Elmwood
- Architect
- Thomas Oliver
- Year
- 1767
- Style
- Georgian
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- colonial & revolutionary
Elmwood, also called the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House, was built around 1767 by John Nutting for Thomas Oliver, the last royal Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, on a 100-acre estate in Cambridge. Oliver abandoned the property when the Revolutionary War broke out and the state confiscated it; it later passed to Elbridge Gerry, signer of the Declaration of Independence and the man whose name gave rise to the term "gerrymandering," and then to the Lowell family, becoming the birthplace and lifelong home of poet James Russell Lowell.
the building
Three owners, three legacies. The house's full name, the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House, comes from three consecutive owners: Thomas Oliver, the Loyalist lieutenant governor who built it; Elbridge Gerry, who lived there until his death in 1814; and the Lowell family, who owned it through the birth and life of James Russell Lowell.
the style
Elmwood was built in the Georgian style around 1767, a mode of restrained symmetry typical of the wealthy Loyalist merchant families of the Province of Massachusetts Bay that Thomas Oliver belonged to.
More on Georgiansignificance
Elmwood is the centerpiece of a National Historic Landmark District and is separately listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Hooper-Lee-Nichols House
- The Larches
- Howe House
- Mount Auburn Cemetery Reception House
- Robert Frost House
- J.A. Noyes House