The History Cambridge organization has been based since 1957 in, appropriately, the second-oldest building in the city: the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, built around 1685.
The future of the organization, though, is elsewhere.
The nonprofit’s board voted Wednesday to sell the house at 159 Brattle St., West Cambridge, and find a headquarters elsewhere, said Marieke Van Damme, executive director of History Cambridge. (The oldest home in the city is the circa-1681 Cooper-Frost-Austin House, at 21 Linnaean St., Neighborhood 9.)
Amy Devin, president of the board, said the building was “not suited to the flexible, community-focused work we are committed to. Moving on from 159 Brattle enables us to find a new location that truly supports our mission and the needs of Cambridge today.”
The decision was not made lightly, Van Damme agreed in a call before the vote, calling it “decades in the making.”
It is not clear where the organization will move, and there is no timeline for that decision – or for the sale of the three-story its current home, 7,888 square feet on an 18,012-square-foot lot with a desirable address but historical protections that restrain development inside and out. (“I feel good knowing the house will be protected and loved and cared for” by conservation laws, Van Damme said.) No agent has been engaged for a sale, and the board is looking for representation from outside the city, “because everybody in Cambridge is related to each other in some way,” Van Damme said.
It’s not clear what price a sale will bring; 159 Brattle was assessed at $7.4 million this year. An 1803 home at 153 Brattle St. sold for $10.6 million in 2011 at a far higher assessment but similar specs: 2.5 stories, or 6,097 square feet of living space on a 22,505-square-foot lot.
“It’s a unique property, right?” Van Damme said. “We don’t know. It feels almost unprecedented.”
The house has never been a perfect fit for the organization, either for staff or public programming. “When I started here, I thought the building would be the thing – I was excited to figure out how to activate this building and make it what we thought a historic house should be,” said Van Damme, who went down a “rabbit hole” of research about the home when she arrived at History Cambridge a decade ago. But it’s “hard to work in a historic structure.” A board member with disabilities can’t attend meetings there, for example, and old, historic buildings add to upkeep demands. “Earlier today, my little mouse friend was rustling around in the walls,” Van Damme noted.
The organization wasn’t founded in the house: It was created by a bunch of engaged amateurs in 1905 as the Cambridge Historical Society, a name that lasted until 2021, and got the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House some 52 years later in a bequest from the will of Frances White Emerson – along with a caretaker who lived there for the next 20 years. In the 1970s the organization ran it as a historic house museum, but “that wasn’t really a sustainable model,” Van Damme said. “The organization had been thinking about the house and our relationship with our house since we received it. There was a report then about ’Should we even accept this house?’ Because it will be, quote, a millstone, unquote – ‘It might be a millstone around our neck.’”
Accessibility will be a factor
Several iterations of the board have worked toward a move, Van Damme said. A major step was taken in 2023: Settling a question from the original bequest about ownership, which was listed as including Harvard University. Harvard wrote a release of deed stipulating it had no interest in the property, resolving “a housekeeping issue that had been holding back” a move, she said.
Over the past couple of years the organization has focused its work on specific neighborhoods: North Cambridge last year, East Cambridge this year. For a while in 2024, it leased space on Massachusetts Avenue and held events, and the staff of History Cambridge marveled at how it felt to have a base away from the quiet of the Colonial-era homes on Tory Row. “It was accessible. It was on a major thoroughfare where there was public transportation, in a neighborhood with high density. We met people we never met before. People came back a few times. We met some dogs,” Van Damme said. “It felt so alive and active. It was a place for people to meet and interact, when third spaces are disappearing rapidly from our city.”
Replicating that accessibility will be key toward finding a next home, she said. “We’ve talked about Central Square because you want to have a place in Cambridge that ticks all those boxes,” Van Damme said. “You want to have it in a spot that doesn’t feel like it’s only for that neighborhood, and Central Square feels like that. Sometimes Inman square feels like that to me.”
“Recognizing when change is necessary”
A press release Thursday called the sale of the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House part of a multiyear strategic shift to become a more open, inclusive and responsive organization to meet people where they are and amplifying the diverse voices and histories of all Cambridge residents, and it said the house limited the organization’s ability to invest in new and meaningful initiatives – failing to serves the functional needs of History Cambridge even beyond financial considerations.
Those financial needs didn’t go away even after a significant upgrade to the house in 2013 – there is still ongoing and deferred maintenance costs. “Would I use that money to fix things here? Or would I put that money towards hiring an intern to do some research?” Van Damme said.
The decision to relocate was applauded by officials including Steve Owens, state representative for the home’s district. “As our neighborhoods grow and change, so too must our institutions. History Cambridge’s decision to move beyond its historic home reflects this spirit,” Owens said in a press release.
“Recognizing when change is necessary to ensure long-term organizational health shows a forward-thinking approach to stewardship,” said Brian Boyles, executive director of Mass Humanities. “By making this choice, History Cambridge is setting a precedent for responsible leadership in the cultural sector.”
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There’s a bit of irony here of the historic protections making the structure unusable for a group dedicated to the history of Cambridge. Personally I think that the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House should stay given its stature in the city, but those same historical protections have mostly been used to prevent development in the city.
Not every old building is historically significant and worthy of preservation forever, in my opinion. Sometimes things need to change to adapt to a changing world, and that’s okay. Cambridge is a thriving city, not a museum.
I Shutter to think? 2013 campaign to restore the Shutters of the Hooper house, Contributors disappointed?
I attended the 2024-09-02 Tory Row History walk describing events of 1774-09-02 250th Anniversary led from the Longfellow House by J.L. Bell. We walked to the end of Brattle Street and back. HQ=History Cambridge, 159 Brattle St., was open and offered tours. This was in contrast to Elmwood House built in 1767. Our group of 70 was told to stay off the driveway and behind the fence on the sidewalk. HC = 2024-2027 Strategic Plan, Diversify the board and volunteers by age, race/ethnicity, and neighborhood & Theory of Change?
In my opinion, HC = 2024-2027 Strategic Plan should be more about telling the story of patriotic struggle of the Heroes of the American Revolution, a celebration of Washington taking Command of the infant US Army (Sheraton Commander). The real story is the Siege of Boston, Washington’s first victory, without it NO Declaration of Independence.
I continue to be disappointed in the direction History Cambridge has taken, far from the original historical society of 1905. The new reiteration is politically correct, light-weight, with a dash of wokeness, litmus tests and millennial self-importance. The organization is far from a preservationist society and more focused on current social issues rather than actual material culture and researchable facts. Neighborhood & Theory of Change? Imposing modern thought on history as the only valid story?
The house on Brattle St was their most important asset but evidently became a political problem in case it was related to slavery which is also part of history. By ignoring this property and connection to Cambridge history, it has ignored a huge part of the society’s loyal supporters, now disinterested. Not being trained historians, they are actually ageist in focusing on youth while commenting on political issues like the AHO and against conservation districts. It is a disservice .