65 Langdon St photographed by Christopher Hail on March 9, 1985
The Colonial Revival apartment building at 65 Langdon Street was constructed in 1907 as designed by Boston-based architectural firm Newhall & Blevins for owners Stearns & Moore. Lawyer Harry N. Stearns was active in Cambridge politics and a member of the Massachusetts militia. He and his wife Edith Baker Winslow had three children, one of whom was Elizabeth Winslow Stearns. Elizabeth went on to become a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and co-founded Cambridge Camera and Marine in Harvard Square with her partner, Lois M. Bowen. Bowen was a Cambridge photographer and entrepreneur and in 2002 her photograph collection was donated to the Cambridge Historical Commission.
65 Langdon St photographed by Christopher Hail on September 11, 1983
Newhall & Blevins, a partnership of architects Louis C. Newhall (1869–1925) and Albert H. Blevins (1874–1946), designed many notable buildings such as the Inman Square Fire Station (1912) and Cambridge Savings Bank Building (1923) but were only active for four years before they took on the Langdon St project. The apartment building was of wood frame construction and finished in stucco with many interesting features that can still be seen today. The brick chimneys are topped with intricate brick design and terracotta tiles. The entrance is recessed behind a projecting three-sided porch with wooden arches. The second story has applied “balconies” with 1/2 balusters. The door itself is oak with leaded glass, and a wrought iron lantern hangs above.
Detail of entryway at 65 Langdon St photographed by CHC staff
While the building was under construction, it was advertised as containing 12 suites, each with three or four rooms and a bath. Many modern amenities, such as steam heat, fireplace, electric lights, and janitor services, were to be included, with rents at $30-40 per month.
Date: September 14, 2024 Time: 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM Location: Joan Lorentz Park, 449 Broadway
Buckle up for a fun-filled afternoon as we hit the road for the Open Archives 2024: Archives Roadtrip! This free annual event, hosted by the Cambridge Historical Commission, invites you to explore the rich history of our city with the help of archivists from multiple repositories
What’s on the Itinerary?
👨👩👧 Family Fun: We’ve got scavenger hunts with prizes and unique crafting opportunities. With activities for the little ones and plenty of engaging exhibits for all ages, it’s a day of fun for the whole family.
📚 Meet the Archivists: Chat with the passionate archivists and historians who keep our city’s history alive. They’ll be on hand to answer questions, share stories, and give you a peek behind the archival curtain.
Join us for a journey through time that’s as thrilling as a road trip, but with fewer gas station stops! We promise a drive down memory lane that’s both educational and entertaining.
Mark your calendars, pack a picnic, and let’s make history together! 🗺️🚙
For more details, follow the Instagram hashtag #CambridgeOpenArchives and check out our Instagram account @cambridgehistoricalcommission or contact histcomm@cambridgema.gov. with questions.
John Muldoon, undated photograph. Image courtesy of Tracy (Halliday) Reusch.
John E. Muldoon, a furniture designer and self-taught architect, was born in East Cambridge in November 1864, the first child of William H. and Catherine (McKeever) Muldoon. William had been born in the neighborhood in 1840. When the Civil War began in 1861, the 21-year-old enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army; in 1864, during the long Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, William suffered a severe wound to his left arm, which was so damaged it had to be amputated. He was mustered out that same year and returned to Cambridge; he was home when John was born. The family lived on Fifth Street in East Cambridge; John’s only sister, Sarah, was born in 1866, his brother Samuel in 1872, and his youngest brother, William, in 1888. William the father worked at the nearby New England Glass Company, and later opened a tavern, “The Cosmopolitan,” on Cambridge Street, and even became a teacher. He died in 1898.
Advertisement for William Muldoon’s tavern, ‘The Cosmopolitan’, Cambridge Chronicle, July 1884.
John Muldoon attended local public schools and was apprenticed as a carpenter while a young man. In 1887, he married Margaret A. Fay; the next year, they welcomed a son, called Willie. John began work as a furniture designer for the esteemed firm of Irving & Casson and could walk to work from his home, a double house he rented with his parents on Fifth Street.
Example design by Irving and Casson – A. H. Davenport — Historic New England Collections. Flower Box of Mahogany c.1900.
John was hired by his landlord to design and oversee construction of a new double-house to replace the existing building there. This would be John’s first known foray into the architecture field. The double house at 41-43 Fifth Street was built with modest proportions but exhibits more detail than many surrounding tenements of the time. Today many of the building’s Classically inspired elements are covered in vinyl siding, yet Muldoon’s affection for Classical design is still apparent in the original pilasters in the Ionic style that frame the two entrances under deeply overhanging eaves. An image from the 1960s (below) shows the original pilaster detailing at the bay windows with swags in the entablatures. He and his young family would occupy one unit with his mother and father living in another unit. This first known building commission for John Muldoon would set off a short, yet significant career as an architectural designer in Cambridge.
Muldoon family home, 41-43 Fifth Street. Before covered with vinyl siding. CHC Staff photograph 1965.
In 1892 John Muldoon, with no architectural training or academic degree, submitted the lowest bid for a new firehouse in East Cambridge and was awarded the contract. The brick structure, described in newspapers as being in the “Doric style,” was built on the corner of Otis and Third streets across from the Middlesex County Courthouse. The station, with its 85-foot hose drying tower, space to accommodate six horses, and (ironically) a smoking room for the firefighters, stood for just three years: in 1895 it and the rest of the block bounded by Cambridge, Otis, Second, and Third streets were razed to make way for the new Middlesex County Registry of Deeds.
“New” Ward 3 Fire Station designed by John Muldoon in 1892. It was demolished less than three years later. Cambridge Chronicle, May 7, 1892.
Muldoon was then hired by the City to design another fire station just a few blocks away at the corner of Gore and Third streets. Architecturally, the second station shares many similarities with the earlier building with a stronger emphasis on Colonial Revival design with bold pilasters and pediment. Historically, the building also exhibited a Palladian window on the second floor. The former station stands today as a noteworthy institutional project in Muldoon’s early architectural career and is likely to have gained him important future commissions in Cambridge, despite his lack of professional credentials.
Engine 3, 29 Third Street, as completed. City of Cambridge Annual Report, 1896.Engine 3, 29 Third Street, 2017.
Muldoon’s first major project outside East Cambridge came in 1894 when a young couple James and Mary Heffernan hired him to design a large residence at the corner of Cambridge Street and Highland Avenue. The dwelling, while clearly Colonial Revival in its detailing, features a more traditional Queen Anne corner tower capped with a conical roof. Its prominent site and handsome design may have helped Muldoon attract the attention of affluent Mid and West Cambridge residents, who might otherwise have overlooked the work of a furniture designer from modest East Cambridge. Upper- and middle-class residents took notice of Muldoon’s high-quality designs, which were as good as those of major architectural firms—and cost a lot less.
Heffernan Residence, 81 Highland Avenue.
In 1895 while overseeing the construction of the second fire station, Muldoon was hired by Jeremiah W. Coveney, a former undertaker, Cambridge City Councillor, and State Senator, to design a dignified single-family home at the corner of Otis and Sixth streets. The design stood out in East Cambridge: a single-family detached house was a rarity in the dense neighborhood of tenements and rowhouses as were houses in the Colonial Revival style. The symmetrical design features two-story rounded bays flanking the central entry portico with a Palladian window above. Alterations in 1992, when the building was used as a funeral home, obscured some of the original detailing, but the Colonial Revival motifs largely remain intact.
Jeremiah Coveney House, 140 Otis Street, before renovations (1967).Jeremiah Coveney House, 140 Otis Street, after renovations (2021).
From 1895, John suffered a series of personal tragedies which put most of his projects on hold. In 1895 John and Margaret’s only child, Willie, died of diphtheria at age six. A year later, Margaret died while in Saratoga Springs, New York. After their deaths, John accepted a few small jobs in East Cambridge such as alterations to a neighbor’s house on Fifth Street, two renovations on Otis Street, and designing a stable on Gore Street (since demolished). In 1898 John lost his father.
During these somber years, John met Ellen Frances O’Connell (1875-1920), a first-generation Irish immigrant who lived with her father and mother in East Cambridge. Her father, John Patrick O’Connell, was for years the advertising agent for the Sacred Heart Review, a prominent Catholic publication that was active from 1888 to 1918. John and Ellen married in 1900 and would have six children together: five daughters (Helen, Catherine, Mary, Sarah, and Betty) and one son, John E. Muldoon, Jr.
The year before the marriage, Thomas J. Casey, the Chief of the Cambridge Fire Department, commissioned John to design a residence for his family on Lexington Avenue. The Casey’s stately, Colonial Revival double-house, a stone’s throw from the recently built Engine 9 Fire Station (1896), which was not designed by Muldoon. The Casey Residence exhibits Muldoon’s exceptional understanding on Colonial-inspired design with its rounded bays, a columned portico, and intricate trim detailing on the façade and dormers. Inside, five types of wood were laid as flooring in distinct patterns and colors.
Chief Thomas Casey House, 166-168 Lexington Avenue.
John’s craftsmanship (and low costs) impressed developers in Mid-Cambridge, who commissioned him to design multiple properties in the neighborhood. In 1901 he designed three adjacent double-houses at 27-29, 31-33, and 35-37 Highland Avenue for the owner-developer John Elston. The three unique residences are an eclectic blend of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival influences and today are in varied states of preservation. Elston also hired Muldoon that year to design a duplex at 14-16 Ellsworth Park, a short dead-end street.
During his career designing buildings all over Cambridge, John remained employed as a designer at Irving & Casson. Though he split his time between roles as architect and designer, his employers at Irving & Casson must have given him their blessing; as in 1903, John was hired by them to plan and design a four-story, four-bay addition to the company’s plant, that would be modest in size and located in the central corridor screened from Otis and Thorndike streets.
Irving & Casson Factory with Muldoon-designed addition from 1903 highlighted.
John Muldoon’s last known project in Cambridge was the two-family house he designed for himself and his family. In 1909 he purchased a house lot on Lexington Avenue from the heirs of his former client, Fire Chief Thomas J. Casey and erected the grand Colonial Revival style structure one sees today. The two-family house boasts a large, gambrel roof with its gable end facing the street, elaborate columned porticos surmounted by balustrades topped with urns, and bold corner quoins.
John Muldoon House (1909), 146-148 Lexington Avenue.
John Muldoon’s legacy in Cambridge cannot be overstated. He progressed from carpenter’s apprentice and furniture designer to a twenty-year career designing houses and buildings in Cambridge. Some of the city’s best examples of Colonial Revival-style houses were designed and built by Muldoon, the self-taught architect.
While he seemingly retired from the architecture profession following the completion of his own home on Lexington Avenue, he remained employed at Irving & Casson until his death in 1937. He was 72 years old.
Muldoon House (center left) and neighboring Chief Casey House (right) on Lexington Avenue.
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R. (Richard) Clipston Sturgis was born in Boston on Christmas Eve in 1860, the son of Russell and Susan Codman Welles Sturgis. As he was born into a wealthy family, Richard was schooled at the prestigious George Washington Copp Noble School (now known as the Noble and Greenough School) in Boston and at St. Paul’s in Concord, New Hampshire to prepare for college. He entered Harvard University in 1877, graduating in 1881 with a degree in architecture.
1881 Harvard Class photo of R. Clipston Sturgis. Courtesy of Harvard University Archives.
From 1881 to 1883 to worked in the office of his uncle, John Hubbard Sturgis (1834-1888), a partner in the firm Sturgis & Brigham, the designers of the original Museum of Fine Arts building in Boston and the Arthur Astor Carey house on Fayerweather Street in Cambridge. The Carey House in Cambridge was one of the earliest and high-style examples of Colonial Revival architecture in the region. It was during this time at his uncle’s firm that R. C. Sturgis married Esther Mary Ogden of Troy, New York in 1882.
The young couple then sailed to England, where Sturgis worked until late 1884 for London architect Robert William Edis, who worked on an extension to Sandringham House in Norfolk, England, one of the royal residences of King Charles III. It was during this period that Richard and Esther had their first child, Richard Clipston Sturgis, Jr. in Canterbury, England in March of 1884. Sturgis Jr. (1884-1913), closely followed in his father’s footsteps, attending the same schools and majoring in architecture at Harvard. Tragically, he died at 30 years old, possibly due to life-long illness as the family had a live-in nurse at their home in Boston. They had two other children, George Ogden Sturgis (1889), who died in infancy, and Dorothy Mary (Sturgis) Harding (1891-1978).
Richard Clipston Sturgis with newborn son Richard Clipston Sturgis, Jr. c.1884. Photo courtesy of F.S. Watt, Ancestry.com
Esther Mary Ogden Sturgis and son Richard Clipston Sturgis, Jr. c.1890, courtesy of F.S. Watt, Ancestry.com
After leaving Edis’ employ, Sturgis spent two years touring Europe, studying and sketching in France, Italy, Germany and Holland until he returned to the United States in September 1886, when he took charge of his uncle’s firm after the partnership between Sturgis and Brigham dissolved. His uncle, John Hubbard Sturgis retired in May of 1887 and died in February of 1888.
The project that perhaps launched the career of ‘Young Clip’ was the Church of the Advent in Beacon Hill. While working with his uncle, he assisted in the design and took over the project when his uncle died. He is credited with overseeing the completion of the project, designing the spire, lectern and the west porch. After his uncle’s death, Clip partnered with William Robinson Cabot forming Sturgis & Cabot from 1888 to 1893. From 1902 to 1907 Sturgis practiced with George E. Barton as Sturgis & Barton. From 1907 until his retirement in 1932 he practiced independently.
Church of the Advent, Beacon Hill, Boston. The project that helped start R. Clipston Sturgis’ career in the United States.
Clip’s career really took off in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In 1900, he was commissioned by John A. Little, the owner of two large private dormitories for Harvard students in Harvard Square to furnish designs for a new athletic building for his properties. The cramped site on Holyoke Street, just steps from Harvard Yard, featured a large tree at the middle, which Sturgis hoped to incorporate into his design. The Big Tree Swimming Pool as designed by Sturgis, was an excellent example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in the English tradition, typical for his work. The U-shaped brick building was sited around the preserved tree and also included two squash courts with limited windows for the interior programming. The building was razed in 1962 for the Holyoke Center.
Big Tree Swimming Pool. Brick Builder (1901)Building detail. Brick Builder (1901)Building plan. Brick Builder (1901)
Sturgis’ only residential project in Cambridge was during his partnership with George Barton. The firm was hired by James D. Prindle, who sought to develop the lot at the corner of Bates and Raymond streets. Sturgis and Barton designed a three-unit row that turns the corner lot. The 2 1/2-story homes are Queen Anne/Tudor in style and constructed of brick on the first floor and shingle siding above. The buildings were constructed in 1905.
32-34 Bates Street, Cambridge.
In 1902, Sturgis was appointed by the Mayor of Boston to the newly established Boston Schoolhouse Commission, a three-person independent board that would oversee the process of building schools for the City of Boston including the hiring of architects and shaping of the plans. From this expertise, Sturgis was called in to various cities all over the region to share how municipalities can provide high-quality and cost-effective new school buildings. In 1909, Sturgis spoke before the Cambridge Public School Association on this matter, explaining how that Boston commission set design standards and a standard cost structure for new buildings as to keep projects from ballooning in value. Sturgis would also serve as a consultant as the designated architect for the Museum of Fine Arts, providing a study and recommendations on the new building in the Fenway.
The Cambridge Chronicle, 23 October 1909
Sturgis was highly influential in school building construction and design in the Boston area (Cambridge included) and always advocated for English-inspired design, a personal favorite of his as he was an anglophile. He specialized in large civic buildings including schools, but also designed clubhouses, stately manors, banks, and churches. Early school buildings designed by Sturgis include the Winsor School in Boston (1908) and designing the new Perkins School for the Blind campus in Watertown in the Neo-Gothic and Colonial Revival styles. A few years after he oversaw the design and construction of the Perkins School campus, the institution hired him again to design the Woolson House Shop building (1914) on Inman Street in Cambridge. The brick building was constructed at the rear of the Woolson House at 277 Harvard Street and served as a workshop for blind women to learn a trade and sell their creations to the public. The modest Colonial Revival building was cost-effective and provided three floors of workspaces inside.
The same year he was commissioned to design the Woolson House on Inman Street, Clip was hired to design a new clubhouse for the Delta Upsilon Fraternity at Harvard, on Harvard Street, a short walk to campus. Sturgis designed the Colonial Revival style building elevated on the site, reusing the existing topography and adding a new stone retaining wall. Inside, the main feature was the hall, somewhat like an English college hall, which extended two stories high opening on the east to a lounge and to the west as a dining room. Above was the library with an opening looking down to the great hall and modest chambers for graduate members visiting. The building was purchased by the Cambridge Lodge of Elks in 1943 and is now home to the Ikeda Center, a non-profit whose mission is to “build cultures of peace through learning and dialogue“.
396 Harvard Street, Cambridge. Former D.U. Clubhouse.
Besides his career as an architect, Clip was involved in many social and professional organizations. Sturgis maintained a strong interest in promoting the arts and in serving community endeavors in the Boston area. In his early years, he was president of the Draughtsmen’s Club, later known as the Boston Architectural Club (now the Boston Architectural College). He was on the organizing committee for the Society of Arts and Crafts Boston and served as its president from 1917 to 1920. He was a member of the Tavern Club for more than 60 years and a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also was a member of the Harvard Clubs of Boston and New York, the Union Boat Club, the Colonial Society, and more. Most notably, he as President of the Boston Society of Architects and as President of the American Institute of Architects for the years 1914-15.
Sturgis was also a prolific writer and critic. He gave many speeches on architecture and planning and wrote articles that appeared in various publications. He was a popular advocate for more thoughtfully designed suburbs, writing in the 1890s that “our suburbs for the most part, are composed of frame houses, looking unsubstantial and temporary. They convey no suggestion of dignity and retirement.” He thought that high quality design of houses and landscapes would make for better neighborhoods, no matter their scale. From this, he sought commissions for working class housing, designing high-quality buildings for the South Bay Union and the Elizabeth Peabody Settlement House in Boston, and Federally funded neighborhoods in Bridgeport, Connecticut and Bath, Maine.
Site plan designed by R. Clipston Sturgis and Arthur A. Shurcliff. University of Michigan Art & Architecture Library collections. U.S. Housing Report Vol. 2, 1919. Digital Commons.
Sturgis would retire in 1932, moving full-time to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he had maintained his summer residence since 1890. His summer and later permanent residence, “Martine Cottage”, made Sturgis a neighbor to friend Arthur Astor Carey, who also summered and retired in Portsmouth. The two were likely friends since Richard Clipston Sturgis’ time at his uncle’s firm, when Arthur Astor Carey’s home in Cambridge was designed by them in the early 1880s. The firm was then reorganized as Sturgis Associates Inc., led by William Stanley Parker and Alanson Hall Sturgis, his nephew. Clip would remain associated with the firm as a consultant. One of the first projects of this new firm with Clip as a consultant would be the new Central Fire Station at Broadway and Cambridge streets. It is clear that the firm utilized a timeless Colonial Revival design due to the adjacency of the site to Harvard Yard, an area where Sturgis spent much of his time. This would be his last commission in Cambridge.
Cambridge Central Fire Station, 489-491 Broadway, CHC photograph, 2015.
Like many members of the “old guard” in the Society of Arts and Crafts, Sturgis was a life-long advocate for high-quality design with handcrafted features, which was in stark contrast to the emerging Modernist/Bauhaus movement that arrived in the United States in the 1930s. In New Hampshire, an entire state away from Harvard, Sturgis was troubled by the new modern design framework of Harvard’s building program under Walter Gropius. In 1950, an 89-year-old Sturgis would pen an open letter to his alma mater in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, with great disdain for the shift in design and craftsmanship the University had taken.
He wrote, “Time Magazine published a cut of the brutally ugly buildings designed by Gropius for Harvard and [they] actually had the temerity to say ‘the buildings are true to an old Harvard tradition…From Colonial to Bulfinch Federal, to Victorian Gothic, to nineteenth century Romanesque, Harvard has moved with the tides of U.S. architecture… these new buildings show not a gleam of interest in Harvard’s past not any sense of value of beauty.” These strong words were the result of the new Graduate Commons and also the new Allston Burr Lecture Hall, the latter would be sited adjacent to the Yard and his firm’s Central Fire Station.
Allston Burr Lecture Hall, 1951, Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbott, architects. Photo by Daniel Reiff, CHC Collections.
In response to the letter penned by Sturgis, Gropius’s students responded to the 90-year-old retired architect in 1951, attacking his traditional position: “must we take the word of our older alumni that ivory tower is the only true architecture? An ivory tower… is a beautiful thing… but Harvard prides herself, not on her ivory tower, but rather on her free marketplace of ideas.”
Sturgis died in 1951 in his beloved Portsmouth cottage. Local papers would write, “R. Clipston Sturgis, 91, national architectural authority for more than 60 years, who almost single-handedly set Boston area’s architectural fashions…died in his home in Portsmouth, N.H. yesterday”. He is remembered for his nearly seventy years of designs, consultations and critiques with witty remarks and a staunch commitment to traditional architecture. He is buried at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.
Photograph courtesy of Find a Grave, by user pstott.
We are starting a new series on designers (architects, builders, landscape architects, and others) who have had a lasting impact on Cambridge’s built environment. For our first post in this series, we are featuring a lesser-known architect who lived and worked right here in Cambridge, William Everett Chamberlin.
William E. Chamberlin, 1907 Class Book courtesy of MIT Libraries
William Everett Chamberlin (1856-1911) was born in Cambridge on June 23, 1856, to Ann Maria Stimson (1822-1907) and Daniel Upham Chamberlin (1824-1898), a prominent Cambridgeport hardware dealer and president of the Cambridgeport Savings Bank. William Chamberlin (sometimes spelled Chamberlain) attended Cambridge public schools before enrolling at MIT, where he majored in Architecture.
William E. Chamberlin, Class of 1877 photograph, courtesy of MIT Libraries.
After graduating from MIT in 1877, the 22-year-old was hired as a draftsman by the esteemed firm of Sturgis and Brigham, architects in Boston. In February 1879, William moved to New York City, and began working as a draftsman at the internationally known firm of McKim, Mead, and White (MMW). Upon arriving in New York, William was quickly overwhelmed. Thinking there was a great deal he hadn’t learned, he was given permission by the firm to travel Europe for over two years to study in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, and to hone his drawing skills while travelling about the continent. He returned to the office of McKim, Mead & White in New York in early 1882, as the firm was receiving lucrative commissions with its Gilded Age clientele.
Sketch at Chaumont-Sur-Loire by William E. Chamberlin. Published in Catalogue of the architectural exhibition, Boston Society of Architects (1886).
Within a few months of arriving in the United States, William quit his job as a draftsman at MMW and returned to Cambridge, seemingly due to poor health – an issue which plagued him his entire life. Later publications explained that Chamberlin suffered from spinal troubles, which progressed enough that it left him confined to a wheelchair for much of his adulthood.
After a season of rest, William opened his own architecture office in downtown Boston, commuting from his parent’s house in Central Square. Recounting the early days of his own practice to former classmates in 1885, he sarcastically wrote: “I have started in business for myself here in Boston, though somehow or other, there don’t seem to be many ‘riche amateurs’ who want to build big ‘musees’ in parks as there used to be in the school programs. Still, I manage to get three meals a day, Voila”!
While Chamberlin joked about a slow start to his office, one of his earliest commissions was among his most important. In 1883, he designed an administration building and hospital wings for the new Cambridge Hospital (renamed Mount Auburn Hospital in 1947) in Cambridge. The building consisted of a main building of three stories and basement, which housed all departments of the hospital, including private rooms and two one-story wards, the whole forming three sides of a hollow square, with the opening toward the south and the river. Chamberlin worked closely with Dr. Morrill Wyman (1812-1903), an expert on the ventilation of sickrooms and public buildings and first president of the hospital, to orient the buildings facing the Charles River to maximize sun-exposure for south facing rooms and provide the full influence of southwestern breezes in the summer. Now known as the Parson’s Building (named after Emily Elizabeth Parsons a Civil War nurse who helped establish the hospital), Chamberlin’s first major commission in Cambridge set-off a prominent, yet largely overlooked career.
Parsons Buildingca.1955 aerial of Parsons Building and rear wings. The two rear hospital wings were truncated in 2006 for the present parking garage.
After receiving just a few commissions while running his own practice, Chamberlin entered into a business partnership with architect William Marcy Whidden (1857-1929). Whidden was a former classmate of Chamberlin, who’s career path mirrored much of his. They both graduated from MIT in architecture in 1877, they both studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and both worked at the office of McKim, Mead & White. Whidden left MMW in 1885, when propositioned with the idea of running his own practice with Chamberlin. The duo established the firm of Chamberlin & Whidden that year.
The firm, led by a pair of thirty-year-old architects, was hired to design buildings all over the Boston area. Due to this success, they hired other young, promising architects to assist with drafting. One of those hires was Henry Bacon, who briefly worked for Chamberlin and Whidden before joining McKim, Mead & White. Locally, Henry Bacon could be known as the designer for the steps and walls of the Longfellow Monument in Longfellow Park, but he is best known for his design of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (built 1915–1922), which was his final project. Within the first few years, the firm of Chamberlin and Whidden saw a lot of activity, including furnishing designs for a six-story commercial building in Boston in the Romanesque Revival style. Their major type of commission, however, was expensive, single-family suburban housing.
Stores on South Street, Boston, Mass. Featured in American Architect and Building News, February 1887.
The firm built beautiful homes including one on Highland Street for Robert Noxon Toppan (1836-1901) and his wife, Sarah Moody Cushing. The Colonial Revival style house was built in 1886 and is one of the earliest houses in Cambridge of the style, setting trends for its neighbors. The brick Toppan House exhibits a large Palladian window at the façade, with a rounded center bay and a full-length piazza overlooks the gently terraced landscape towards Brattle Street at the rear.
House at Cambridge, Mass. Featured in American Architect and Building News, February 1887.54 Highland Street54 Highland Street, rear facade.
When a design competition was announced for the new Cambridge City Hall, a few local firms were asked to submit designs following benefactor Frederick H. Rindge’s strict requirements. The advisory design committee suggested that Peabody & Stearns, Van Brunt & Howe, Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, John Lyman Faxon, and Chamberlin and Whidden all submit designs for consideration. Chamberlin and Whidden proposed a stately, symmetrical building with a strong Romanesque emphasis and a central clock tower, capped by a belfry and cupola. Their design was not accepted by Rindge, who selected Longfellow, Alden & Harlow instead. Undeterred, the young firm persevered.
Chamberlin & Whidden proposal for Cambridge City Hall, 1888. American Architect & Building News, June 1888.
A second time, Chamberlin and Whidden submitted in a design competition for the English High School in Cambridge, and won the design competition in 1889, securing that job. It would be their final project together in Cambridge. Their plans for the new High School called for a three-story masonry building of stone on the first floor with light-red brick above. The building was long and narrow, giving each classroom ample natural light and ventilation. Articles mentioned that there was little ornamentation as “the desire of all concerned was to construct a simple and dignified building expressive of its serious purpose”. The building was demolished in 1938 for the consolidated Cambridge High and Latin School.
English High School, photographed 1908. Detroit Publishing Company.
By 1890, William Whidden had moved west to Oregon and established his own firm. William promoted architect William Downes Austin (1856-1944) to partner of the firm, renaming it Chamberlin & Austin. The new firm kept busy with a steady stream of commissions, but it was clear Chamberlin’s health was preventing him from actively seeking out new projects as he once did. Many of the designs the firm completed as Chamberlin & Austin appear to have been from previous clients, showing their trust in Chamberlin’s quality designs.
One such projects was commissioned by Henry Endicott, whos large home at 151 Brattle Street was designed by Henry Bacon Jr. while working under William Chamberlin in 1888. Two years later in 1890, Endicott returned to Chamberlin to design a smaller residence on the newly laid out Brewster Street, at the rear of the Brattle Street property, for his daughter and son-in-law. The second house, much smaller in size, showcases Chamberlin’s attention to detail with the saw-tooth cut shingle and recessed porch at the entrance and gentle undulating form with continuous shingled siding.
151 Brattle Street as depicted in American Architect and Building News, May 5, 1888.151 Brattle Street, CHC photograph.
In 1891, William Chamberlin married Emily Douglass Abbott (1858-1916). The couple acquired a house lot on Clinton Street, at the rear of Emily’s father George Abbott’s residence on Harvard Street. That year, William designed his new house on Clinton Street and a renovation for his father’s new home on Harvard Street. The three houses were all direct neighbors. William Chamberlin’s new home on Clinton Street was the first of his own, after decades of boarding with his father and mother in Central Square. For his own house, William designed a modest, 1½ -story structure with prominent gambrel roof. The house, while altered, exhibits Chamberlin’s eclectic sense of design, which often blends styles into a single composition. William and Emily never had children. One year later, William D. Austin left the firm to partner with Frederick W. Stickney forming Stickney & Austin.
William E. Chamberlin House (1891), 27 Clinton Street, photograph taken 11-2022.1894 Bromley map showing location of William and Emily’s residence on Clinton Street (red); his father’s (blue); and his father-in-law’s (green).
William E. Chamberlin entered a semi-retirement due to his worsening health, which plagued him most of his life but could never fully step away from his passion for design. When he heard about the death of his beloved former professor at MIT, Eugene Letang in 1891, Chamberlin designed a memorial tablet of bronze set into a carved marble surround. This marker still stands in the Boston Public Library, Copley Square branch location. With this work, Chamberlin showed his skill beyond designing buildings. It is possible that he was the designer of many of his family memorial stones in the family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery.
Eugène Létang tablet designed by W. E. Chamberlin. Ca. 1905 photograph, Boston Public Library collections.
He was hired again by the Cambridge Hospital (now Mount Auburn Hospital) in 1896, designing a Nurse’s Residence just steps away from the Administration Building and Hospital wings he designed over ten years prior. His design for the Nurse’s Residence, like nearly all his work, blends multiple styles effortlessly into a single composition. The brick building displays strong Classical features including the central columned portico and the belt course above the second story windows which reads as a frieze band with ocular windows. Soon after in 1898, he designed the Cambridge Homes for Aged People at 360 Mt. Auburn Street with former partner Stickney and Austin.
Nurse’s Home (1896)Cambridge Homes for Aged People (1898)
Nearly a decade later in 1904, Chamberlin and Boston architect Clarence Blackall completed designs for the new Cambridgeport Savings Bank (where his late father once served as president) in Central Square, Cambridge. The building is perhaps Chamberlin’s most recognizable and stately extant design where he could show-off his architectural versatility. The Cambridgeport Savings Bank is a monumentally scaled limestone-clad structure with a façade dominated by recessed central bays behind an engaged Corinthian portico. The ornate stone parapet which once capped the building was replaced in the 1950s. The Cambridgeport Savings Bank building is Chamberlin’s last known work in Cambridge before his death.
Cambridgeport Savings Bank Building, 689 Mass. Ave. CHC Postcard Collection.
At just 55 years old, William Everett Chamberlin died from a stroke on August 6, 1911, in Manchester Massachusetts, at his father-in-law’s summer house. When news of his passing spread, fellow members of the Boston Society of Architects memorialized of Chamberlin:
William E. Chamberlin was by nature dowered with great personal charm, a clear keen brain, debonair in its perceptions, just in its conclusions; a genius for his profession of architecture which was rare; and a fresh directness of expression tempered by a delicate humor. The active use of these qualities in the work of the great marketplace was first checked and then barred to him by a disease, which prevented his working outside of his home, and for over twenty years he made that home a center of intellectual stimulus to his friends…His noble character vibrated only perfect harmonies, but, unlike the harp in the wind, in him was the soul and the strong will which decreed always, as a duty to his fellow men, that no discords should mar the beauties of this life which, in spite of one great affliction, he found and made so blessed even to the last hour.
Last known photograph of William E. Chamberlin, ca.1910
William E. Chamberlin bequeathed nearly all his sizable estate, estimated at nearly $100,000, to several Cambridge institutions. His widow, Emily D. Chamberlin, received the income from his estate during her lifetime and that after her death. After which, it was distributed in seven parts. Two-sevenths went to the Cambridge Hospital, two-sevenths to the Cambridge Homes for Aged People, and one-seventh each to the Avon Home, the Holy Ghost Hospital, and to the Department of Architecture at MIT, which he remained engaged with throughout his life. Chamberlin’s legacy has lived on not only through his extant buildings, but his generosity, in the William Everett Chamberlain (sic) Prize for achievement in design at MIT and his generous gifts to Cambridge institutions.
William Everett Chamberlin is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery on Bellwort Path in the family plot. His monument, like many of his family members, was likely designed by himself from his Cambridge home.
William E. Chamberlin’s monument at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Much of lettering covered by lichen.
Part I: H.R.R. Richardson and the Romanesque Revival
Henry Hobson Richardson created and introduced to America a distinctive architectural style that became known as Richardsonian Romanesque. It derived from the architecture of Medieval Europe, especially that of France, which had been influenced by the region’s ancient Roman structures. Richardson admired many aspects of the Romanesque—its visual weight, rounded arches and towers, recessed windows and door, and the use of varied building materials—and used those elements to inspire his own designs.
Two examples of the Romanesque in France. Above: West front of Notre Dame la Grande, Poitiers, France. Gibert Bochenek photo. Wikimedia Below: West front of Church at Fontevraud Abbey. Jean-Christophe Benoist photo. Wikimedia
Henry was born in 1838 in rural Louisiana and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans. He enrolled in Tulane University in 1855 but soon transferred to Harvard College. The wealthy and affable young man formed lifelong friendships with fellow students such as Henry Adams (a future client) and Edward W. Hooper.
Richardson had intended to study civil engineering but was drawn to architecture and moved to Paris in 1860 to attend the École des Beaux-Arts. Money troubles forced him to leave the school, but he stayed on in Paris, working for a French architect, studying and practicing his craft, and traveling extensively.
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Guilhem Vellut photo. Wikimedia
He returned to the States in 1865. Two years later he married Julia Gorham Hayden of Boston, and the couple and their growing family (six children in all) settled on Staten Island. Richardson and his near neighbor—the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted—became good friends and colleagues. Richardson’s talent and connections brought in commissions, especially in New England, and the family moved to Brookline in 1874 (possibly to finish work on Trinity Church, Boston, 1872-77). *
25 Cottage Street, Brookline.* The Richardson’s rented no. 25 from Edward Hooper. Julia purchased the house after the deaths of Richardson and Hooper. Public Library of Brookline, Brookline Photo Collection. Digital Commonwealth
H.H. Richardson’s library and studio at 25 Cottage Street. Public Library of Brookline, Brookline Photo Collection. Digital Commonwealth
Henry died in Brookline of Bright’s disease in 1886. Julia died in 1914.
Richardson’s New England commissions are diverse in style and size and include houses, community libraries, suburban railroad stations, and churches, as well as education, commercial, and civic buildings. He designed Sever and Austin halls for Harvard, which cites the latter “one of the best examples of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in the world.” Austin Hall’s façade is both grounded and vivacious: undressed (rusticated?) Longmeadow sandstone is laid in polychrome patterns that contrast with arches and an incised cornice band of pale Ohio sandstone. The round corner tower is topped with a conical roof; the recessed center entrance is approached through a triple Romanesque arch.
Austin Hall. Harvard University photo.
* In November 2020 a developer acquired properties on Cottage and Warren streets in Brookline, including the Richardson’s house at 25 Cottage and the house of John Charles Olmsted and his wife, Sophia, at 222 Warren (John Charles was Frederick’s nephew/stepson), and applied to the Brookline Preservation Commission for a demolition permit, which quickly imposed an 18- month demolition delay. BPC staff researched the properties and ultimately proposed the creation of the Richardson/Olmsted Local Preservation District that was approved at Brookline’s fall 2021 town meeting. The new district comprises 25 Cottage, 16 and 222 Warren (residences of John Charles), and 99 Warren Street known, the senior Olmsted’s house and studio.
Richardson freely adapted elements of the Romanesque in his own designs; other architects did the same with Richardsonian Romanesque, using Richardsonian elements in their own fashion. Tune in next week for a survey of Richardsonian Romanesque buildings in Cambridge–none of which were designed by the great architect.
Here we are smack in the middle of the sweltering and humid heat of “the Dog Days” of summer.
The actual dates of the Dog Days can vary according to sources, but they generally fall July 3 and August 11. As Becky Little writing for National Geographic tells us:
“For many, the ‘dog days,’ evoke those summer days that are so devastatingly hot that even dogs would lie around on the asphalt, panting. But originally, the phrase had nothing to do with dogs, or even with the lazy days of summer. Instead, the dog days refer to Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, which means “big dog” in Latin and is said to represent one of Orion’s hunting dogs…To the Greeks and Romans, the ‘dog days’ occurred around the time Sirius appears to rise alongside the sun, in late July in the Northern Hemisphere. They believed the heat from the two stars combined is what made these days the hottest of the year, a period that could bring fever or even catastrophe.”
So, what to do? Go shopping. Some Cambridge merchants in the 19th century used the arrival of “Dog Days” as a marketing gimmick:
Cambridge Chronicle June 24, 1876
In July of 1877, grocer Sam James (545 Main Street) claimed that if you buy June Butter it is cheaper and better than that made in dog days—“Try it once and you will thank me.” (Cambridge Chronicle July 7, 1877)
Another grocer, J. A. Holmes, advertised the implication that after the arrival of dog days his eggs would not be as fresh.
Cambridge Chronicle January 12, 1889
It was also the time to advertise summer clothes. Yacht caps, anyone?
Cambridge Chronicle July 25, 1891
In 1895, the J.H. Corcoran store also led off with underwear:
Cambridge Chronicle August 10, 1895
G. C. W. Fuller, Main Street…how about negligee shirts?
Cambridge Chronicle July 23,1892
It has been difficult to find the hottest day on record in July for Cambridge, but we did find this for neighboring Boston from the Boston Evening Transcript in 1911 (excerpts):
Boston Evening Transcript July 3, 1911
And now that the political season of 2022 is revving up, lets conclude with this snippet from 1926:
Cambridge Chronicle August 6, 1926
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox
The Arts and Crafts Movement developed in England in the 1860s in response to the increasing industrialization of production. Factories were turning out everything from furniture and fabric to architectural elements and selling all cheaply. Advocates of the movement believed that these mass-produced items lacked style, beauty, and individuality and desired a return to the unique, high-quality goods made by artisans and artists using traditional methods.
Arts and Crafts ideals migrated to America beginning in the 1880s. In 1897, the first US exhibition of contemporary crafts was organized by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and sparked a design reform movement in the United States. Craftspeople, consumers, and manufacturers realized the aesthetic and technical potential of the applied arts. Architects, artists, and intellectuals were influenced by their studies of old English architecture and design; Gothic Revival and Tudor Revival buildings proliferated in Cambridge and across the country.
The brothers Bertram and Harry Goodhue were early practitioners of medieval Gothic design and helped transform American architecture and art for decades to come.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue
Bertram Goodhue, undated. Courtesy of Panama-California Exposition Digital Archive.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869-1924) was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, to Charles Wells Goodhue and his second wife, Helen Grosvenor Eldredge. Bertram attended the New Haven Collegiate and Commercial Institute. He became enamored of the Gothic-style buildings on Yale’s nearby campus. He wanted to become an architect himself but could not afford university, so in lieu of formal training, at sixteen years old he moved to Manhattan to apprentice at the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell. He later relocated to Boston, where he joined other young, artistic intellectuals to found Boston’s Society of Arts and Crafts. Through this group Goodhue met Ralph Adams Cram; the two men would be business partners for almost twenty-five years. In 1891, they founded the architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth and Goodhue (renamed Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson in 1898 after Wentworth’s death) and became proponents of Neo-Gothic architecture, accepting commissions from significant ecclesiastical, academic, and institutional clients. Their 1902 design of the United States Military Academy at West Point was a major milestone in the firm’s career.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (left) and Ralph Adams Cram (center) in their Boston architectural studio with a client (and a dog). Courtesy of Cram & Ferguson archives.
Soon after, the company opened an office in New York where Goodhue would preside, leaving Cram to operate in Boston. At first, the men worked as a productive team, complementing each other’s strengths; later they began to compete, sometimes submitting independent proposals for the same commission. The partnership ended when Cram was selected as the architect of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan– on Goodhue’s supposed turf. When Goodhue left to begin his own practice in 1914, Cram had already created his dreamed-of Gothic Revival commission at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and continued to work in the Gothic style mode for the rest of his career. Goodhue branched out from the Gothic mode which gained him such prominence, and designed notable Byzantine and Spanish Revival buildings all over the country. He died in 1924 at the age of fifty-four and at his request was interred in a wall vault at the Church of the Intercession, the building he considered his finest design. The centerpiece of the monument is a life-size effigy of Goodhue in the manner of those preserved in medieval English country churches.
Church of the Intercession, designed by Bertram Goodhue, the building he considered his finest design. Image c.1915 by Wurst Brothers.Bertram Goodhue Tomb in the Church of the Intercession, Image by Samuel H. Gottscho.
Harry Eldredge Goodhue
Harry Eldredge Goodhue (1873-1918), Bertram’s younger brother, was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, and attended the Holderness School in Plymouth, New Hampshire. In 1892, at nineteen, he joined the Boston Art Students’ Association and became an advocate for and expert in traditional stained glassmaking processes. Harry began designing stained glass for his brother’s firm and was sent to Europe to study, draw, and collect medieval stained glass. In 1900, Bertram Goodhue’s firm was chosen as the architect of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Newport, Rhode Island; in 1902, Harry began designing their Brown Memorial Window, his first major commission. The window was the first in America to be made of antique glass in accordance with techniques refined in thirteenth-century Europe. From this, Harry became known as one of only three stained glass artisans then reviving the art of medieval glassmaking.
Harry Goodhue opened his own shop at 23 Church Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge, in 1903, soon after completing the memorial window. He was sought-after by church people and architects who were intrigued by the medieval quality of his translucent and richly colored hand-blown stained glass and preferred it to the opaque opalescent glass that was popular at the time. Opalescent stained glass was developed in the late nineteenth century by John La Farge and Louis C. Tiffany and presents a milky, streaky, and iridescent appearance. In 1903 Harry wrote a piece for the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts’ monthly publication, Handicraft, criticizing the opalescent “American” style as not really stained glass, for it is absolutely different from what has been understood by the term.” In a subsequent issue, the artist Sarah Wyman Whitman (featured previously on our blog) wrote in opposition to Goodhue’s opinion and praised the experimentations of La Farge and Tiffany in the development of the opalescent/American method and claimed that academics and experts varied in their preference.
Circa 1930 image of 23 Church Street with added fourth floor for Goodhue studio. Cambridge Historical Commission Photograph.
With additional positive press and commissions from churches and homeowners, Goodhue outgrew his studio on Church Street. When asked, the property owner obliged him by adding an entire floor to the building. The addition was completed in 1907, and Goodhue expanded his company. However, by 1916, Harry’s business was in decline, and he closed his Cambridge shop. 23 Church street would later be heavily altered in 1936 when the top three floors were removed and the building redesigned in the Art Deco style we see today.
23 Church Street (2019). CHC staff photo.
After closing his Cambridge shop, Harry became affiliated with Vaughan & O’Neill & Co. that had a studio on Sudbury Street. Harry’s brother Bertram felt that this company was beneath his brother and refused to order windows from them. Between 1903 and his death in 1918, Goodhue created antique stained glass windows for more than seventy buildings in twenty-one states and Canada. During fifteen plus years of perfecting his craft, he trained dozens of apprentices, including his wife, Mary, and their eldest son, Harry.
Mary Louise (Wright) Goodhue (1876-1965) was born in Cincinnati to Juliet and Daniel T. Wright. Her father was a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, and her brother, Daniel, held an Associate Justice seat on the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Mary married Harry Goodhue in 1904 and had three sons, Harry, Daniel, and William. The couple settled in Cambridge and first resided on Buckingham Place, soon after, relocating to a rental on Martin Street. By 1908 the family had bought a house lot on Fayerweather Street and hired the architectural firm of Newhall and Blevins to design an Arts and Crafts style house. Mary taught singing and violin at her home to young students and assisted her husband in his growing stained glass company.
Depiction of Mary Louise Goodhue, 1920. Boston Globe clipping.
Mrs. Goodhue was the president of the Cambridge Musical Club, as well as a suffragist. When Harry died in 1918, she took over the stained glass company; she fulfilled commissions and taught their eldest son the art of making antique glass. In a 1920 Boston Globe article, Mary explained her ability to take over the family business so quickly. “Having worked so much with my husband, it comes easy for me to carry on the business. I have hundreds of his designs to guide me and find little trouble in selecting portions of them for the work I get. I know all about his ideals and became so impregnated with his imagination and genius that I love the work, even as did he.” She continued, “when he [Harry] died, I simply had to take up the practical part of the work, but as I was well taught in the artistic part, I found no trouble in mastering the business part.” The article listed Mary as the only female, stained glass maker in America and highlighted her winning proposal for a memorial window to be placed in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in celebration of the Massachusetts Bay Tercentenary. She had bested dozens of male artists to win the commission.
Mary Goodhue is credited with stained glass windows in churches in the Boston area and as far as Providence and Detroit. Her memorial windows at Pilgrim Hall and the First Parish Church of Brookline are her most notable. When Harry, the oldest, came of age, he took up the family business, and Mary returned to her other passion, music. In 1935 she wrote “Stagefright and its Cure“, to help musicians and public speakers understand the psychological reasons for stage fright and ways to overcome it. Mary lived at the family home on Fayerweather Street until her mid-80s. After the Great Depression, when her children had left home, she converted the single-family to a duplex and rented out one side for income. She died in Braintree, Massachusetts, at eighty-eight years old.
56 Fayerweather Street, built in 1914 for Harry and Mary Goodhue. CHC photo 11-2021.
Harry “Wright Goodhue
Harry Wright Goodhue (1905-1931) closely followed his father’s footsteps in medieval stained glass artistry, but in order to distinguish himself from his father, he went by Wright Goodhue, his middle and mother’s maiden name. Growing up in Cambridge, Wright spent most of his free time in his father’s studio, learning how to make stained glass windows the old way. Wright’s “studio” was described in a newspaper account published when he was 11 years old. “In a corner of the roomy studio where his father works, young Harry set up his easel and his drawing board. Here he spends long hours depicting the deeds of the Round Table knights, the battles of biblical heroes…”
He attended the Russell School before attending the Cambridge Latin School, leaving after two years. Instead of a conventional education, Wright attended evening classes at the Boston Normal Art School and worked as a draftsman at the architectural firm of Allen & Collins during the day at just 16 years old.
His first two professional projects were executed in 1921 at just sixteen years old. He designed the ornamental details for the wooden doors at Lindsey Memorial Chapel (an addition designed by Allen & Collens to Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury Street, Boston, and he designed his first stained glass window – the chancel window for his uncle Bertram’s First Cong. Church, Montclair, New Jersey. Soon after, while working as a draftsman under Allen & Collens, Wright was asked to design 36 stained glass medallions for the Teachers’ College at Columbia University, a commission the practice was working on. This commission allowed Wright and his mother to purchase a studio space in Boston, when Wright was just eighteen.
Soon after, when his employer received the contract to design the Second Universalist Church (now St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine) in Boston, he was asked to provide windows for the Gothic style building. Together with his mother, the artist, in his teens, furnished designs and made the windows. Soon after, stained glass commissions came in rapidly. Window commissions overwhelmed the small operation included an 18-foot rose window for the Sacred Heart Church in Jersey City. Wright completed three commissions in Cambridge. He designed six circular clerestory windows as part of Allen & Collens’ 1923 restoration of Bigelow Chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Josephine Peabody Marks window for Radcliffe College, and the Martha and Lazarus Window at St. James Church in North Cambridge. Wright began to regret his lack of formal education, and even as his workload grew, he began to study for the entrance exam for admission to Harvard. He was admitted to Harvard in 1927 at the age of 22. Spread thin between his work and schooling, he left at the end of two years, without a degree.
1924 passport application photo of Wright Goodhue, then 19 years old.
As his prominence in the field grew, the young man became consumed with work. His career hit a crescendo when Allen & Collens were selected to collaborate on the design of the 22-story Riverside Church in Manhattan, with Wright asked to design and make some of the windows for the massive edifice. The Riverside Church was modeled after the 13th Century Gothic cathedral in Chartres, France, a building Wright understood well from his earlier trip to Chartres and other medieval towns and cities in Europe. Wright’s 1924 passport application explained he would be visiting France and England to “study”. This trip was possibly inspired by the Riverside Church commission and from his father’s writings about the Chartres Cathedral and it’s renowned 12th-century stained glass windows.
Clipping of Wright Goodhue with his mother, Mary Louise Goodhue, designing the Mercy window for Riverside Church, NY. Photo courtesy of Riverside Church Archives.
In 1930, Wright married Cornelia Evans, an academic and writer, who studied at Lasell Seminary for Young Women and Wellesley College, both in Massachusetts, and later Columbia University, New York City. The couple resided in Greenwich Village. Tragically, in 1931 just one month after his 26th birthday, Wright Goodhue died by suicide at a hotel in Providence. He was buried in the family plot in the Old North Cemetery in Pomfret, Connecticut. After his death, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, featured his work in an exhibition. His mother also donated some of his works to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In his 1936 autobiography, Ralph Adams Cram, an architect who worked with Wright on numerous commissions, recalled Wright’s “great, unhappy, and unique genius”. Cram reminisced about Wright’s genius in a 1932 piece in Stained Glass Magazine, where he mentioned Wright’s final completed piece, a wood sculpture “Madonna and Child”. Cram writes, “There is something mystical about this last work of his which, in a way, links it with the shadow that came heavily and increasingly upon him during the last years of his life…”
Photograph of Wright’s final completed work, “Madonna and Child”. From Stained Glass Magazine 09-1932.1929 photograph of Wright Goodhue, less than two years before his death. Photo courtesy of Albert M. Tannler.
In the mid to late 19th century, virtually all of the monument makers in Cambridge hailed from Scotland, Ireland, and England, as did virtually all of their employees. In 1855, 22% of Cambridge’s citizens were born in Ireland and by 1865 the number of Irish had increased by an additional 20%.[i] Of course it’s difficult to make assumptions about origins based on surnames, but some are pretty clear. In 1885 the City Directory listed approximately 1600 individuals with names beginning with “O’” or “Mc” or “Mac”. And that doesn’t even include all the other Irish and Scottish names that begin with other letters! 70 men identified themselves as working in the marble, granite and monument making businesses that year. One of the earliest, and the most nationally prominent, was Alexander McDonald(not to be confused with an earlier Alex McDonald, a stone worker on Western Ave in 1849.)
Alexander McDonald (1829-1906) was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the major exporter of granite world-wide—including to the United States. Young Aberdonian granite laborers would frequently work summers overseas, returning to Scotland in the winter to prepare granite for the next year’s export. Beginning around 1865, the shortage of skilled workers in the U. S. led to more and more of these young men emigrating permanently.[ii]
The exact date of McDonald’s arrival in the U.S. is unclear. His obituary states he arrived in New York in 1852, and subsequently moved to Albany, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Lyall. He appears to have arrived in Cambridge in 1856, apparently with enough capital, at age 27, to start his business.
McDonald proved to be an acute businessman. Given his almost immediate success in Cambridge, it is more than likely he worked as a stone cutter in Aberdeen. In 1867, ten years after starting his monument business, he purchased a granite quarry in Mason, N. H. This he ran “entirely by steam-power without the use of horses or oxen,” and where he put in action the “McDonald Stone Cutting Machine” which he had invented and patented.
From: The collection of building and ornamental stones in the United States National museum by Merrill, George P. (George Perkins), 1854-1929, p.328.
McDonald’s first place of business was on Rice Place (later renamed Maynard Place). He built a wharf on the Charles River directly across from Rice Place—one of only two wharves this far upriver. McDonald’s advertisements first appeared in the Cambridge newspapers in 1857:
Cambridge Chronicle July 25, 1857
Detail: G. M. Hopkins Cambridge Atlas, 1873. McDonald’s Wharf across from Rice Place (later Maynard Place) can be seen bottom right
McDonald’s Wharf. Image: Historic New England
A team of 18 oxen moving a piece of marble for Alexander McDonald, date unknown. Image: Cambridge Historical Commission
Detail: the sign reads “Alexander McDonald Mount Auburn Marble & Granite Works Cambridge Mass.”
McDonald lived for a while further west, in the Jonas Wyeth homestead, and in 1868 purchased land from the Wyeth estate for $4,000.[iii] The land was strategically located across from the front gate to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and became the permanent location for his business at #583 Mt. Auburn Street, at the corner on what is now Aberdeen Avenue. On the atlas detail below you can see the Reception House belonging to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, just across from their main gate. In 1896 when the cemetery closed the reception house (in favor of one inside the cemetery gates), McDonald moved his office and “wareroom” into the building. It still bears the sign stating the date his business was established, “1856”.
Detail: G. M. Hopkins Cambridge Atlas, 1873
In 1873, a dead-end street called McDonald Street had been constructed through his property. In 1895, McDonald sold land to the town to enable extending it through to Huron Ave, thereby providing electric street cars a “turn around.” Thereafter it was renamed Aberdeen St, after the County in Scotland that McDonald was from.
An amusing notice appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle highlighting the use of his marble yard for target practice:
Cambridge Chronicle November 13, 1875
McDonald’s own house was at #643 Mt. Auburn Street. He had permission to raise cows on the premises and, it appears, advertised the services of his bull:
Cambridge Chronicle June 11, 1870
The house can be seen below, second building from the right. Also visible is the rectangular entrance sign for his marble yard along with a couple of monuments on display. The large building on the right is the Mt. Auburn Cemetery Reception House. The image is presumably of a ceremony at the cemetery. The building is now owned by W. C. Caniff and Sons, monument makers, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Parade on Mount Auburn St, ca. 1890 (Cambridge Historical Commission)
The Reception House yoday:
Image via Google Street View
Alexander McDonald also provided a shed on his property to house sculptor Martin Milmore’s mammoth Sphinx monument for the Cemetery:
Boston Evening Transcript August 16, 1872
And now we get to the mayor…
WILLIAM FRANCIS BROOKS, LATER MAYOR OF CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge Chronicle December 8, 1900
The May 10, 1899 edition of Trenton Evening Times stated that McDonald had “some 40 artists in his employ.” Many of McDonald’s workers lived on McDonald Street, in the area called The Upper Marsh and across the street from the McDonald Wharf, or further west on Holworthy and Cushing Streets.
Granite workers went out on strike in 1892, but McDonald’s operation seems relatively immune to its effects:
Cambridge Chronicle May 21,1892
William F. Brooks, future Mayor of Cambridge, was one of those workers, who, like his father, had a long association with the company. His father, Patrick Brooks, had emigrated from Ireland in 1851 at the age of 17, ending up in Cambridge 1852[iv]. The family lived at #35 McDonald Street. Patrick worked for McDonald’s Marble and Granite Works for 40 years, purchasing the business after McDonald’s death and passing it on to his son William. William Brooks worked at McDonald’s from 1885 to 1900 before leaving to found a real estate company (Brooks & Conley) and to dedicate more time to his political career. Active in Democratic politics, Brooks had been elected a City Councilman in 1896, President of the Common Council in 1899, Alderman, and Principal Assessor in 1902. In 1909, he was elected Mayor. Brooks held the position for two terms through 1911. William F. Brooks owned the Marble and Granite Works from 1916 until his death in 1925, after which his son, also William F. Brooks, was at the helm until sometime between 1938 and 1940.
Mayor William Francis Brooks Square: Brooks was a friend of MIT President Robert C. Maclaurin, and instrumental in bringing MIT from Boston to Cambridge. In honor of this (and his other achievements), in 2012 the Cambridge City Council dedicated the corner of Vassar St. and Massachusetts Avenue as Mayor William Francis Brooks Square.
MCDONALD’S MONUMENTS: FROM COAST TO COAST
Alexander McDonald & Sons, and his son Norman McDonald’s separate company, were responsible for approximately 850 monuments in the Mt. Auburn Cemetery between 1856 and 1900. The two monuments below to slain Civil War soldiers are good examples of his work:
Lieut. Edgar Newcomb, Battle of Fredricksburg. Image: Stone and Dust
Through his intricate work, McDonald gained a national reputation. At the end of the 19th century, McDonald’s business occupied an office at the gates of Riverview Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey, and one in Paterson, North Carolina next to the Cedar Lawn Cemetery.
Many of his monuments were of truly monumental proportions. The 70 ft tall obelisk in commemoration of dentist H. D. Cogswell of San Francisco (designed by Cogswell himself) cost $100,000, weighed 400 tons and cost $5,000 to ship. The Oakland Tribune (July 15, 1887) declared it was “the largest shipment ever made across the continent.” A month later, the San Francisco Examiner ran an article (August 11, 1887) describing the monument:
“The mammoth monument of Dr. Cogswell recently arrived overland…laden upon twenty-one freight cars…The base block of stone, weighing twenty-five tons, was loaded upon a truck specially sent from the East to transport the heavy pieces. Eighteen horses were required to haul the base block. In loading it the streetcar rails were bent and the cross walks were broken by the great weight, and a tire ten inches wide came off one of the truck- wheels….the heaviest piece of stone is the shaft, thirty-three feet long and weighing over thirty tons. Thirty six horses will be required to pull the truck….In addition to the twenty-one carloads of stone (granite and marble) of the monument, ten more carloads of coping for the lot are on their way higher across the continent.”
The Mercer County Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Trenton, N. J., completed after McDonald’s death, was “the largest obelisk at that time ever manufactured in the United States” at 50 feet high.[v]
In Cambridge, McDonald and his then partner Jonathan Mann were the contractors for the Cambridge Soldier’s monument on the Cambridge Common. (Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor.)
Civil War Monument on the Cambridge Common photographed by Richard Heath (April 17, 2014)
A side note: McDonald and Mann shared a patent on a thoroughly unlikely product: an improved hoop for ladies’ hoop skirts:
Annual Report of the Commission of Patents, Part I, Vol. I., 1866
In 1872, the partnership between McDonald and Mann was dissolved, although Mann continued to be active in the stone business with McDonald, remaining on the board of the McDonald Stone Cutting Machine Company.
PRIVATE LIFE and DEATH
Alexander McDonald married Elizabeth Lyall (of Albany, N. Y.) in 1859. They had two daughters and five sons.
Two of his sons followed in his footsteps. Frank, who was taken into partnership with his father in 1887, died in 1905 after complications from surgery. His father died Just a month later. Norman McDonald went out on his own the same year (1887) establishing his own company at 212-214 Brattle Street (the current location of Lowell Park on Fresh Pond Parkway). Just three years later, in 1890, his business failed.
Cambridge Press January 15, 1887
Cambridge Chronicle December 6, 1890
After over half a century in business, Alexander McDonald died of pneumonia on January 11, 1906. By now his name had become a brand. Patrick Brooks took over the company, continuing to list it as Alexander McDonald & Sons. when his son William F. Brooks took over in 1916 the name was changed to the Mount Auburn Monumental Marble and Granite Works. Brooks’ son, also William F. Brooks, took over after his death. sold the business at some point between 1938 and 1940 to Nino P. Zapponi. In the late 1950’s the business was bought by William Canniff, whose family still owns the property at #583 Mt. Auburn St.
Alexander McDonald is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery on Angelica Path, Lot #3471.
Image via Mount Auburn Historical Collections
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.
The Commission seeks a full-time Archivist to organize and maintain its public archive and create in-person and online programming that promotes the archive and highlights Cambridge history. The archive is founded on an architectural inventory containing survey forms, photographs, and documentation on all 13,000± buildings in the city that is currently being digitized. Other collections include both historic and contemporary materials, such as atlases, papers and manuscripts, books, objects, and ephemera. The photograph collection is estimated to contain more than 60,000 images in all forms. These unique resources are used daily by staff, residents, researchers, and building professionals. The Archivist will oversee the Digital Projects Archivist, who also coordinates the Commission’s social media presence, and supervise relevant interns and volunteers.
Click here to view the full job posting and application instructions.
