A Harvard Square hotel project that relocates and revives the historic Harriet Jacobs House won unanimous “approval in principle” on Thursday from the Cambridge Historical Commission, meaning members are supportive enough to want more details.
The proposal is “by no means detailed enough for the commission to approve,” executive director Charles Sullivan said in explaining the vote, “but the applicants are entitled to have some indication from the commission of support … so they can continue with design development.”
In getting to the vote, developers continued a presentation from an Aug. 14 meeting of a plan around the Regency-style home built in 1846 that once belonged to the writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs: to move 30 feet from 17 Story St. to the corner of Story and Mount Auburn streets and restore it, putting up a 90,000-square-foot building behind of up to 67 hotel rooms and 50 residential units. The plan, with developers operating under the name 17 Story Street, involves demolishing a neighborhood building at 129 Mount Auburn St.
The presentation was paused at the previous meeting to consider a resident landmarking petition for the Jacobs house, which was approved.
The landmarking study is expected to take around four months but “does not stop the project,” Sullivan said. The study can even incorporate information from the developers as they continue to hone their plans for a next presentation to the commission – expected in around a month.
Limits to commission oversight
The Jacobs house is already in the Harvard Square Conservation District, which offers some oversight of changes “visible from a public way,” but a landmark study adds oversight of such things as the appropriateness of a project’s size and shape, just as though landmark status had already been granted, Sullivan said. The commission’s vote is a recommendation to the City Council, which has final say.
The developers’ plan would see the Jacobs house open to the public as a historic site honoring the author of the 1861 memoir “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and acting as a lobby to the new building. The two would be connected with a cafe attachment. The commission “shall not consider interior arrangements or features not subject to public view,” Sullivan noted, and “new construction that accommodates older structures will be encouraged.”
The proposed cafe connector is uncontroversial historically because developers wouldn’t remove parts of the original building for it. “There was a portico in that location with a side entrance to the building, and that was enclosed or removed and rebuilt in the 1930s,” at least 84 years after the original house was built, Sullivan said.
Commission members largely liked the project or expressed sympathy for the difficulties of the parcel combined with the puzzle of making the finances work – such as how to lower the eight-story hotel portion next to residential Hilliard Street, where homeowners say they will lose privacy and property value.
In considering the goals of the Historic Commission, chair Chandra Harrington felt the 17 Story St. project meets “every one of them one way or another, if you look at them closely – or almost. For instance, the first one is to preserve historically or architecturally significant buildings. Okay, that’s being done. Sustain the vitality of the commercial environment. The hotel. Support creative, contemporary design for new construction. That’s being done.”
“The project is in good shape,” Harrington said.
Delicate financial balance
There were resident voices in opposition who felt the project was too tall, changing the nature of the neighborhood and casting too much shadow, and were suspicious that the residential portion was a ruse, with units that would be sold to out-of-state investors who planned to use them as short-term rentals – useless in addressing Cambridge’s housing crisis.
While developer attorney Patrick Barrett said more details and neighborhood discussions were forthcoming, getting the project to happen was delicately balanced financially.
“From day one we’ve been trying to figure out how we balance these issues,” Barrett said, calling the three aspects of the project – the hotel, the residences and Jacobs house – “symbiotic.”
Every 5 feet of setback from Hilliard, for instance, loses “about 5,600 square feet of gross floor area, and that would be the same pretty much in every side of the building as you start to squeeze it. For every floor that you take off the building, you lose about 10,200 square feet,” Barrett said. “What actually makes the engine work are the top two floors of the building. Without them, it’s next to impossible to make this [financially] feasible.”
The developers had to make a choice “to focus on the Harriet Jacobs house or to focus on the abutters in the back. We chose to focus on the Harriet Jacobs house because that seemed like that was the primary motivation and drive of the project,” Barrett said.
Owner and legacy committee aligned
This meeting led off with testimony from building owner Janet Jiang, who came to America in her 20s from China, “fell in love with Harvard Square” and walked past the Jacobs house every day while running her own small travel agency, sad to see “the building slowly falling apart.” Learning about Jacobs, Jiang bought the house in 2020.
“I want this to be a real place that is alive to the public, where people can connect with her history, not just a static landmark,” Jiang said.
The project also has the general support of the Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee, a group of residents, historians, preservationists and archivists who struggled to find a path to preservation for the house. Attempts to see it bought by an institution such as Harvard failed, committee member Nicola Williams said, but now Jiang has the same goals. “We desire to have public access to the building and feel that a hotel project on the site will connect the Jacobs house to so many more people,” Williams said. The group recognizes “that the project is not fully baked. Our support of the current developer is sincere, but remains contingent upon continued progress in achieving the legacy committee’s goals.”
A similar sentiment was heard from Historical Commission member Scott Kyle before the vote for project approval “in principle” – that he wanted to see more details as soon as possible.
“We really do need very good specifications and revised ideas about this for the next hearing, because we’re just going to be going in circles,” Kyle said.
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The Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee has found no other plan to repair and preserve this house. The current owner’s proposal will restore the building, install exhibits about her life and work, make it accessible to the public, and build housing on the same lot.
Harriet Jacobs never actually owned 17 Story Street. She rented it for about three years while she and her daughter operated it as a rooming house. Today, our city offers few housing options for people who do not have very high incomes or exceptional wealth.
Cambridge has been gradually lowering its legal barriers to more housing, but historic preservation—involving the Historical Commission’s evaluation of each new building’s appearance against the Commission’s preference for keeping structures as they were when built, even if a century or more ago—is emerging as an obstacle to efforts to maintain our city as an equitable and welcoming place to live.
Good to see reason prevail and this project moving forward. It’s a win all around: Restoring the house, making it public, and adding much-needed housing. Exactly the kind of project the Historical Commission should support and it has the backing of the Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee.
The opposition is grasping at straws. Shadows? “Neighborhood character”? There are already tall buildings and hotels within a frisbee’s throw of the site.
For the record, it would be illegal for a non-owner-occupant to operate a short-term rental, and the City is (finally) strengthening enforcement of the short-term rental ordinance.
Now some oppose housing based on what new owners might do? As @Justin Saif noted, the city already has a short-term rental ordinance, and is strengthening and enforcing it, to address the housing crisis.
Huge news that the project now has unanimous approval from the historical commission! This really is the only plan for this site with the resources and real intent to restore the house, open it to the public, build real new housing for Cambridge, and fill in vacant infill.
I think it’s worth pointing out in addition to the legacy committee support noted earlier that the mayor, vice mayor, multiple city councillors, harvard square business association, students, and more all support the project. And that is real support! From real community members! The direct abutters obviously have their own personal reasons, but this is clearly a project that blends preservation, housing, hospitality, and community fabric all in one and is a huge benefit to the neighborhood.
The neighbors’ suspicion of the residential side of the project is also completely baseless and it is actually honestly kind of strange that the neighbors made this business plan up and keep emphasizing it.
Anti-development groups have misused “preservation” and claims of voices silenced and history ignored to block a project that does the opposite: It restores, preserves, and educates.
This raises real questions of integrity. We don’t solve problems by misleading people about motives and goals.
I find it hard to believe that the proposed renovation and residence units will be providing
“housing options for people who do not have very high incomes or exceptional wealth,” as suggested by James Zoll, above.
Removing the top two floors would keep the project more in scale with surrounding buildings. I don’t see why the “developers” need to make a killing on the backs of the neighbors.
Cambridge has inclusionary zoning meaning reduction in size is a reduction in the number of affordable units.
@Margot The project includes affordable units, so it will provide housing options for people without very high incomes.
Why call it “making a killing on the backs of neighbors” when developers build housing? That’s their business and we need housing.
The real concern is neighbors making a killing on property values by blocking housing for others.