Hooper-Lee-Nichols House

Like all buildings in Cambridge, the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House is located on the traditional homelands of the Massachusett people. We acknowledge that we are here as guests, and strive to give honor and respect to these ancestors as well as the thousands of Native people living in the Commonwealth today.

Founded in 1905 by a group of historians, the Cambridge Historical Society initially met in private homes and on the Harvard campus to present lectures on Cambridge history. Beginning in 1906, these lectures were published as The Proceedings. Not long after, the Society began collecting books, documents, significant papers, photographs, and objects. Together these materials made the basis for our current archival collection.

We’ve come a long way since our 1905 beginnings. What started as a group of amateur history enthusiasts has taken a fresh, new direction. In 2021 we became History Cambridge, a reflection of our efforts to be the most relevant and responsive historical voice in Cambridge. We do that by recognizing that every person in our city knows something about Cambridge's history, and their knowledge matters.

About the House

The historic Hooper-Lee-Nichols House on Brattle Street—the second oldest house in Cambridge and one of the oldest houses in New England—became the Society’s headquarters in 1957 after Frances Emerson donated the building to the Society. Today it houses our staff offices and special collection archives.

The Hooper-Lee-Nichols house was built in 1685 and has been changed by its residents over the years, modified repeatedly to meet the style of the day. While it primarily reflects the Georgian Style of the 18th century, parts of the original 17th-century construction remain and one can see Victorian and Colonial Revival alterations from later generations. Learn more about its architectural history in this 2010 publication.

The HLN House and Enslaved People

We know much more about the white families who owned the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House over the centuries than we do about the servants and enslaved people associated with the house and land. We know that past homeowners Cornelius Waldo (1684–1753/1754) and Joseph Lee (1710–1802) were both enslavers. It is possible that enslaved people lived and worked at the house, but we have not yet found records that could confirm this. Read more in our 2019 report on what we know about the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House and its ties to slavery.

Hooper-Lee-Nichols House from Brattle Street

Events and Filming at the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House

Built in 1685 and transformed into a Georgian mansion in the 1730s, the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House is one of the oldest houses in Cambridge.

We've hosted corporate retreats, community meetings, weddings and milestone celebrations, documentary film crews, and more. Capacity ranges from 40 to 100 people, depending on the type of event.

Learn more about our amenities and rates

Owners of the HLN House

1684–1701, Richard and Elizabeth Hooper 1701–1722, Henry Hooper 1733–1758, Cornelius Waldo 1758–1802, Judge Joseph Lee 1802–1808, Thomas Lee 1808–1814, John Appleton 1814–1860, Benjamin and Deborah Carpenter 1850–1892, George and Susan Nichols 1893–1898, Henry Lee 1898–1916, John White Treadwell Nichols 1916–1923, Austin and Amelia White 1923–1957, William and Frances Emerson

1684–1701, Richard and Elizabeth Hooper

Richard Hooper purchased an eleven acre farm including the land this house sits on, on February 14, 1684, for 45 pounds. He lived here with his wife and two children until he died on December 8, 1690. The inventory of his estate included a house that was well furnished with books “beyond a bible,” a barn, an orchard, cattle, pigs, horses, and a servant.

Prior to purchasing the land, there is no mention of Hooper in the records of Cambridge or Watertown and it is believed that he moved to the area from New Hampshire. In the intensely insular Puritan communities, being from another colony would have raised some suspicion. He worked in medicine, but in what capacity is unclear. He is referred to as a physician in records of the purchase of the farm, but in a court case he is referred to as a surgeon. These different positions would have placed him in radically different social classes.

Soon after Richard’s death his wife, Elizabeth, fell on hard times. In 1691 she petitioned the selectmen of Watertown to keep an inn and to serve alcohol. Within a year she was reprimanded for entertaining questionable guests, and by the time of her death in 1701 the house was virtually empty, lacking even a sheet to wrap the corpse. Was this because the family were outsiders? Because Richard was a surgeon? Or was it just the harsh climate of Puritan New England?

1701–1722, Henry Hooper

Henry Hooper, like his father, was in the medical profession. After the death of both of his parents, respected Cambridge landowner Francis Foxcroft was appointed to be the executor of the estate. He took Henry and his sister from the house and found Henry an apprenticeship in a Boston apothecary. With training in medicine, Henry went on to become a successful physician and married Remember Parker, a member of a well connected family. In 1716 he reclaimed the property, paid the outstanding debt on the estate and made significant additions to both the house and the property before selling the estate in 1733. His sister Hanna did not do as well. By the end of her life, she was destitute. When she died, Watertown offered four pairs of gloves, six quarts of rum, a coffin, and a grave to anyone who would bury her.

1733–1758, Cornelius Waldo

Usually described as a Boston merchant, Waldo bought the house from Henry in 1733 and owned it for the rest of his life, although there is no record of him having lived in the house. He made a number of improvements, including casing of exposed beams, and possibly added paneling and moldings in some rooms. In 1742 Waldo placed a “to be lett” advertisement in the Boston Newsletter for a “house with gardens and other accommodations to a gentleman for a country seat…” His widow sold the house in 1758.

Waldo had ties through his family to the slave trade, and he himself enslaved people. We have three direct references to Cornelius’ slave ownership; two of these are recorded in his ledger books and reproduced online by a vendor of antique documents. In 1728 Cornelius noted payments made during travel to Worcester with his wife and “my Negro man Cesar to attend us.” On February 22, 1742, his ledger shows “a bond for the sale of a Negro Boy named Prince to Daniel Rea, Taylor (tailor.)” Cornelius inserted the word “named” above his text, possibly as an afterthought. Further details show Rea paid 130 pounds and that Prince was then in Rea’s possession. Cornelius warranted the “Boy to him from the Demands of any Person or Persons whatsoever.”

The third reference to his slave ownership occurred after Cornelius’s death in 1753. The probate document for his estate stated that he owned “one ‘Negro Woman’ probably a slave, who was valued at 200 pounds.” This amount was half the price of his house and land in Boston.

We have no direct evidence that an enslaved person ever lived in the house from 1733 until it was sold in 1758. But it was of course entirely possible.

1758–1802, Judge Joseph Lee

Born in 1710 or 11, the records of his Harvard class of 1729 describe him as “one of the more disorderly members of a quiet class.” Like others of his time, he was a merchant, and a land speculator. He married Rebecca, the youngest daughter of Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phipps, in 1755. Three years later they moved into the Brattle Street house.

According to available records, the Lees enslaved two people while at 159 Brattle: Cesar and a man named Mark Lewis. Read more here.

In 1769, Judge Lee was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas, but when considered for a permanent appointment was rejected as being unfit. Lee was elected to the House of Representatives, but was denied reelection in 1766. He then accepted an appointment to the most controversial and reviled governing body in the colony, the Mandamus Council, a group appointed by the king in 1774 to replace the elected officials. However, when citizens gathered to protest against this council, Lee resigned.

Following the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Judge Lee sought protection in British-held Boston and then later in Philadelphia and New Jersey. However, unlike the other Cambridge Tories, two years later he was back in Cambridge, reclaiming his house after the departure of the Continental Army. He lived out the rest of his life in Cambridge and worked for the new American government.

1802–1808, Thomas Lee

Judge Joseph Lee died childless, leaving the house and farm to his nephews, Thomas and Joseph Lee. Thomas, an affluent merchant who had made a fortune as a master mariner, bought Joseph’s portion of the property. In 1803 Thomas Lee built a mansion for his family at 153 Brattle Street on part of the farm’s acreage, and rented out the house. In 1808 he sold the house.

1808–1814, John Appleton

John Appleton was a merchant in Salem and in the 1790s served as a consul to France at the port of Calais. His Continental experience involved a liaison with an English woman with whom he had two sons. Leaving her in England, John brought his sons back to Massachusetts, and in 1807 he married Sarah Fayerweather. Appleton used part of the property to build a new house for his family. In 1810 the Appletons moved into 163 Brattle Street. In 1814 he subdivided the land and sold the old house.

1814–1860, Benjamin and Deborah Carpenter

Benjamin Carpenter was a retired ship captain from Salem in the China and East India trade and a friend of both Joseph Lee and Thomas Appleton. He had been a privateer in the Revolution. When his second wife died he married Deborah Lee Austin, the daughter of Thomas Lee. Benjamin and Deborah were married only two months before Benjamin died, leaving the house to Deborah. She returned to her father’s house and let this house out.

1850–1892, George and Susan Nichols

George Nichols was born in Salem in 1809 to a merchant and ship master. He graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1828. In 1833 he and two partners bought the (Harvard) University Press. Along with James Monroe, he bought the (Harvard) University Bookstore in 1847. Nichols also worked as a proofreader appointed by Harvard President Josiah Quincy. He edited the works of Burke and completed a five-volume edition of the papers of Charles Sumner.

George Nichols married Susan Farley Treadwell in 1834. In 1850 the Nichols family returned to Cambridge, moving to 159 Brattle Street, which they eventually purchased from the estate of Deborah Carpenter in 1860. Together George and Susan Nichols had five daughters: Susan, Lily, Harriet, Lucy, Mary; and one son, John White Treadwell Nichols. George Nichols died in Cambridge in 1882.

According to Mary Gozzaldi, Susan Nichols had a fondness for children. She formed the Constellation Club where neighborhood children came to stargaze and socialize. The house also served as host for several meetings of the Bee, a local young women’s sewing circle, of which Lucy and Mary were founding members.

Following Susan Farley Nichols’ death in 1892, the house was left to her children. They subdivided the property and sold the house to Henry Lee, a descendant of earlier owner Joseph Lee.

1893–1898, Henry Lee

For the price of one dollar, Henry Lee may have saved the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House from demolition. In September 1892, following the death of Susan Nichols, the Cambridge Tribune reported that the property was to be sold, with the house to be “taken down…much of the wood-work being decayed.” Nothing further on the matter of demolition was reported, but in April 1893 Boston merchant Henry Lee, a descendent of Judge Joseph Lee, was recorded as buying the property for one dollar. And in November, Susan Nichols Carter wrote from New York to Lee that “it has been a great satisfaction to me, as well as to members of our family, that…[the house] has been returned into your hands, as having a hereditary regard for it.” He owned the house for twelve years and left it to the Nichols family – for the original price of one dollar.

1898–1916, John White Treadwell Nichols

Upon his death in 1898, probate records indicate that Henry Lee left the house to John White Treadwell Nichols, who received it in 1905. Living in New York, he rented it to his sister Harriet Nichols Lamb. She lived in the house with her son Charles Lamb, his wife, and their two daughters, Harriet and Frances, until Nichols sold the house to his nephew, Austin White, in 1916.

1916–1923, Austin and Amelia White

Austin and Amelia White purchased the house in 1916. The grandson of George and Susan Nichols and a successful mining executive, he bought the property “not for his own occupancy, but…largely for sentimental reasons.” He had been born in it, grew up in it, and perhaps wished to rescue it.

He hired the well-known preservation architect Joseph Everett Chandler to enlarge and remodel the house “in order to embody all the requirements of comfort of a modern family in the neighborhood.” One reason was clearly preservation; a second must have been to render it equal to the other houses on fashionable Brattle Street. White, a member of the Bostonian Society, further demonstrated his identification with the property and its historic significance by placing a bronze plaque on a gate post, which designated it as the Nichols House and dated it, incorrectly, to a quarter of a century earlier than it had actually been built.

1923–1957, William and Frances Emerson

Frances Emerson, the daughter of noted financier William August White, was given the house as a Christmas present from her father. Legend has it that she found the deed to the house in the toe of her Christmas stocking. Her husband William was an architect, and to document the historic building, William had measured drawings made in 1932. He served as Dean of MIT’s School of Architecture from 1919 to 1939, overseeing much educational innovation and introducing courses in City Planning. Francis and William died in 1957, and she left the house to the Cambridge Historical Society, which has owned it since.

Explore the Rooms of the HLN House

The Bosphorus Room The Chandler Room The East Chamber The East Parlor The Naples Room

The Bosphorus Room

This room and the Naples Room pictured above are the two oldest in the house. Our recent dendrochronology dates the main support beam below this room to 1685.

At that time this room would have looked very different. It was most likely built in the style once known to architectural historians as First Period, with exposed beams featuring decorative cuts.

Richard Hooper, his wife Elizabeth, and two children lived here until he died in 1690. Soon after his death, Elizabeth fell on hard times. By the time of her death in 1701, the house was empty, lacking even a sheet to wrap her corpse. Following Elizabeth Hooper’s death the house was left empty for 15 years. In 1716 the house was reclaimed by Henry Hooper, the son of Richard and Elizabeth. He may have replaced part of the termite-damaged structure of this room.

The room was updated in the Georgian style in the 1700s. Our paint analysis has shown that this process happened in multiple stages. It is likely that the first changes were made by Cornelius Waldo who advertised the house for rent as a country seat for a gentleman. Waldo sold the house to Joseph Lee in 1758. Lee completed the Georgianization of the room, adding such features as the furred out walls and window seats.

The most notable feature of this room, the wallpaper, was installed in 1856 by George and Susan Nichols. The paper was printed by the leading Parisian scenic wallpaper company, Joseph Dufour et Cie. It depicts scenes of the Bosphorus in Turkey and was installed to match the earlier wallpaper on the second floor.

Our exploration of the room has revealed some curious facts. The oak structure behind the south and west walls shows 17th-century details one would expect. However, the structure under the north and east walls is made from pine wood and does not show the expected decorations. These structural beams have been covered since the middle of the 18th century. Why they don’t match from one side to the other is a mystery.

The Chandler Room

Joseph Everett Chandler, an early specialist in preservation architecture, extensively remodeled the house in 1916–1917. He removed the back portion of the house and rebuilt it with this library that, since 1957, has been called the Chandler Room. It began as a kitchen located in a lean-to built against the rear wall of the house before 1742. Susan Nichols reported in 1893 “for some years after we had the house an immense fireplace with high mantelpiece jutted into the kitchen. ….this fireplace was cut away and within it another fireplace was discovered, and still another within that. At the back of the latter were two little ovens and I believe there were settles at the side.”

Chandler planned the room to represent the house’s earliest Colonial architecture, much of which in the front part of the house had been covered by later remodeling. He retained the long, narrow shape of the lean-to, laid down a brick floor when he found original bricks under nineteenth century flooring, and repaired the huge fireplace, whose chimney stack may date from 1717. The room’s massive corner posts are copied from those in the East Chamber, the roughest in the house but also the only ones never cased. However, Chandler exaggerated the crudeness of the beams, leaving adze marks where the originals were carefully smoothed. The dark, beaded wood paneling, small windows, heavy posts and primitive woodwork are signature elements of an early twentieth century Colonial Revival style room. As such, it is a better example of the sophisticated taste and restoration philosophy of that period than of the vernacular Colonial on which it was based. Now it is itself a period room.

The East Chamber

This room is one of the most fascinating in the house. Remarkably, some of the 17th-century features are still clearly visible. The summer beam, the large central beam supporting the room above, has a beveled or chamfered edge that comes to a decorative lambs tongue stop, classic features of 17th-century architecture. Exposed, decorated structural beams were often covered as a more finished look came into style.

For a house that has been on one of the most stylish streets in Cambridge for at least 250 years, the fact that this room has not been changed much is surprising. The chimney girt, the beam that the summer beam connects to above the fireplace, has been cased in the Georgian style and other features of the room have been changed. Joseph Chandler made few alterations to this room. He installed the tiles around the fireplace and built out the northwest portion of the room for a bathroom, however, a number of elements, including the front girt and summer beam are intact.

Our paint analysis found the same layers of paint on the exposed beams, which suggests that they were not covered in the past and then uncovered during a Colonial Revival renovation.

The East Parlor

The East Parlor and the East Chamber were probably built as a separate house and brought here. Compared to the Bosphorus room, the dimensions are different: ceilings are lower and the room is not as wide or as deep. The wall containing the arched doors divides the room and creates a small area, today used as a pantry. The small space could have been a chimney and stairwell bay.

A review of the existing records suggest that this was a house that was brought here by Henry Hooper in 1716 or 1717 when he reclaimed and expanded his parents’ house. Supporting this theory, our probes of the building show that the beams under the Georgian casings display 17th-century characteristics.

As in the rest of the house, this room has been altered in multiple campaigns. Its earliest alterations show it being refashioned into the Georgian style and used as a kitchen. In the second alteration, the south wall was furred out to create window seats that match the Bosphorus room. At that time the cooking was shifted to the back of the house; soon after the arched door was installed. Additional alterations include the federal style mantle.

Structural evidence suggests that the east side of the house was moved here and joined to the west side, already on the site. But we still do not know which is older. We hoped a recent Dendrochronology study would answer these questions, but only one of the three samples was datable. Taken from the west side, it dates to 1685.

The Naples Room

This room, part of the original 1685 house, has undergone repeated remodeling. Henry Hooper (owner 1716–1733) or Cornelius Waldo (owner 1733–1758) redecorated it in the Georgian style in vogue at the time. The room’s 17th-century features were covered with casings and the window openings were made symmetrical to give them a more formal appearance. These alterations changed the room from a simple to high style, suitable for a wealthy physician or country gentleman.

Probably around 1717 the plain board paneling at the fireplace wall was updated by applying a grid system of thin boards to resemble expensive Georgian raised wall paneling without incurring the cost. This faux paneling is believed to be unique in New England.

Judge Joseph Lee modernized the room by plastering over the faux paneling and installing figured wallpaper throughout. Samples of this paper have been recovered and date to between 1760 and 1780. Lee also probably took advantage of new techniques and reduced the size of the fireplace, allowing it to throw more heat into the room instead of up the chimney.

The wallpaper, printed by Joseph Dufour et Cie in Paris in the early 1820s, depicts the Bay of Naples. It was the height of style when it was printed.