One hundred years ago, the Glen Rock estate was made up of B.F. Dutton’s large house, the barn, and the houses that were built for his children. The children who lived on the property after they married were Ellen (Dutton) Claus, Cora (Dutton) Little, George C. Dutton, and Clara (Dutton) McGregor. These properties are all visible on the map that was drawn up in June 1915 by A. F. Sargent, surveyor, as part of B.F. Dutton’s estate proceedings, as shown here.
Today, all of the Dutton properties are gone and the original estate has been split into smaller plots with many new houses having been constructed. An aerial view of the area shows the Glen Rock estate as it is today.
The photograph shows that most of the roads and the circular driveway that existed back in B.F. Dutton’s times are still in place, although a close look reveals that the driveway circle has been somewhat elongated.
By carefully sizing and aligning the surveyor’s drawing with the aerial view, I am able to determine the exact location of the Dutton houses on the property today, and this is shown here with the Dutton houses being superimposed in yellow on the photograph.
B.F. Dutton’s house was located just between the two houses now standing on the right side of the circle. New houses have been built on the sites of the McGregor house and the Cora Dutton house, while there is no structure where the George Dutton and Claus houses stood. The site of the barn has been totally reclaimed by the woods, although some ruins of it remain and this will be addressed in a future blog post. The large rocky outcrop to the left of the barn and behind and to the left of the George Dutton house is what was called Tea Rock (now called Pinnacle Rock), and we will take a tour to Tea Rock’s summit also in a future post.
And in case anyone is wondering, the original location of the fountain, described in my previous post, is shown here.
duttonsofglenrock 
This post is fantastic! It’s almost like actually being there. Really into the labeling, too.
What fun this is! I’m very impressed. Thank you, Sara
Thanks, Leslie, but the content and actual posting are all Dad’s! (I’m just playing tyrannical webmaster.)
Wow! I love it! I have a very good friend in Saugus which is near Malden and I think I’ll have to pay her a visit and search out BFs property!
Thank you so much!
Dear Helen,
If you do happen to visit your cousin in Saugus at some point, contact me via email. I can show you the lay of the land of the former estate, as I live across the street.
Hi Marilyn,
Thanks for your generous offer; I’d love to take you up on it in the spring!
Best,
Helen
What fun this is! I can’t wait for next posting. I know Joe has more to reveal, and.Sara has done a fabulous job setting up such an attractive and professional blog!
I always thought the main house’s entrance faced towards the west and the circular driveway. It seems from your mock-up that it faced south, towards Boston. Where you have the fountain is very close to a precipice. I was just wondering about that.
Marilyn, I’m really glad you raised this question because this is something I have spent a long time studying and obsessing over. If you look closely at the surveyor’s map and the shape of the house and compare it to the photographs, I think you will see that the fountain side of the house faced south. Compare also the slope that the fountain is on and the way the hill runs down to the right. According to the newspaper description on pp. 12-13 of the book, the writer calls the fountain entrance the house’s main entrance. My grandmother, however, described the fountain entrance as one of the two side entrances, leading to the long reception hall that went straight through the house. She then said, “the entrance we all used was at the front, through a conservatory and into Grandma’s library.” This would have been the west entrance and the one she naturally would have used if walking over from the McGregor house. The conservatory I believe is the rounded projection on the west side of the house near the circle on the surveyor’s map. It led into the library in the main part of the house. Looking at the photo on the cover of the book, the door leads into the long entry hall. The two windows to the right of the door is the parlor, where the big anniversary photo was taken, the two windows immediately to the left of the door is “Grandma’s library,” and only partly visible further around to the left of the library is the conservatory. If you look really closely, you can see a gardener wearing a hat in that photo in front of the conservatory window. I have another photo taken from the house of a group of ladies sitting near the fountain. Behind them is some tall brush that might be the edge of the precipice you mention. I’ll try to dig that photo out.
One additional observation about the facing of the house. My grandmother wrote that the conservatory was Grandma Dutton’s favorite room and that “she loved having tea served there, in the late afternoon sun.” That would strongly suggest the conservatory faced west and that the main facade of the house faced south.