The George Bentley House is located in a residential area east of downtown Worcester, on the south side of Earle Street between Edward and Elizabeth Streets. It is a 1+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, mostly finished in modern siding. It has a steeply pitched gable roof with original bargeboard in the eaves, a bracketed hood over its front entry, and a side porch with elaborate woodwork trim and chamfered posts. The windows have decorative hood molding, and there are gabled dormers projecting from the roof faces. The left bay of the front facade has a two-story polygonal projecting bay. Later in the 19th century, Queen Anne-style scale shingle treatment was added to its gables.[2]
The house was built in 1849-50 by John Barrett, who purchased the empty lot in 1849, and sold it, with house standing, the following year to George Bentley and Daniel Jackson. Bentley and Jackson were listed as clerks working for the Nashua Railroad. The house is a typical example of the type of housing built during the early suburbanization of the area in the 1850s, and is one of its only survivors. Its later alterations, mainly the addition of scale shingles and the raising of the front bay, do not detract from its Gothic features,[2] but some have been lost by the application of modern siding.
