Nomination for Hooper-Lee Nichols House

From the form

The catalogue entry the section above was filed under.

Form No. 10-300 REV.

(9/77) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PH0625326 FOR NPS USE ONLY NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTORY -- NOMINATION FORM RECEIVED APR 12 1979 DATE ENTERED JUN |5 1979 2 3 SEE INSTRUCTIONS IN HOW TO COMPLETE NATIONAL REGISTER FORMS TYPE ALL ENTRIES - COMPLETE APPLICABLE SECTIONS NAME HISTORIC Hooper-Lee-Nichols House AND/OR COMMON same LOCATION STREET & NUMBER 159 Brattle Street CITY, TOWN Cambridge STATE - VICINITY OF CODE 025 - NOT FOR PUBLICATION CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 8th COUNTY Middlesex CODE 017 Massachusetts CLASSIFICATION CATEGORY DISTRICT UIDIN(S) _STRUCTURE SITE -OBJECT OWNERSHIP _PUBLIC XpRIVATE PUBLIC ACQUISITION -IN PROCESS -BEING CONSIDERED STATUS XOCCUPIED _UNOCCUPIED -WORK IN PROGRESS ACCESSIBLE XYES: RESTRICTED - YES: UNRESTRICTED -NO PRESENT USE AGRICULTURE XMUSEUM -COMMERCIAL -PARK XEDUCATIONAL - PRIVATE RESIDENCE -ENTERTAINMENT -RELIGIOUS -GOVERNMENT -SCIENTIFIC -INDUSTRIAL -TRANSPORTATION _MILITARY - OTHER: OWNER OF PROPERTY NAME Cambridge Historical Society STREET & NUMBER 159 Brattle Street CITY.

TOWN Cambridge . VICINITY OF LOCATION OF LEGAL DESCRIPTION STATE Massachusetts COURTHOUSE REGISTRY OF DEEDS, ETC. STREET & NUMBER Middlesex County Registry of Deeds Cambridge Street CITY, TOWN Cambridge STATE Massachusetts REPRESENTATION IN EXISTING SURVEYS TITLE Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge; Report Four: ola Cambridge DATE 1975 DEPOSITORY FOR SURVEY RECORDS CITY, TOWN -FEDERAL _STATE _COUNTY &LOCAL Cambridge Historical Commission Cambridge STATE Massachusetts 7-DESCRIPTION CONDITION EXCELLENT X GOOD - FAIR DETERIORATED _RUINS -UNEXPOSED CHECK ONE -UNALTERED ZALTERED CHECK ONE XORIGINAL SITE _MOVED DATE. DESCRIBE THE PRESENT AND ORIGINAL (IF KNOWN) PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Description of the property

The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House was constructed in c. 1685 and has undergone major alterations. The seventeenth century character of the house is immediately apparent only in the massive central chimney, a huge construction twelve feet square with six flues protruding above the roof. The house was remodelled in the Georgian style in c. 1745, at which time the roof was raised, the vestibule shutters and quoins added to the exterior, and one wall stuccoed. The pedimented gable of the strongly projecting vestibule is supported by paired pilasters flanking an unusually wide and low single door of ie mankingoan thg nine panels. The window frames project strongly from the facade with heavy cornices and moulded sills; the shutters are in the heavy scale of the eighteenth century and have fixed louvers.

Windows are eight over twelve in the first two stories, and eight over eight in the main house, which is covered in roughcast scored to resemble ashlar masonry. The low pitched roof is screened by a wooden parapet added in 1860. The solid panels of the parapet alternate with balusters to emphasize the spacing of the bays. The interior of the house reflects the extensive remodellings that were carried out in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Both the east and west first floor rooms have panelling, mantels, and window'seats added between 1745 and 1760. The boxed summer beams run longitudinally in the east room and transversely in the west room. The 'paper in the west first floor front room shows views of the Bosphorus and perhaps Istanbul, and may have been the work of Dufour of Paris.

The "Bay of Naples" paper in the west front room on the second floor is better known, and is definitely a Dufour creation, printed in France c. 1820. The former kitchen was converted to a library in 1916, and the earlier fireplaces removed. 3AJD0 D0to 3020 90 009200:E 8

From the form

The catalogue entry the section above was filed under.

SIGNIFICANCE PERIOD _PREHISTORIC 1400-1499 -1500-1599 X1600-1699 XX700-1799 X1800-1899 - 1900- _ARCHEOLUGY-PREHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY-HISTORIC -AGRICULTURE ZARCHITECTURE -ART -COMMERCE -COMMUNICATIONS *: AREAS OF SIGNIFICANCE -- CHECK AND JUSTIFY BELOW _COMMUNITY PLANNING _LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE -CONSERVATION -LAW _ECONOMICS _LITERATURE _EDUCATION _MILITARY _ENGINEERING _MUSIC _EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT _PHILOSOPHY _INDUSTRY XPOLITICS/GOVERNMENT _INVENTION _RELIGION -SCIENCE _SCULPTURE -SOCIAL/HUMANITARIAN -THEATER _TRANSPORTATION _OTHER (SPECIFY) SPECIFIC DATES STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

Statement of significance

c. 1680, c= 1745 BUILDER/ARCHITECT Various The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House is the oldest of seven mansions on Brattle Street in Cambridge associated with Tory figures of the pre-Revolutionary period. It is one of three houses originally constructed in the seventeenth century remaining in Cambridge and, although altered numerous times in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it retains its importance as a largely eighteenth century mansion. The property is currently operated as an historic house museum by the Cambridge Historical Society. The house was constructed c. 1685 on a farm in what was then Watertown by Dr. Richard Hooper. Dr.

Hooper died in 1691, and by this time the house had already been seriously damaged by fire and "wormes." The earliest existing element of the house, its great central chimney stack twelve feet square built of granite and brick, dates fnom this period. r. Hooper's widow, who had a license to operate an inn, thoroughly repaired and altered the house in 1716-1717 before passing it to her son, Dr. Henry Hooper; the present stairs and a fragment of panelling under the present fireplace wall in the left chamber date from this remodelling. In 1733, a Boston merchant, Cornelius Waldo, became owner of the house and after unsuccessfully advertising it for rent "to a Gentleman for a Country Seat", apparently occupied it himself. The present third story and much of the present panelling and interior trim were added about 1745.

In 1748, the house was purchased by Joseph Lee, a Judge in the Court of Common Pleas of Middlesex County, a Iounder of Christ Church, Cambriage, in 1159, and a Mandamus Councillor in 1774. Lee's wife was a daughter of Spencer Phips, colonial Governor of Massachusetts in 1749 and 1756, and during the Lee family years the house was one of six pre-1776 homes along the road to Watertown occupied by one large family group. A sister of Mrs. Lee married Richard Lechmere, who built in 1767 at the site now numbered 145 Brattle Street. Another sister married a relation of

The rest of the file

Bibliography, boundary description, and the people who prepared and reviewed the nomination.

MAJOR BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES Cambridge Historical Commission, Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge, Report Four: Old Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975. 10 GEOGRAPHICAL DATA ACREAGE OF NOMINATED PROPERTY 0.41 QUADRANGLE NAME Lexington,MA UTM REFERENCES AL19324419 ZONE EASTING 14993649 NORTHING ELL iLL GLU L VERBAL BOUNDARY DESCRIPTION QUADRANGLE SCALE 1:24,000 ZONE EASTING LiLl, Lu NORTHING LALL FLi LILu LuIlL HLJ L ILU LILILAJ see attached assessor's map, with the property boundary marked in black LIST ALL STATES AND COUNTIES FOR PROPERTIES OVERLAPPING STATE OR COUNTY BOUNDARIES CODE COUNTY CODE CODE COUNTY CODE STATE STATE 1 FORM PREPARED BY NAME / TITLE Charles M. Sullivan, Executive Director ORGANIZATION Cambridge Historical Commission STREET & NUMBER 57 Inman Street CITY OR TOWN DATE March 11, 1979 TELEPHONE 617- STATE Cambridge, Mass.

02139 12 STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICER CERTIFICATION THE EVALUATED SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS PROPERTY WITHIN THE STATE IS NATIONAL - STATE_ LOCAL As the designated State Historic Preservation Officer for the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (Public Law 89-665), I hereby nominate this property for inclusion in the National Register and certify that it has been evaluated according to the criteria and procedures set forth by the National Park Service. STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICER SIGNATURE Patera R Wesenske TITLE Executive Director, Massachusetts Historical CommissionATE 416/79 April 6, 1979 OR NPS USE ONLY I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THIS PROPERTY IS INCLUDED IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER Malu KEEPER OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER cooluras DATE ATTEST DATE 6-15.29 6/15/79 CHIET OF RECISTRA TION GPO 921-803 Form No. 10-300a (Hev.

10-74) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR NATIONAL PARK SERVICE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTOR Y -- NOMINATION FORM FOR NPS USE ONLY RECEIVED APR 12 1979 DATE ENTERED JUN 15 1979 CONTINUATION SHEET One ITEM NUMBER EightPAGE Three Col. Henry Vassall (#94 Brattle, built 1746) and of George Ruggles (#175 Brattle, built 1760). Iwo nephews of Judge Lee settled close by: John Vassall, Jr., who built at 105 Brattle in 1759 (known today as Longfellow House), and Thomas Oliver, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, who built at 33 Elmwood Avenue in 1767 (known today as the former James Russell Lowell House). Judge Lee considerably altered and enlarged the house c. 1748-60, adding hearths and mantels in the openings of the fireplaces of the two front rooms of the first floor and installing window seats and panelling.

Judge Lee, although only mildly Tory, was forced by public pressure to resign as a Mandamus Councillor on September 2, 1774. Although he subsequently took refuge with Tory friends in Boston, his Cambridge house was not confiscated. By 1777 he had returned to it and lived there until his death on December 5, 1802. Descendants of Judge Lee lived in the house until 1850, when the house and remaining land was rented to George Nichols, who a cellar, provided a furnace, and strengthened the house. Because the house looked low for its breadth, Nichols pur- chased . a discarded mahogany railing from the chancel of St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Tremont Street, Boston, and used the balusters to make the existing decorative parapet along the front edge of the roof. Nichols bought the house in 1860. Early in the twentieth century, Nichols' grandson, Austin I.

White, became the owner, and made further changes under the direction of the Boston architect Joseph E. Chandler. White added the present library and its fireplace, and remodelled and enlarged the ell. 401U1270 (120.0) (45.0) (75.0) (36.0) (IZ4.Z7) (124.24) 60.0) (26.0) Nº7 7200 9285 LLnLI (123,36) N011 16439 (122.34) (45.0) (75.0 (96.0) (120.0) Nº8 11570 ''''Lrfc (120.0) ENNED (147.0) Nº10 8012 (148 Nº9 17902 «!!! (121.08) BR.ATTLE (120.0) S T. CITY OF CAMBRIDGE Hooper-Lee-Nichols House UTM reference: 19/324110/4693640 SCALEI"=40' SEPTEMBERI975 15 (95.75) (150.0) 238 JUN 1 5 1979 RECEIVED. APR 1 2 1979 NATIONAL REGISTER 1pl PropertyHtooper - Lee. Nichals House state mass (middlederking Number 4.

12.29.821 TECHNICAL Photos Maps CONTROL pl OK 4.12.29 HISTORIAN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN ARCHEOLOGIST OTHER HAER OUE OF THE FARLEST HOUSES IN CAMBRIDGE THDUGL LARGKLY TODAY REFUELTINGE ITS MID IST CENTURY AAVEARANCK. THE HOUsE CONNS ARCUHTELTUAAL FRATURRS INSTALLED AT UARIOS MWES BY ITS FARLIFER ECCUPANTS Inventory - Review REVIEW UNIT CHIEF ARLEPT Mx Daubt 6/15/29 BRANCH CHIEF KEEPER National Register Write-up Federal Register Entry 7-3-79 Send-back Re-submit Entered JUN / 5 1979 United States Department of the Interior -Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service #l0f/ JUN 15 1979 APR 1 % 1979 CAMBRIDGE HISTOZURAL, CRMMISSION COPY PHOTOGRAPH No. #1058/9 Date Copied_ March 12, 1979 SourceLee-Nichols House, 159 Brattle St.

Name Hooper-Lee-Nichols House Calvanistic Congregational Church Sawin, Ezeklel, House ENTRIES IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER STATE MASSACHUSETTS Date Entered JUN | 5 1979 - Location Cambridge Middlesex County Fitchburg Worcester County Fairhaven Bristol County Also Notified Honorable Paul G. Tsongas Honorable Edward M. Kennedy Honorable Thomas P. O'Neil1, Jr. Honorable Robert F. Drinan Honorable Gerry E. Studds (NR Byers/bjr 6/19/79 State Historic Preservation Officer Mrs. Patricia L. Weslowski Executive Director Massachusetts Historical Conmission 294 Washington Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108 For further information, please call the National Register at (202) 343-6401.