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Metropolitan Boston » Route 128 Corridor Northwest » Sudbury » Whitehall, Ralph Adams Cram House and Chapel of St. Elizabeth of Hungary

Whitehall, Ralph Adams Cram House and Chapel of St. Elizabeth of Hungary

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c. 1815; 1914–1915 additions, Ralph Adams Cram. 427 Concord Rd. 1914, Ralph Adams Cram. 435 Concord Rd.
  • Chapel of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Peter Vanderwarker or Antonina Smith)

Medieval scholar and architect Ralph Adams Cram purchased Whitehall, a handsome Federal mansion and enlarged the house in 1914–1915 by constructing a library wing on the street side and modifying the service areas on the opposite end. At the time, Cram was the director of the architecture program at MIT and nationally recognized as a church and college designer.

With his family and two masons, Cram built a small Norman chapel on the hillside behind the house, using stones from the fields for materials. A large rose window above the entrance lights the simple gabled hall, which is ornamented with sculptural and architectural fragments brought from Europe. Mr. and Mrs. Cram are buried in the cemetery beyond the chapel, which is owned by the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge. The adjacent St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church uses the chapel for worship services in the summer. The finest of three similar Norman chapels that Ralph Adams Cram designed in the Metropolitan Boston area, St. Elizabeth of Hungary should be compared to the Chapel of St. Anne at the Germaine Lawrence School in Arlington (AR2) and Ellingwood Chapel in Nahant's Greenlawn Cemetery (NH2).

Writing Credits

Author: 
Keith N. Morgan
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Data

What's Nearby

Sudbury Center Historic District
Samuel Stone House
Wayland Center Historic District
Wayside Inn Complex
Richard H. and Caroline C. Field House

Citation

Keith N. Morgan, "Whitehall, Ralph Adams Cram House and Chapel of St. Elizabeth of Hungary", [Sudbury, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-SD2.

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, 466-466.

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