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Date: March 31, 2005

To: Members of the Historical Commission

From: Charles Sullivan, Executive Director
Sarah L. Burks, Designated Property Administrator

Re: D-1021: 300 Mt. Auburn Street (Parsons Building, Mt. Auburn Hospital)

An application to demolish large portions of the rear wings of the Parsons Building at Mount Auburn Hospital was received on January 12, 2005. The applicant requested continuances to the April 7 hearing of the Historical Commission.

Site Conditions and Zoning Status

The Parsons Building is located on the Mount Auburn Hospital campus on the south side of Mt. Auburn Street, opposite Channing Street. The structure is a three-story stone and brick building with one-story brick wings facing the river. The assessed value for the land and buildings (Map 241/Parcel 14, 14E), according to the Assessors database, is $115,665,300. The structures are sited on a 344,148 square-foot lot.

The majority of the Mt Auburn Hospital campus is regulated in the Zoning Ordinance by a Residence C-3 zoning district. A hospital is a permitted as-of-right use in a C-3 district; buildings are allowed to a height of 120 feet, with an FAR of 3.0. Setbacks are required, determined by formulas based on a proposed structure’s height and wall length facing a property line. The portion of the campus along Mt. Auburn Street, to a depth of 100 feet, is regulated by the much more restrictive Residence C-1 zoning district. In this district the hospital use would normally be prohibited. Heights of all building are limited to thirty-five feet, with an FAR of 0.75.

One additional zoning district applies to the entire campus, which has the effect of granting additional flexibility to locating hospital facilities in the C-1 district. That district, the Mount Auburn Hospital Institutional Overlay District, permits a hospital facility in the C-1 district after the granting of a special permit from the Board of Zoning Appeal. Any project having a building area of 50,000 square feet or more would be subject to the Project Review Special Permit from the Planning Board, which requires review of the urban design and traffic impacts of the proposed development.

The O’Connor Zoning Petition, currently before the City Council and Planning Board, would require a hospital use to secure a special permit even in the Residence C-3 zoning district. Hearings on that proposed zoning text change are to be held on April 6 at the Ordinance Committee and April 19 at the Planning Board.

Description

Designed by William E. Chamberlin of Cambridge and opened in 1886, the Cambridge Hospital consisted of three units: a three-story center pavilion (now known as the Parsons Building) flanked by two one-story wings, Wards A and B, which were connected by open passages that could be glassed in during the winter. Wards for men and women each had a capacity of sixteen patients, while a few private rooms on the second floor of the center block provided additional space. The rest of the main block held, on the first floor, offices, a staff dining room, and an accident room that doubled as an operating room; on the third floor were rooms for nurses and house physicians; and in the basement, a kitchen that was connected to the wards by underground passageways. Dr. Wyman, the president of the hospital since 1874, helped design the heating and ventilating systems for the wards, and large copper intake louvers are visible at the crests of the hip roofs. The exterior walls contrast rough stone and brick, while terra-cotta moldings frame the openings. The massing and proportion of these buildings, the color and texture of their masonry, and their location in a parklike setting at the crest of a low hill are felicitous, and these original buildings are still the most handsome part of the complex. The Parsons Building was remodeled in 1939 by Lois Lilley Howe; the wards have not been used for patients since 1961.

History

The city's first hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, was incorporated in 1871 as the Cambridge Hospital and was intended mainly to serve the poor. The hospital began as the work of Emily Elizabeth Parsons, a granddaughter of Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Although lame and blind in one eye, Parsons trained as a nurse and served as a volunteer during the Civil War. On her return to Cambridge she planned a charity hospital for women and children, which opened in 1867 in a house on Prospect Street in Cambridgeport. After a year, the hospital was forced to move, and from 1869 to 1872 it operated on the corner of Hampshire and Prospect streets, until it again closed for lack of funds.

A special act of the legislature in 1871 incorporated the Cambridge Hospital "for the purpose of maintaining a Hospital in the City of Cambridge for sick and disabled persons" (Ames, 39). Fund-raising efforts resumed after Emily Parsons' death in 1880, but the hospital existed only on paper until 1883, when Dr. Morrill Wyman purchased a 9-acre plot on the Charles River near Gerry's Landing. The site, a remnant of Simon's Hill, was about 25 feet above the river and well above Mount Auburn Street. Construction of the first building began in 1884 and was completed two years later. This first building, the Parsons Building (also called the Main Building) opened in 1886.

In 1891, an isolated two-story brick and stone "pest house" for patients with infectious diseases was placed at the southeastern corner of the lot, as far from the main buildings and as close to the river and its breezes as possible. Designed by Chamberlin & Austin and remodeled in 1905, this was the only place in the city where patients with serious contagious diseases could be cared for safely. It was demolished for the 1959 wing of Wyman House.

The Nurses' Home, now the Clark Building, was constructed in three stages. The present east block, designed in 1896 by William E. Chamberlin, repeats the broad eaves and blocky shape of the main hospital building. Establishment of the School of Nursing in 1904 required enlarging the Nurses' Home substantially. The present central block, designed by Charles Cogswell in 1917, is considerably larger than the original, but continues the projecting eaves, size and spacing of windows, and shortened attic story of the 1896 building. The west and south wing, designed by Kendall, Taylor & Company in 1928, completes the building.

The surgical building was designed in 1897 by William E. Chamberlin of Cambridge in collaboration with Wheelwright & Haven of Boston. Edmund Wheelwright was the City Architect of Boston in the 1890s and had designed buildings for Boston City Hospital, and it may have been this experience that attracted the hospital to him for this specialized building. The one-story wing faces Mount Auburn Street and connects at the rear to the open passageway leading to the 1886 main building. The surgical wing uses the same brick, slate, and granite as the main building, but its special function is expressed by the large north-facing window, which provides light for the operating room. The interior was finished with a marble floor, walls, and tables in the operating room, and remains relatively intact.

In the 20th century the hospital expanded tremendously, filling its land with ever-larger multi-story buildings to accommodate a larger clientele and new technology. Charles Cogswell designed the three-story Fisk Building in 1912 and an outpatient building in 1916. The five-story Wyman House was built in 1928 and was augmented by a six-story wing in 1959 and a one-story laboratory in 1963, both by Markus & Mocka. In 1946, the Cambridge Hospital became Mount Auburn Hospital, ending years of confusion with Cambridge City Hospital.

An expansion in 1969 required the demolition of the outpatient building (1916), the Woolson Building (1929), and the Fisk Building (1912). The new facilities, designed by Perry, Dean & Stewart, provide a garage for some 500 cars, a three-story office building for 90 doctors, and a ten-story medical support building. In 1982 the hospital completed a new intensive care unit, and in 1983 it proposed to demolish the Clark Building for a parking garage. Instead, the hospital in 1991 purchased the former Western Electric Company manufacturing plant in East Watertown for possible future expansion. After Mount Auburn became a founding member of CareGroup Healthcare System, an integrated healthcare system serving Eastern Massachusetts, it cancelled its expansion plans and sold the Watertown facility.

The current expansion project includes a four-level parking garage that is proposed to be sited where the wings of the Parsons Buildings (Wards A and B) are currently located, a seven-story West Wing, and circulation changes.

Significance and Recommendation

The Parsons Building was determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 as part of the Cambridge Multiple Resource Area nomination. The federal and state protections and review procedures apply equally to properties determined eligible for listing on the Register as to those actually listed. The Cambridge demolition review ordinance, Ch. 2.78, Article II, of the Municipal Code, defines a significant building as any building within the City which is in whole or in part fifty years or more old and:

1. Which is within any historic district; or
2. Which is listed on, or is within an area listed on, the National Register of Historic Places, or which is the subject of a pending application for listing on the National Register; or
3. Which is or has been designated by the Commission to be a significant building after a finding by the Commission that a building either:
a. Is importantly associated with one or more historic persons or events, or with the broad architectural, cultural, political, economic or social history of the City or the Commonwealth, or
b. Is historically or architecturally significant (in terms of period, style, method of building construction or association with a famous architect or builder) either by itself or in the context of a group of buildings.

It is the staff recommendation that the Commission confirm the Parsons Building, inclusive of the two wings (Wards A and B) as a significant building for its important associations with Emily Parsons and with the nineteenth-century improvements in medical care and facilities, for its architecture as an important institutional example of the Renaissance Revival style, and for its associations with prominent Cambridge architects, William E. Chamberlin and Lois Lilley Howe.

The staff further recommends that the Commission find the Parsons Building preferably preserved, initiating the demolition delay period and thereby communicating to the other City and State boards and agencies that will undertake review and permitting of the hospital expansion project that the building is an important historic resource that should be protected from inappropriate demolition and alterations. The applicant should be encouraged to study other possible solutions to their parking and circulation requirements.

cc: James Rafferty