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= Ephraim Marsh = Ephraim Marsh (Nov 2, 1769 - Feb 19, 1847) was an early American architect best known for developing the Bay Village neighborhood of Boston.

Personal Life
Ephraim Marsh was born in Hingham, MA, and was one of five children born to Susana Todd and Ephraim Marsh. He was a descendant of George and Elizabeth Marsh who moved to the United States from England to Hingham, MA in 1635. He married Rachel White Marsh and lived most of his life on Pleasant Street and Fayette Street in Boston. He was the father of nine children, all of whom survived into adulthood.

Career and Buildings
Marsh built "not less than 300 buildings" in Boston during his long career, mostly in the Beacon Hill and Bay Village neighborhoods of Boston. He listed his occupation as a housewright in the Boston Directory, rather than an architect, which was not yet a commonly used term in the early 19th century United States. His buildings were mostly in the Federal style of architecture, and resembled those of his better known contemporaries Asher Benjamin and Charles Bulfinch.

Beacon Hill
Two of Marsh's best known still-standing houses in Beacon Hill are located at 56 Beacon Street and 57 Beacon Street, which he built in 1819. Both are elegant bow-front brick row homes with fanlight windows and other classic architectural features associated with the Federal style. Shortly afterward, in 1821, Marsh designed and built the similar pair of houses at 63 and 64 Beacon Street. Today the latter is home to the King's Chapel Parish and Rectory. While similar, the houses have important differences, such as the Doric capitals and triglyph ornamented frieze above the door of 63 Beacon Street, and the Ionic capitals and large sidelights around the door of 64 Beacon.t. According to the The Boston Society of Architects' A.I.A. Guide to Boston:"The buildings are notable for the purple colored glass in their windows. Between 1818 and 1824 a glass manufacturer in England shipped glass with this unusual hue caused by the transformation of manganese oxide. Today authentic colored windowpanes survive only on these two houses and at 39 and 40 Beacon Street and 29A and 70B Chestnut Street."Marsh also built a number of the houses on Chestnut Street in Beacon Hill, the stores on Broad Street, and the steeple of the Hollis Street Church. It is not known exactly which houses on Chestnut Street were built by Marsh.

Bay Village
Around 1820, Marsh began to develop the Church Street district, now known as Bay Village, by filling in the mud flats of the Back Bay south of what is now the Boston Public Garden. Marsh's main financial backer was Francis Cabot Lowell Jr, whose father, Francis Cabot Lowell, had made his fortune in the Lowell Textile mills, and was a member of the Continental Congress. The land was filled in with rocks starting from Pleasant Street, near the current Broadway and Charles Street, and extended west to the present-day Arlington Street. Marsh himself lived at 22 Pleasant Street at the time. The new land extended from what is now the Public Garden south to what is now the Castle Square area.

The earliest street to be laid out was Fayette street, in 1824, which went right through Marsh 's land. Marsh designed and built the houses on Fayette street and sold many of them to the artisans involved in the development of the district, including Presbury Coffin and James Marble. Marsh sold the Federal home at 27 Fayette Street to Abraham Call, a tailor, and the house at 33 Fayette Street to John Thomas Dingley, a hatter, for whom Dingley Place was named. The four Federal homes at 33 to 39 Fayette Street are "good examples of architecture of the 1820s.'' Marsh himself moved into 1 Fayette Street, which has since been destroyed, and is now the site of an art deco building Boston Chinese Church of the Saving Grace. At the time of Marsh's death he still owned ten houses on Fayette Street plus a number of others elsewhere in Boston.

Other Building Enterprises
Marsh bored the first artesian well in South Boston in 1807.

Public Service
Marsh served on a number of public committees in his lifetime and played a leadership role in several industry associations. He became a member of the first Common Council and came to be the ``right-hand man of Mayor Josiah Quincy. Marsh was a member of a Bostonian builder's organization, the Associated Housewrights, which was founded in 1804. In 1822, the Associated Housewrights appointed a committee consisting of Marsh, Alexander Parris and Seth Copeland and put them in charge of purchasing the majority of shares in the Boston Architectural Library and organizing the books in the library. The Boston Architectural Library was an important step in the professionalization of American architecture.