Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Hasty Pudding Club
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. 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 1978 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.78000442- 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 62 fires within 5 miles of Hasty Pudding Club 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
17
Debris and open burning
8
Recreation and ceremony
6
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 2,093 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Hasty Pudding Club between 1898 and
1975: 916 Animalia, 654 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 Hasty Pudding Club: 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
1,525 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 Hasty Pudding Club is located at 12 Holyoke Street, two blocks from Harvard Square in Cambridge. The building is surrounded by shops on both sides and along the opposite side of the street. The three story structure was built in 1887-88. It is constructed entirely of brick, except the rear wall which is sheathed in clapboards painted red. A narrow molded frieze runs around the base of the enta- blature of the building, which is crowned by a massive overhanging cornice with large modillions. The symmetrical facade faces west. It is three bays wide with one story entry porches flanking either side of the main block. Six stone steps lead to each porch.
The entrances are covered by flat roofs with overhanging eaves on modillions and wide entablatures supported by columns with simple moldings. The partially exposed basement level has paired windows in each bay. The three ground floor windows are set in large arches and have 38 lights in the top half of the arch over three rec- tangular lights in the bottom half. The brick arches have a round brick boss flanking each. At the second floor, each of the three bays has paired windows; they are linked horizontally by a continuous sill. These six windows are framed by their architraves alone. The south elevation shows the building's stone foundation. The west end wall of the south end entry porch protrudes.
The second floor elevation has three large 24/6 windows over two tall arched windows on the ground floor. Both windows contain a semi-elliptical fan over 40 lights. The east end rear section protrudes and is windowless. The north elevation is brick and sits on an alleyway.
/ARCHITECT The Hasty Pudding Club is significant as one of the first institutions to consis- tently produce original musical comedies. It is believed to be the oldest continuous theatrical organization in the United States and the third oldest in the world. The first Pudding play at Harvard University took place in 1844. There was no clubhouse at that time so that meetings and rehearsals took place in the pri- vate rooms of the members.
Since the founding of the Club, the musicals, operettas, and plays have been participated in by such famous theatrical graduates as Oliver Wende11 Holmes (1860), William Randolph Hearst (1885), Robert Benchly (1911 and 1912), Henry Cabot Lodge III (1923), Archibald Cox (1932 and 1933), Alan Jay Lerner (1938 and 1939), Jack Lemmon (1945 and 1947) and Erich Segal (1958). This clubhouse has been the home of the theatricals since 1889. Hanging on walls throughout the building are handpainted posters and historical materials from past shows and other significant events. The theater is used year round. The annual Hasty Pudding show is held each spring.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78000442, 7 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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