Edwin Abbot House
- Architects
- Longfellow, Alden & Harlow Huygens And Tappe, Inc.
- Year
- 1889
- Style
- Richardsonian Romanesque
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- richardson romanesque
The Edwin Abbot House is an 1889 residence at 27 Garden Street in Cambridge (originally addressed as 1 Follen Street), designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow as a prominent local example of residential Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. Since 1937 it has served as the principal building of the Longy School of Music, now part of Bard College. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and later folded into the Follen Street Historic District in 1986.
the building
Shifted entrance. The house's traditional front facade still faces south toward Follen Street, but the main entrance has been relocated to a modern addition facing the Garden Street/Concord Avenue intersection, a sign of the building's later institutional life as the Longy School's headquarters.
A five-way junction. The house sits west of Harvard Square at what was once a five-way junction of Concord Avenue, Garden Street, and Follen Street. A pedestrian plaza now separates the quiet residential stretch of Follen Street from the rest of the intersection.
the style
Built in 1889, the Edwin Abbot House is described as a prominent local example of residential Richardsonian Romanesque architecture - the round-arched, heavily massed style named for H. H. Richardson that spread through the Boston area in the late nineteenth century.
More on Richardsonian Romanesquethe architect
The original 1889 house was designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow. The firm Huygens and Tappe, Inc. is also credited on the building, associated with the modern addition that added the current Garden Street entrance.
significance
The Edwin Abbot House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and included in the Follen Street Historic District in 1986. It has been repurposed since 1937 as the main building of the Longy School of Music, now part of Bard College.
nearby
- Building at 10 Follen Street
- Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site
- Oliver Hastings House
- Cloverden
- Grace Hopkinson Eliot Hall
- Mary Fiske Stoughton House