(c) 2014 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Marie Seiler Scull

Bönigen, Switzerland, 1843 - 1923, Boston

Biography131 Commonwealth is located on the north side of Commonwealth, between Clarendon and Dartmouth, with 129 Commonwealth to the east and 133 Commonwealth to the west.

131 Commonwealth was designed by architect Carl Fehmer and built in 1880 by I. & H. M. Harmon, builders, as the home of insurance broker Gideon Scull and his wife, Anna Jertha Hedwig (Seiler) Scull. They previously had lived at 13 Mt. Vernon.

Gideon Scull is shown as the owner of 131 Commonwealth on the original building permit application, dated January 16, 1880, on an amendment to the application dated March 5, 1880, and on the final building inspection report, dated December 30, 1880.

Gideon Scull purchased the land for 131 Commonwealth on December 22, 1879, from Henry L. Jaques of New York City. It previously had been held by several owners, and originally had been purchased from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 2, 1866, by Franklin Haven. He was one of the three Commissioners on Public Lands responsible for the sale of the Commonwealth’s lands in the Back Bay.

Click here for an index to the deeds for 131 Commonwealth, and click here for further information about the land between the north side of Commonwealth and Alley 424, from Clarendon to Dartmouth.

The Sculls’ four children — Maximillian (Max Leopold) Scull, Marjorie Scull, Guy Hamilton Scull, and Dorothy Scull – lived with them at 131 Commonwealth.

Basement and first through third floor plans of 131 Commonwealth, bound with the final building inspection report , 30Dec1880 (v. 1, p. 118); courtesy of the Boston Public Library Arts Department
Basement and first through third floor plans of 131 Commonwealth, bound with the final building inspection report , 30Dec1880 (v. 1, p. 118); Boston City Archives

Both sons left home soon after graduating from Harvard. Maximillian Scull graduated in 1895, served in the Navy during the Spanish American war, and then went to Paris, where he became an artist. He married in January of 1914 to Gertrude Sophie Mathilda Lang and died in September of 1919 in Vevey, Switzerland. In February of 1923, Gertrude Scull remarried to Baron Jules Hope Joseph de Szilassy.

Guy Scull graduated in 1898 and served as a member of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” during the Spanish American War. He then was a newspaper correspondent, covering the Boer War, the Russian-Japanese War, and other international conflicts. In 1908, he led in an ill-fated attempt to discover sunken Spanish gold (Scull’s boat, the former America’s Cup defender Mayflower, sank off of Cuba in a hurricane), hunted big game in Africa, served briefly as Chief of Police in Nicaragua, and served as Deputy Police Commissioner of New York City. He died in October of 1920; his widow, Nancy (Whitman) Scull, married again in July of 1922 to his Harvard classmate and friend, Eliot Wadsworth, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. After their marriage, the Wadsworths lived in Washington until his resignation from the US Treasury in March of 1925, after which they returned to Boston and lived at 180 Marlborough.

Gideon Scull died in June of 1899. Anna Scull continued to live at 131 Commonwealth with their two daughters, Marjorie and Dorothy. The Sculls had also maintained a home in Manchester, Massachusetts. Anna Scull sold the house in 1900 and by 1903 had acquired a new summer home in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

131 Commonwealth (ca. 1942), photograph by Bainbridge Bunting, courtesy of The Gleason Partnership
131 Commonwealth (ca. 1942), photograph by Bainbridge Bunting, courtesy of The Gleason Partnership

Marjorie Scull married in October of 1903 to Bartlett Harding Hayes, a stockbroker and Harvard classmate of her brother, Guy, and they moved to Andover. Dorothy Scull died in April of 1904.

Anna Scull died in January of 1923.

From https://backbayhouses.org/131-commonwealth/ 2/13/24 NW

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Last Updated5/8/24

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