You are here

Metropolitan Boston » Cambridge » Harvard Yard » Wadsworth House

Wadsworth House

-A A +A
1726; 1783, 1810, and 1871 additions. 1341 Massachusetts Ave.
  • Wadsworth House (Keith Morgan)
  • (Damie Stillman)

Tucked behind Grays Hall (HY8.2) at the southern end of Harvard Yard stands the Benjamin Wadsworth House, another survivor of the colonial campus. Constructed for the college president, the five-bay two-and-a-half story gambrel-roofed clap-boarded house was one of the finest residences in Cambridge in its day. Backing on Harvard Yard but facing the street, Wadsworth House provides one more reminder that the planning assumptions for the campus during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were radically changed in the nineteenth century, when new quadrangles were defined and the new buildings were sited to front on greenswards.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Maureen Meister
×

Data

What's Nearby

Grays Hall
Boylston Hall
Harvard Square Station
Harvard Square
The Edges of Harvard Yard

Citation

Maureen Meister, "Wadsworth House", [Cambridge, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-HY9.

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, 318-319.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,