Preservation Awards

Preservation Award plaque

Celebrating historic preservation in Cambridge! 

The Cambridge Preservation Awards Program, inaugurated by the Historical Commission in 1997, celebrates outstanding projects and notable individuals who conserve and protect the city’s architecture and history. Awards are presented each May for projects completed within the previous calendar year. May is National Preservation Month and the 2023 theme is "People Saving Places."

Seven project categories are eligible for Cambridge Preservation Awards: restoration, rehabilitation, adaptive use, neighborhood conservation, landscape preservation, archaeology, and education/outreach. Award winners are selected based on the following criteria:

  • historical and architectural significance of the property,
  • exceptional quality of the project,
  • extent to which the project contributed to the preservation of the property,
  • impact of the project on the preservation of the city’s historic resources

View a slideshow of the 2024 Preservation Awards program.

Congratulations to the 2024 winners:

Cambridge Preservation Awards

121 Third St
46 Blackstone St
44 Bow St
34 Buckingham St
5 Ellsworth Ave
Holden Chapel
15 Inman St
730-750 Main St
1450 Massachusetts Ave
1626 Massachusetts Ave
971 Memorial Dr
96 Otis St
15-17 Pleasant St
315 Franklin St
99 Prospect
98-100 Sciarappa St
6 Union St

Individual Recognition to the folowing local historians, artists, authors, filmmakers:

Sarah Boyer, Coming Out, Becoming Ourselves
Leslie Brunetta, Black Cantabrigians in the Early 1800s
Elisa Hamilton, Jukebox at the Foundry
Stephen Kaiser, A History of Defeating the Inner Belt Highway in Cambridge
John Pitkin, Robert Winters, and Gregorio Leon, "The Cambridge City Charter: From Town Meeting to Plan E"

 

For information on the Massachusetts Historical Commission's preservation awards program, click here.