Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1985. 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
“Richmond Court is a historic apartment complex at 1209-1217 Beacon Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. Designed by Ralph Adams Cram and built in 1898, this was probably the first apartment house built in the northeastern United States that resembled an English Tudor manor house.”
Wikipedia article Richmond Court, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 249 National Register listings in Norfolk County · listed in 1985 · category: District · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Norfolk County.
National Register reference number.85001575- 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.
THERE are only six cities and no individual towns in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a larger tax list than the town of Brookline. The town of Milton is the only one approaching it in the value of its taxable property, ami the relative value on the tax lists of the two towns is as $65,- 000,000 is to $20,000,000. Watertown, Westll(.l,l Detlham, Manchester, Framingham, Plymouth, Falmouth, Weymouth, N'atick, Attleboro, Marblehead and Amesbury, all delightful colonial towns, each brin- to the Commonwealth a tax income of less than one tenth the amounl contributed by Brookline.
When the town of Brookline was bom mi November 13, 1705, Massachusetts bad over sixty towns in her family ranging in age from one to eighty-five years. The same form of town government inaugurated at the birth of each has been preserved by Brookline and carried nut in the town meetings of cad, year. The officers taking part in the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Brookline's birth, November 13, [005, were elected to office and performed the same functions as did i1m.sc chosen in 1705 to stand sponsors t<> the infant town. The voting list df the town lias increased to 1,300 and the limits of the town include the villages of Cottage population at the time of the celebration of its -w,, hundredth birthday numbered over 23,000. Brookline is unique, as a Massachusetts town, its limits, the only exception being electric motors and philosophical instruments. Its wealth and importance is due mainly to its natural and acquired beauty, and its healthfulness a- a residential town. The private fortunes of its inhabitants furnish the means for its multiplying wealth of attractions as a place of suburban residence, and unlike most Massachusetts towns, no rich corporations are sheltered within its borders.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 21 fires within 5 miles of Richmond Court between
2015 and 2020, burning about 20 acres in total. None 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
8
Recreation and ceremony
7
Smoking
3
Arson/incendiarism
2
Equipment and vehicle use
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 12,535 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Richmond Court between 1810 and
1975: 5,155 Plantae, 3,810 Fungi, 3,103 Animalia, 193 Protozoa, 177 Chromista, 64 Unrecorded, 33 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by (MARSDEN, H W), ?, ? ex Herb. W.G. Farlow 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
8 workings within 5 miles of Richmond Court: 7 plants, 1 past producer.
7 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
Brookline, the town this property stands in, in 19 storm reports between 1995 and 2022: 13 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 2 flood, 1 hail.
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.
Several trees and wires on Cottage Street and Dean Road were downed by thunderstorm winds. In addition, an amateur radio operator reported a 58 mph wind gust.
In Brookline, at 1259 PM EST (159 PM EDT), a tree was down onto a building on Perry Street. At 101 PM EST (201 PM EDT), a tree was down on the 200 block of Walnut Street.
Portions of Route 9 (Boylston Street) were flooded with up to three feet of water. Newton and South Streets and Clark Road were impassable due to flooding.
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
4,545 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
N/A Dating from 1898, Richmond Court is a four-story brick apartment house with sandstone trim designed by the renowned Boston architect, Ralph Adams Cram. It is significant in the architectural development of apartment houses as an early example of the Jacobethan style and as a prototype for later courtyard apartments. It is located in the south side of Beacon Street between Coolidge Corner to the west and Auburn Circle (at the Boston line) to the east. Conceived by the 01msted brothers in the 1880s as a spacious throughfare accommodating streetcars, pleasure vehicles, and pedestrians, Beacon Street is noted for its fine masonry apartment blocks and commercial establishments.
Richmond Court was designed as five attached apartment houses, symmetrically arranged around a U-shaped courtyard that is screened from the street by an iron picket fence supported between brick piers with sandstone finials. The fence incorporates four gates; the two narrow outer gates are for pedestrians while the larger inner gates, spannedby decorative arches with lanterns, accommodate vehicular traffic. The courtyard itself is laid out as a small private park in the formal Italian fashion. The grassed area surrounded by the driveway contains gravel footpaths and a central fountain ornamented by Lee Lawrie's bronze statue of anymph.
The courtyard concept, employed here for the first time in the Boston , provided several amenities lacking in apartment houses of conventional It supplied more windows per apartment, thus increasing air circulation and the admittance of light; it provided each apartment with a pleasant view of an elegant and private park; and finally, it allowed a setback from the bustle of Beacon Street.
(in one paragraph) Ralph Adams Cram Richmond Court possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, and workmanship as well as significant associations with the late nineteenth century development of Brookline, and with the development of the apartment house building Constructed in 1896-1898, to the designs of noted Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram, Richmond Court was the first apartment house in the Boston area to be designed in the dacobethan or English manor style, and to be arranged about a central courtyard. Richmond Court was also a relatively early apartment house built along Beacon Street after its transformation into an elegant boulevard by the 01msted brothers in 1886; in plan and style, it served as the prototype for many later apartment houses of the higher class.
Thus, Richmond Court meets Criteria A, B, and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. The historical development of Richmond Court has been recorded by the Brookline Historical Commission in their comprehensive townwide inventory (26-124-7). Richmond Court was built in 1898 by the Richmond Court Trust, Francis Peabody and Noah W. Jordan, trustees. Jordan was also a trustee of the Brookline Real Estate and Building Trust which built 1056-1064 Beacon Street as well as a stockholder in the West End Land Company. (The West End Land Co.
had been formed in 1886 by Henry Whitney for the purpose of improving Beacon Street, an end that was accomplished in that same year.) Born in 1846, he was listed as a financier, a trustee of the Boston and Worcester Electric Co., and a director of the Columbian National Life Insurance Co. Like most of the other investors in Beacon ISTERE Street buildings, Jordan lived in Boston....
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 85001575, 20 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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