Headquarters House
- Architect
- Asher Benjamin
- Year
- 1808
- Style
- Federal
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- federal boston
Built in 1808 to a design by Asher Benjamin, the William Hickling Prescott House — also known as Headquarters House — is the western half of a twin townhouse at 54-55 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 not primarily for its architecture but for its association with William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), one of the nation's first historians, who lived there. Since 1944 it has served as headquarters and a house museum for the Massachusetts chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
the building
Mirror-image twin houses. The twin townhouses at 54 and 55 Beacon Street are four stories tall and three bays wide, still nearly mirror images of each other, with outer bays forming rounded bay fronts marked by pilasters rising from the porch to the roofline.
Doric porch, fanlight door. Each house is fronted by a Doric-columned porch that follows the curve of the rounded bays, with a doorway set in the innermost bay flanked by sidelight windows and topped by a fanlight.
the style
Built in the Federal style fashionable in early-19th-century Boston, the house pairs a rounded bay front with a Doric entrance porch, restrained ornament typical of the style's formal domestic architecture.
More on Federalsignificance
The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 for its association with historian William Hickling Prescott. It has been a museum since 1944, when the Massachusetts chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America purchased it for their headquarters.
nearby
- Bachelor Apartments
- Francis Parkman House
- David Sears House
- Nathan Appleton Residence
- Second Harrison Gray Otis House
- Church of the Advent