The Sears Estate was a groundbreaking development effort, capitalizing on Brookline’s recent (at the time) recognition that the only way to save some of the Town’s historic architectural legacy was to allow large mansions and their appurtenant outbuildings to be changed from a single-family occupancy to multi-family occupancy. In this instance, the mansion house was converted to five large condominiums and the rear carriage house was converted to one large condominium unit. This approach became the paradigm for many other adaptive re-use and historic preservation projects that now typify the approach to saving once enormous single-family homes and bringing them into the 21st century.

Equally noteworthy is the Conservation Restriction placed on part of the property by the developer with the local Conservation Commission as the grantee.  It was the first of many such restrictions placed on properties in Brookline from the early 80s to the current day. 

The architecture for the project was provided “in-house” by the developer and the general contractor was CB Construction.