After seven decades serving as a historical society headquarters, the iconic Hooper-Lee-Nichols House—a 17th century Georgian masterpiece renowned as the second-oldest home in Cambridge, MA—is transitioning into a private residence and seeking its next legacy owner.
Built circa 1684, predating the Revolutionary War by nearly a century, the elegant mansion at 159 Brattle Street hit the market last week for $5.8 million.
Nestled in a quintessentially New England tree-lined street in the heart of West Cambridge, this sprawling property boasts 10 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and a coveted location just down the street from world-famous Harvard University.
“This is unlike any property that I’ve worked on in West Cambridge,” listing agent Nicole Monahan, of LandVest, tells Realtor.com®. “This is unique.”
The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House has been repeatedly renovated and altered over the course of its 340-year history, but since 1957 it has been owned by the Cambridge Historical Society, now known as History Cambridge.
According to the organization, Richard Hooper, a physician who was believed to have relocated to Cambridge from New Hampshire, purchased an 11-acre farm, including the land the house sits on, for 45 pounds in 1684 and lived there with his wife and their two children until his death six years later.
The inventory of his estate included a well-furnished house, a barn, an orchard, cattle, pigs, horses, and a servant.
For the next three centuries, the stately home changed hands 10 times, with its occupants including merchant families, ship captains, and a slave-owning judge.
The home’s final private owner was Frances Emerson, the daughter of financier William August White, who was gifted the house as a present from her father in 1923. According to a local legend, the woman found the deed to the house in the toe of her Christmas stocking.
When Emerson and her husband died in 1957, she left the house in her will to the local historical society founded in 1905.
Searching for a legacy steward
Today, much of the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House primarily reflects the Georgian Style, although parts of the original 17th-century construction still peek through, along with Victorian and Colonial Revival tweaks.
The listing notes that while the three-story home is currently set up for office use, “future owners will have the opportunity to reimagine the interiors as a grand private home.”
Monahan points out that the legacy residence—the oldest on Brattle Street—is protected by historic preservation measures imposed by the Massachusetts Historical Commission safeguarding its interiors.
“It has to be somebody who appreciates the history here and who’s willing to preserve it,” says Monahan when asked about the right candidate to buy this unique property. “Someone is going to need to love that and be willing to put some effort into making it liveable as a single-family home again after it’s been used as offices for so many years.”
A time capsule of architectural styles
From its front walkway to the basement, the Cambridge home is filled with flourishes and details reflecting bygone styles.
One of the oldest rooms in the house, The Bosphorus Room dates back to 1685 and the home’s first owner. It was updated in the 1700s and again in the mid 1800s, when a fashionable Parisian wallpaper depicting the Strait of Bosphorus in Turkey was installed, giving the room its name.
Dating back to the late 1600s, the Naples Room on the second floor is also notable for its Parisian wallpaper depicting the Bay of Naples in Italy, as well as its impressive fireplace.
The library, known as the Chandler Room, after Joseph Everett Chandler, early specialist in preservation architecture who remodeled the house in 1916, features a brick floor, rich wooden paneling, and a large fireplace with an open hearth—a nod to the room’s original purpose as a kitchen.
Outside, a detached carriage house/garage is spacious enough to accommodate two cars.
Monahan says the one-of-a-kind listing has generated considerable interest over the past week, and she has already had two showings, with more scheduled in the coming days.
