Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Sands, Hiram, House
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Richard Henry (1787-1879) was the author, poet and essayist. He was one of the founders of the North American Review.”
A History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 (1913). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.76000238- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In October, 1660, the County Court ordered, that the House of Correction, or Bridewell, should be used as a prison for the County, until further provision be made. Such provision was made by the erection of a jail l before Aug. 26, 1692, when it was ordered by the Court, " that the County Treasurer take care that their majesties Goal at Cambridge be repaired, for the comfortable being of what persons may be committed forthwith." 2 It was also ordered, Dec. 14, 1703, " that an addition be made to the prison at the west end thereof, of eighteen foot square, with studs conformable to the old house." A dozen years later, the old part of the prison became so unsatisfactory, that the Court appointed " a committee to agree with carpenters and other workmen to erect and build a good well-timbered house in Cambridge for a Prison, for the accommodation of a keeper, to be thirty-six foot long, and for width agreeable to the foundation of the old Goal or Prison, two storeys high, fifteen foot stud, with a stack of chyrnneys in the middle, to be done and finished workmanlike, as soon as may be conveniently effected Further
Until 1720, the " Common " extended to Linnaean Street, and included also a few acres, lying in a nearly square form, at the northwesterly corner of Linnaean Street and North Avenue.1 This extreme point of the Common was set apart as a " Place of Execution," or " Gallows Lot," as it was more familiarly called. And after the Common was reduced to its present size, and the lots in this square fronting on the streets, had been granted to individuals, about one acre in its extreme northwesterly corner was reserved for its former use, until trials, and imprisonments, and executions were transferred to East Cambridge.2 It was entered from North Avenue through a bridleway or passage, between Lancaster Place and Arlington Street, now called Stone Court.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 63 fires within 5 miles of Sands, Hiram, House between
2015 and 2020, burning about 107 acres in total. None started naturally. 24 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Arson/incendiarism
24
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
16
Debris and open burning
9
Recreation and ceremony
7
Smoking
5
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 2,072 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Sands, Hiram, House between 1898 and
1975: 900 Animalia, 649 Plantae, 459 Fungi, 27 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 12 Chromista, 8 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
12 workings within 5 miles of Sands, Hiram, House: 10 plants, 2 past producers.
10 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Lead, Tantalum, Niobium (Columbium). Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cambridge, the town this property stands in, in 16 storm reports between 2006 and 2023: 7 thunderstorm wind, 3 flood, 3 flash flood, 2 lightning.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,937 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Hiram Sands House is located on Putnam Avenue, several blocks from Harvard Square, in the Cambridgeport area of Cambridge. The house is the only large Bracketed house in Cambridgeport which retains much of its original appearance. Although the house is confined to a conventional 63 by 100 foot lot on a busy street, its setting is enhanced by a garden seen behind a picket fence. The two-story brick house was built in 1848 for a member of the Sands family, owners of an important North Cambridge brickyard. The building retains many Greek Revival aspects in its stolid mass and pedimented lintels on the upper-floor windows. The proportions and the widely projecting eaves supported by pairs of brackets belong to the Italianate period.
Interspersed between the large brackets is a series of smaller brackets that read almost as a row of dentil blocks. The design of the large eave brackets is repeated on a smaller scale on each face of the square posts and pilasters of the front portico. The result is a lacy enframement of the entrance that contrasts with the building's otherwise heavy proportions. The facade ornamentation is strongly plastic - window caps and sills project bluntly, and two belt courses corbel out from the wall in two steps of brick. The deep brick fascia under the main cornice is not designed as an entablature, and its depth is determined solely by the three-foot high roof brackets. An important Italianate feature not evident from the facade is the irregular plan of the Hiram Sands House.
The I-shaped core allows two rooms on one side of the central hall and just one large room on the other.
/ARCHITECT possibly levi Perkins The Hiram Sands House is significant for its associations with the Cambridge brickmaking industry and as one of the most outstanding architectural examples in the community of Cambridgeport. The Sands House at 22 Putnam Avenue was the home of Hiram Sands who belonged to a promi- nent Cambridge brickmaking family and operated a brickyard near his residence. The house is the second of three brick Sands family homes erected in Cambridge during the mid-nineteenth century. The first still exists at 145 Elm Street and the third, in North Cambridge, was demolished in 1939. The Sands House incorporates elements of both the Greek Revival and Italianate styles and is an unusually elaborate example of a mid- nineteenth century craftsman's residence.
Iocated on a prominent corner site, it is the most significant building in the Putnam Avenue area and occupies an important place in the history of Cambridge architecture. The lot on which the Sands House stands was purchased by John Sands in 1848 from John and Horace Hews who were involved in the Putnam Avenue brickyards. Hiram Sands bought the lot and the partially finished house in October of the same year. Levi Perkins, a Cam- bridge carpenter who figures in these property transactions, was probably the builder. The Sands House was located within easy walking distance from the brickyard, and was one of the most ostentatious residences in Cambridgeport.
The building offers an interesting contrast to the small workers' cottages of its immediate neighborhood, as well as to the suburban residences of nearby Dana Hill, a middle class development of the same period that drew residents of a more socially and financially secure class.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76000238, 18 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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