Built in 1840 in the Greek Revival architecture. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1986. 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 Captain James Berry House is a historic house located in Harwich, Massachusetts. Built in 1858, it is a well-preserved example of Greek Revival architecture, notable for its continuous ownership by a single family.”
Wikipedia article Captain James Berry House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 145 National Register listings in Barnstable County · listed in 1986 · category: Building · built in 1840, Greek Revival architecture.
National Register reference number.86001837- 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.
Fires near this property
74 since 2007
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 74 fires within 5 miles of Berry, Captain James, House between
2007 and 2020, burning about 18 acres in total. 7 started naturally. 4 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
31
Debris and open burning
17
Natural
7
Equipment and vehicle use
5
Arson/incendiarism
4
Recreation and ceremony
4
Smoking
3
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
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 2,686 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Berry, Captain James, House between 1840 and
1975: 1,500 Animalia, 878 Plantae, 244 Fungi, 36 Chromista, 22 Unrecorded, 5 Bacteria, 1 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. Pealey, A. R. Hodgdon 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 National Weather Service names
Harwich, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 1997 and 2024: 3 hail, 2 flood, 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado.
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.
The same supercell storm that produced the Barnstable-Yarmouth tornado went on to touch down again near the center of Harwich, MA at 1210 PM EDT (1110 AM EST). The initial touchdown was just east of Harwich Elementary School, just south of Parallel Street. It moved northeast through Harwich Center, passing just south of a golf course, and lifted in East Harwich in the Vicinity of Queen Anne Road. At least 150 hardwood trees were either uprooted or snapped. A few homes also had shingles that were ripped off. Wind gusts were estimated as high as 110 mph, which is on the high end of the Enhanced Fujita EF-1 ranking. Harwich spent $1.2 million on cleanup of roads. That figure is estimated to be one-third of the total costs, when individual homeowner claims are taken into account.||The tornado then lifted. However, severe straight-line wind damage was observed in Chatham. Numerous large trees were uprooted, consistent with 90 mph gusts or greater.
In Harwich, two large trees were down on a house on Lake Pleasant Avenue (Route 124). A tree was down on Bank Street. Another tree was down on Gotham Road and yet another down on Sisson Road. A large limb was down on Route 28 near Route 274. A large tree and wires was down on Guilford Drive. Tree and wires down on Main Street at Uncle Harry's Road.
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
7,104 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.
Statement of significance
(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect Unknown The Captain James Berry House, located in the Harwich village of West Harwich, retains integrity of location, design, setting, mater ials, feeling, workmanship, and association. The Greek Revival-style dwelling is a Iemaikably intact assemblage of main block and ells unified by a consistent application of well-executed decorative detailing. The house holds associations wi th Harwich's maritime past and with a prominent family of local mariners. Built in the mid 19th century to house a sea captain and his family, the Berry House continued to shelter seafar ing members of the Berry family into the twentieth century. The house has Iemained in continuous residential use by the Berry family to the present day.
The Captain James Berry House thus fulfils Criteria B and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. Harwich, incorporated in 1694, was by the mid 18th century an area of dispersed settlement wi th several developing loci of population. West Harwich was one of several villages that grew up south of Harwich Center and just north of the coast. Fishing, whaling, and maritime-related trade had, by the eve of the Revolution, become the town's principal business. After the war, with the collapse of the whale fisheries, fishing along Harwich's southern coast became increasingly important. Main Street, established in the early 19th century, provided a southern east-west route linking Harwich's coastal villages and stimulating both residential and commeicial construction.
Early in the Federal period, Harwich's fisher ies-predominantly harvesting codfish-made the town one of the three largest fishing centers on the Cape. In 1802, there were 15-20 vessels engaged in shore fishing with four others of 100 tons each active in cod fishing off Newfoundland and Labrador.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 86001837, 32 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.
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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