Charles Sumner House
- Style
- Federal
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- federal boston
This brick Federal townhouse on Beacon Hill, built around 1806, was the home of Charles Sumner from 1830 to 1867. Sumner, educated at Harvard College and trained in law under Joseph Story, became a leading abolitionist orator, helped found the Free Soil Party in 1848, and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1851. In 1856 he was beaten on the floor of the Senate, an assault that became a defining flashpoint of the pre-Civil War period. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973.
the building
The side-hall plan. The four-story brick townhouse follows a typical side-hall plan: a front parlor opens onto a sitting room and kitchen behind it, with similar room arrangements repeated on the upper floors.
the style
A Federal-era brick townhouse, built in the plain, symmetrical idiom common to Beacon Hill row houses of the early 1800s.
More on Federalsignificance
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- African Meeting House
- Nichols House Museum
- First Harrison Gray Otis House
- Old West Church
- Second Harrison Gray Otis House
- William C. Nell House