Arthur D. Little Inc., Building
- Year
- 1917
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Boston, MA
The Arthur D. Little Inc. Building went up in 1917 at 30 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, next to MIT, to give the Arthur D. Little Company more laboratory space than its original home on Milk Street in Boston could offer. Arthur Dehon Little founded the company in 1886, and with partner William H. Walker built it into the first business in the nation established purely as a consulting laboratory, hired by other businesses to solve technical problems rather than staffing their own research labs. The three-story brick building is now home to the dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management.
the style
Despite the Neoclassical label attached to the building, its own National Historic Landmark description calls it an architecturally unexceptional commercial structure - the designation rests entirely on the company's history, not on the architecture.
More on Neoclassicalsignificance
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark for its association with the Arthur D. Little Company, the first business in the United States established as a consulting laboratory - a model that let companies hire out research and technical problem-solving rather than staffing their own labs.
nearby
- Athenaeum Press
- Wiesner building
- Green Building
- Stata Center
- Gibson House Museum
- Cushing-Endicott House