.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:26 (CET).