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Cochrane House

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1886, McKim, Mead and White. 257 Commonwealth Ave.
  • Cochrane House (NRD) (Richard W. Longstreth)
  • (Damie Stillman)
  • (Damie Stillman)

Recalling elements of both their John Andrew House at 32 Hereford Street (BB68; 1884) and their Beebe House at 199 Commonwealth Avenue (BB50; 1890), McKim, Mead and White's Cochrane House facade represents an uneasy amalgam, rather than a true synthesis, of their respective Italian Renaissance and Federal idioms. The Adamesque swags of the first-floor window architraves coexist awkwardly with the fifteenth-century round-arched entrance surround. As such disparate influences are easier to segregate within individual rooms, the interior is more successful. While its details are sedulously derived from early-nineteenth-century precedents, the scale of the top-lit cylindrical stair hall exceeds that of even public buildings of the Federal period.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Keith N. Morgan
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Data

What's Nearby

Proctor House
Hotel Tuileries and Hotel Lafayette
Charles Francis Adams House and 448 Beacon Street
Sears House
Georgiana Lowell House

Citation

Keith N. Morgan, "Cochrane House", [Boston, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-BB74.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Massachusetts

Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, Keith N. Morgan, with Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Roger G. Reed, and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 176-176.

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