Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Bennink Douglas Cottages

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Built
  
1874 (1874)

NRHP Reference #
  
86001272

Area
  
1,619 m²

MPS
  
Cambridge MRA

Opened
  
1874

Added to NRHP
  
19 May 1986

Bennink-Douglas Cottages

Location
  
35-51 Walker St., Cambridge, Massachusetts

Built by
  
Bennink,G.J.; Douglas,W.G.

Architectural style
  
Second Empire architecture in Europe

Similar
  
Lechmere Canal, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard Square, Cambridge Common, Semitic Museum

Bennink douglas cottages top 5 facts


The Bennink-Douglas Cottages are a collection of four historic worker duplexes on 35-51 Walker Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1874 as a speculative venture, they typify the housing built for low and middle-income workers in the 1870s. They were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Contents

Description and history

The Bennink-Douglas Cottages are located in an densely built residential area between the Cambridge Common and the Radcliffe Quadrangle, on the south side of Walker Street. The four buildings are each 1-1/2 story wood frame structure on brick foundations, with mansard roofs that provide a full second floor. Each cottage is four bays wide, with two entrances in the center bays and polygonal projecting window bays in the outer bays, rising through the mansard level. The steep sections of the roofs feature hexagonal slate shingles. Three of the four have bracketed hoods sheltering the entrances; the fourth had its porch rebuilt in the Colonial Revival style. The roof eaves also have paired Italianate brackets.

The four cottages were built in 1874 as a speculative venture by Gerritt Bennink and William Douglas for sale as low-to-middle-cost housing for workers. Their style was typical of low-cost housing built during the 1870s throughout Cambridge, a period in which the city experienced rapid growth; by the late 1880s, the triple-decker became a more common low-cost construction. The exteriors of these four buildings have, for the most part, retained their original appearance. The land on which they were built was subdivided for development in 1868; it had been pasture land before then.

References

Bennink-Douglas Cottages Wikipedia