11 Chesley Road

11 Chesley Rd from 1897 pictoral map of Newton Center.

The Italianate house now at 11 Chesley Road was built between about 1849 and 1855 as the main house of what became the Wardwell estate. It originally stood a few hundred feet to the west — you can find it on the 1874 and 1886 maps — and was moved to its present spot around 1895, when the estate was subdivided and Chesley Road was laid out.

You can pick out the house — its two rounded front windows and the old barn behind it — in the 1897 pictorial map of Newton Centre. The barn is gone now, though parts of its foundation still remain under the ivy.

Its owners trace Newton’s history in miniature. Charles E. Pike, who held the property from 1854, was a Boston lawyer who represented Newton in the state legislature and later became Solicitor of Internal Revenue — and his brother Frederick was a U.S. Congressman through the Civil War. William Wardwell gave the estate its name across 23 years. Ezra C. Dudley — a Newton real-estate developer who also ran a cattle ranch in the Texas Panhandle — bought the estate in 1891 and subdivided it, the move that created Chesley Road. And Asa C. Jewett, who lived here from 1902 to 1925, was Grand Commander of the Knights Templar of Massachusetts and Rhode Island; he died in 1925 while leading a Templar pilgrimage west, at Glacier National Park en route to Seattle. The house’s longest residence, though, came later: the Pittorino family made it their home for some 37 years, from 1945 to 1982. And in its most recent chapter the house opened its doors to the world: for two decades (2001–2021) it was the Chesley Road Bed & Breakfast, rated “Exceptional” by guests from everywhere. The complete chain of title is in the ownership history.

Further documentation survives in the Massachusetts Historical Commission report and the Newton Historical Society report.

Follow the house through time below, or meet the people who lived here.