Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1980. 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
“The William Russell Allen House is a historic house at 359 East Street in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Built in 1886, it was the first local design of H.”
Wikipedia article William Russell Allen House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 94 National Register listings in Berkshire County · listed in 1980 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Berkshire County.
Architectural style. Queen Anne style architecture in the United States
Architect. H. Neill Wilson
National Register reference number.80000427- 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.
The names inscribed on the monument are those of citizens of Pittsfield who died in the war, either from wounds, or, before their discharge, from disease contracted in the war ; not including citizens of other places, who served on her quota. They are as follows :
It was determined to place it at the west end of the park, in or near which, a large portion of the Pittsfield soldiers volunteered, and which possessed many other associations of patriotic interest; and the park, however beautiful, being not considered in a proper condition for the reception of the contemplated work, the town placed in the hands of the committee before-named, a further sum of seven thousand dollars, for the purpose of making some longdesired improvements. The nature of these improvements was left to the discretion of the committee, by whom the following changes were made : The oval plot which constitutes the park, was surrounded by a handsome and substantial coping of granite, outside of which a broad gravel walk, with granite curbing, was built. The surface of the plot was graded, and a considerable number of trees, which had become so thick as to impede each other's growth, were felled. The Old Elm had fallen in 1861. In addition to this, the grade of Park place was reduced so as to make it more uniform with that of Bank row.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 118 fires within 5 miles of Allen, William Russell, House between
2002 and 2020, burning about 82 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 2 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
Debris and open burning
66
Recreation and ceremony
17
Smoking
7
Railroad operations and maintenance
7
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
6
Equipment and vehicle use
4
Misuse of fire by a minor
4
Natural
2
Arson/incendiarism
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Other causes
1
Fireworks
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 1,006 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Allen, William Russell, House between 1834 and
1975: 470 Plantae, 329 Animalia, 203 Fungi, 4 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. H. Mead, A. K. Harrison, A. K. Harrison, Florence 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
16 workings within 5 miles of Allen, William Russell, House: 9 past producers, 4 producers, 2 occurrences, 1 unknown.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Pittsfield, the town this property stands in, in 98 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 64 thunderstorm wind, 17 hail, 13 flash flood, 3 flood.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
Survey team observed several structures with shingle damage to roofs. Many limbs and several trees were knocked down. Upon observation these trees were determined to be shallow rooted. Roofs dislodged from clubhouse and dugout of Waconah Park baseball stadium. Eyewitnesses with various vantage points reported observing rotating debris consistent with a tornado. Additional reports indicate a portion of the fencing at Waconah Park was also knocked down, and bleachers along the left field were pushed backward. In addition, trees and wires were downed on Tyler Street and Woodlawn Avenue, and two moored motor boats at Burbank Park were flipped over and partially submerged. There was also a report of a tree falling on a house on Charles Street. Top winds estimated at 70 mph.
A line of thunderstorms, that developed over eastern New York, moved into southern Berkshire county shortly after noon on May 25. This line of storms continued to produce strong gusty winds that brought numerous large trees and power lines down throughout the city of Pittsfield.
A cold front moving east into Berkshire County triggered widely scattered severe thunderstorms. The storms brought down large limbs and power lines in the town of Pittsfield.
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
2,017 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 William Russell Allen House is located on East Street in down town Pittsfield, three blocks east of the Court Square Historic District (NR). When constructed, it occupied an ample one acre lot in the city's finest residential . neighborhood. Today it is flank- ed by former hospital buildings which were constructed in the early twentieth century. It is one of the few remaining structures which reflect the area's elegant residential character of the late nineteenth century. The Queen Anne style Allen House is asymmetrical in both plan and elevation. It is two and one-half stories in height and is enclosed by a complex pitched roof which is pierced near its center by a single chimney stack.
It's basement is constructed of rock faced granite blocks, the first floor is uncoursed rock faced Great Barrington bluestone and the upper floors are covered with a combination of patterned wood and terra cotta shingles, specifi- cally, a band of wooden shingles in a staggered butt pattern encircles the base of the second floor; the remainder of the second floor is covered with wooden shingles in a canted hexagonal pattern; terra cotta tiles in an arcaded pattern are used in the gables. Additionally, its porch which wraps around the southeast corner is trimmed with East Longmeadow sandstone and marble. Sash varies from a 1/1 to a multi-pane treatment. A continuous boxed cornice encircles the building forming pedimented gables.
The facade (south) is dominated by a projecting gabled pavillion which contains a two- story, three sided bay. The bay contains windows on all three faces at both the first and second stories and is topped by a balustrade to form a third story porch. East of the bay at the first story is an open porch whose entrance is approached by five granite steps.
(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect H. Neil Wilson The Willlam kussell Allen House possesses integrity of location, design, materials, and workmanship and associations with prominent local persons. Additionally it is the example of Queen Anne design in Pittsfield and one of the finest in Berkshire County. William Russell Allen was the grandson of Thomas Allen, III who had given the town the Berkshire Athenauem, (located in Park Square National Register Historic District) the decade before. Allen was also the great grandson of Thomas Allen, the "Fighting Parson" of Revolutionary War fame. Even the land on which he built his new home, although bought from the estate of Dr. John Brewster, was part of the ancestrial lands of his grandfather.
Beyond his family connections, William Allen distinguished himself as the owner of the Allen Farm (in the eastern part of Pittsfield) where he raised horses on his 1250 acres. At the time of his death in 1916, Allen had raised and sold over 1,000 blooded horses, including the famous stallion "Kremlin" who was at one time the fastest horse in the United States. Allen brought a revolutionary idea to the Berkshires - that of raising fast horses in a cold climate. By the 1890's Pittsfield was enjoying a rep- utation, not only for stock farms, but for horse racing. Much of this interest can be traced to Allen's innovative idea. The William Allen House is the finest example of the Queen Anne style extant in Pittsfield and one of the most important examples in Berkshire County.
The style expressed in its asymmetrical plan and massing, and in the variety of materials used in construction to produce contrasts in texture and color.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80000427, 11 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.
Block
