Built 1852 (1852) MPS Cambridge MRA Area 2 ha | Architect Multiple Opened 1852 Added to NRHP 13 April 1982 | |
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Architectural style Late Victorian, Italian Villa, Other NRHP Reference # 82001920 (original)86001265 (increase) Similar Lechmere Canal, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard Square, Cambridge Common, Semitic Museum | ||
Berkeley street historic district top 6 facts
The Berkeley Street Historic District is a historic district on Berkeley Street and Berkeley Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It encompasses a neighborhood containing one of the greatest concentrations of fine Italianate and Second Empire houses in the city. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, with a substantial increase in 1986.
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Description and history
Berkeley Street is located west of Cambridge Common in western Cambridge, running parallel to and south of Concord Avenue between Craigie Street and Garden Street. Land in this area was acquired by Harvard University professor Joseph Worcester in 1843, and laid out for subdivision in 1852. Most of the houses on Berkeley Street were built between 1852 and 1872, for people prominent in business, culture, and politics. Berkeley Place, a deadend street projecting southerly from Berkely Street, was laid out in 1890; it was originally a back lane to the Longfellow House, which was Worcester's home in the 1840s. Most of its houses date to the period between 1892 and 1918.
When the district was first listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, it included 15 properties on Berkeley Street. Most of these houses are in the fashionable Bracketed Italianate style of that time, with a number of examples of the Second Empire style. A few later houses, built in the Queen Anne style, are sympathetic to the earlier houses in massing and style. Four years later the district was expanded to include most of the properties on Berkeley Place. Stylistically, they are a cross section of styles fashionable at that time: Queen Anne, Shingle, and Colonial Revival.