Timeline for the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House

1685-1689
Dr. Richard Hooper built his farmhouse using the one-over-one, single-cell plan--the most common house form of the 17th century. The house was an English, post-medieval, vernacular building--considered first-period. Dr. Hooper covered the ceilings with plaster between joists. This refinement, "found normally in more expensive houses", suggests that Dr. Hooper had certain pretensions to wealth and display.

1691-1717
Richard Hooper died in 1691. His widow, Elizabeth, with two young children to raise, was forced to sell her "movables" and take in boarders. The property deteriorated,  and after Elizabeth's death in 1701, Francis Foxcroft, administrator of the estate, said, "the house [was] so out of repair that nobody would live in it, though i proffered sundry to live in it rent free."

1717-1733
Hooper's son, Dr. Henry Hooper inherited the house and put it back into living condition. A lean-to was added, giving it the saltbox shape so typical of 18th century houses. The massive chimney was rebuilt, incorporating the cooking fireplace with ovens that can now be seen through the closet in the dining room. Hooper installed "proto-paneling" in the upstairs west chamber--a harbinger of the sort of wall paneling that would become the hallmark of the Georgian era in America.

1733-1758
Cornelius Waldo bought the house. He installed larger, double-hung sash windows with prominent window caps. He also added a third story under a low-pitch roof and applied decorative wooden quoins at the corners of the house. By 1842 it was so Georgian in appearance that Waldo advertised the house in the Boston Newsletter, offering the house for rent "to a gentleman for a country seat."

1758-1802
Judge Joseph Lee bought the house; added the enclosed pedimented porch on the facade, and was responsible for "roughcasting" (stucco) the west wall. Roughcast, made up of fine sand bonded with natural limes and animal hair could be made to imitate fine ashlar stone, the most desirable and stylish building material of the time.  A British sympathizer, (a Tory) Judge Lee vacated the house during the revolution, returning in 1777.

 1850- ?
George and Susan Nichols rented and began to renovate the house. Susan Nichols wrote that at first there was "much demur on the part of my husband against hiring (renting) such an old house..." The Nichols enlarged the rear of the house and installed the roof balustrade, which contained balusters that were once part of the chancel of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Boston. Like many occupants of Colonial houses in the Victorian period, the Nichols painted the house in muted colors popular at the time--a gray-brown.

Early 20th century
Austin White, grandson of George and Susan Nichols, bought the house "largely for sentimental reasons, having lived there as a boy." In 1916 he raised the rear of the house to a full three stories, thus achieving its present size of twenty-one rooms and four full, and two half bathrooms. White employed Joseph Everett Chandler, a well known restoration architect, to plan the alterations.

1923-1957
William and Frances Emerson purchased the house. For many years Mr. Emerson was dean of architecture at MIT, and the Emersons regularly opened their home to architects, artists, students and friends. The Emersons were members of the Cambridge Historical Society.

1957-present
Frances Emerson deeded the house, with an endowment, to the Cambridge Historical Society. This became the first headquarters for the Historical Society. In the early 1980s, the Historical Society received a grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission and made extensive exterior restorations. This work was done in cooperation with the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the American and New England Studies department of Boston University.

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