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Continued from 26 Weybridge Road part two

The old Wild house, like the rest of the Blake property acquired by the P.H. Park Trust in 1916, remained unchanged (and apparently unused) when the Blake Park project came to a halt after the death of the Trust's founder Parvin Harbaugh. It was then sold, with the rest of the property, to the new developer, the Inter-City Trust, in 1919.

Two years later, Inter-City's architect, Clarence McFarland, undertook the first major redesign of the house in more than 50 years. The August 1921 building permit included a brief description of the changes: "Take off ell on right rear corner filling in cellar of sand. Take off roof of main house & replace with flat roof & general alterations."

The ell that was removed is visible in the 1919 map at right. McFarland's design, much changed from the 1868 design, can be seen more fully in the the illustration at the top of this page, taken from in an Inter-City ad for Blake Park that appeared in the Brookline Chronicle on November 19, 1921.

The building permit put the cost of the alterations at $2,500. A separate permit (November 1921) called for two eight-foot-by-eight-foot doors to be cut through the outside wall of the stable at a cost of $200. The November ad in the Chronicle said the house would be completed in about two months, but Inter-City's troubles put a halt to the work before it was completed. (Whether this was the result of the Trust's growing financial problems or part of the cause -- along with other promised but unfinished development -- is unclear.)

In any case, work on the house was stopped and it remained unfinished and unoccupied until the property, along with the rest of Blake Park, was taken over by Inter Urban Estates, the new corporation formed to protect the interest of Inter-City's investors. The renovations were then completed by a new developer, Benjamin F. Teel, in 1925. An April 9, 1925 permit listed a cost of $3,000 to complete the work begun by Inter-City in 1921. A separate permit a month later detailed plumbing work to be done -- at a cost of $2,000 -- including a kitchen sink on the first floor, a drain and wash trays in the basement, and "2 baths, 3 WC, 3 lav., 2 showers" on the second floor.

The new owner after the renovations were completed -- and the first occupant of the house in nearly a decade -- was publisher, editor, and writer Porter Sargent. Porter Edward Sargent (1872-1951) was born in Brooklyn and came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard in 1893. He graduated in 1896 and continued with post-graduate work in neurology while teaching science at the Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge until 1904. For the next 10 years, he ran Sargent's Travel School for Boys, taking five separate trips around the world with the sons of wealthy Boston families as his students. It was, according to a 1949 profile of Sargent in the Journal of Higher Education, "'the grand tour' so inherently a part of young Bostonian Brahmins' education."

World War I ended the travel school, and in 1914 Sargent published the first edition of The Handbook of Private Schools, an annual guide that he continued to produce until the end of his life (and that is still published each year by the Porter Sargent Publishing Company.) Sargent's annual prefaces to the handbook, sometimes also produced as separate publications, and other writings earned him a reputation as a fierce critic of American education. A 1947 review of one of these writings, in the New England Quarterly, offered high praise for his views and his willingness to express them.

What Porter Sargent says here and in his various books is important [wrote the reviewer], but not as important as what he is. He is an independent and intelligent dissenter, a type once thought to be rather characteristic of New England and of which we were justly proud. It is our misfortune and the country's that this type is now rare....[Sargent] keeps his thinking open at both ends, knowing the tendency of thought to stagnate and become ideé fixe. He is one of our best provokers of thought, and by taking thought the human venture may still have a future.

Sargent was first listed at the old Wild House in the 1926 Street List. Sargent's sons Upham (1913?-1934) and Porter (1915-1975) lived with him, though they were too young to be listed in the Street List at that time. Sargent's wife Margaret had died in 1920. A housekeeper and governess were also listed in 1926, and various housekeepers, governesses, maids, and secretaries (one or two at a time) were listed with the family until the mid-1930s.

The 1930 U.S. Census listed the residents as: Porter E. Sargent, 57, publisher (books), born New York; Upham Sargent, 17; Porter Sargent, 15; Bertha Johnson, 24, housekeeper, born Vermont; and Beatrice Bannister, 23, secretary, born Vermont. The house was valued at $40,000.

The property, as acquired by Sargent, was further reduced from what it had been a decade earlier. (It was still quite large compared to the typical Blake Park property.) Three separate lots were taken out of it along the Greenough Street side (the sites of 3, 9, and 15 Greenough Street, built in 1925 and 1926), and the Washington Street frontage was taken as a lot for 454 Washington Street (built in 1929.)

The address of Sargent's house was shown as 26 Blake Road East (the original name for Weybridge Road) in the 1926 Street List. It was changed to 26 Weybridge Road beginning with the 1927 Street List. (This was the first year other houses, built as part of the revived Blake Park development, were shown on Weybridge, the former main entrance to the Blake estate from Washington Street. See The Streets of Blake Park for more on the evolution of this and other streets in the development.)

A permit to add a one-story conservatory to the house was granted in 1929. The work, at a cost of $800, was done by Burton W. Neal, who had performed the 1904 renovations on the house for the Blake family (as well as other work for the Blakes.)

Porter Sargent's older son Upham was first listed in the Street List, as a student, in 1933 at the age of 20. He disappeared while on a solo kayak trip in the wilds of northern Canada, near Hudson Bay, in 1934. He was last seen by native Americans in early September and his paddle and parts of his kayak were found later. He was presumed dead.

Upham's younger brother Porter was first listed in the Street List in 1936 when he was 20. He had no occupation listed at first, but he was later listed as a salesman, a manager, a publisher, and a clerk.

Porter Sargent used his Brookline house as an office as well as a home. "In Sargent's early nineteenth-century Brookline house, on a knoll surrounded by terraced gardens, his light can be seen burning until 2 a.m.," wrote a biographer in a 1941 profile in Current Biography. "He and his secretary start editing Private Schools in January and it usually comes out and is sent to reviewers in May ...."

A 1949 profile in the Journal of Higher Education, offered this description of Sargent's endeavors in his Blake Park home:

Today at seventy-seven, when most teachers have long since fallen back on the solace of inadequate annuities, the subtle and constant reassurance of their wives, and the somnolent armchair in thoroughly self-appreciative retrospect before the comforting open fire, this man works from two in the afternoon until early in the morning seven days a week and thinks he is having the time of his life. Work and play are interwoven without a break except when Jane Sargent, his very competent New England housekeeper, insists that he eat, or during the few minutes a day he spends in his beloved Brookline garden. He accomplishes an unusual amount of work, and saves the time usually spent going to and from the office, by having two or more house secretaries constantly available. Once a week he dons his favorite bow tie and makes a journey to the Beacon Street, Boston, office where the Private School Handbook, which sustains his critical ventures, is produced by a competent staff under the direction of his son, Porter. On Saturday nights a group of Harvard graduate students may usually be found around his generous table and, later, the library fireplace, to discuss until early morning any problem that may come up.

Porter Sargent died in 1951. The old Wild house is still owned by members of the Sargent family.