{"nrhp_refnum":"75000284","name":"Brown Square House","other_names":["Garrison Inn"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"11 Brown Sq.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Newburyport","county":"Essex County","state":"MA","lat":42.811128361000044,"lon":-70.87373776899994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1975-03-07","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A four-story brick Federal-style building at 11 Brown Square in Newburyport, Massachusetts, built in 1809-1810 as two mirror-image attached town houses for merchant Moses Brown. It later served as a boarding house, hotel and the Garrison Inn.","why_significant":"It is the largest remaining brick building in Newburyport and the only completed part of a planned terrace of grand town houses facing Brown Square. The exterior is almost unaltered and many interior details survive. It also reflects the ambitions of Moses Brown, a leading merchant and philanthropist, and its long use as an inn adds to its history.","narrative":"Built in 1809-1810 for Newburyport merchant Moses Brown, this four-story brick building at 11 Brown Square began as two mirror-image Federal town houses. Brown meant them to anchor one end of a long terrace facing the square he gave the town, but the illness of the contractor, the fire of 1811 and the War of 1812 stopped the project, and protruding bricks on one wall still wait for a neighbor that never came. The result is the largest remaining brick building in the city, with Flemish-bond brick, sandstone trim, fan-lit doorways and a dentiled cornice largely unchanged. Inside, the stairs and some partitions were altered, but mantels, cornices and sliding doors between the second-floor drawing rooms remain. By 1849 it was a boarding house, then a hotel, and in 1923 it became the Garrison Inn, named for William Lloyd Garrison. The inn closed in 1948, leaving the building empty but intact.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899","architect_builder":"Moses Brown, builder","architectural_style":"Federal","criteria":[],"status_note":"The inn closed in December 1948 and the building remained empty but intact; the owning trust was seeking funding to restore it and a zoning variance to reopen the inn. Condition is marked fair.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:11:53.439374-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/26/7947/63794726/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/75000284.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/75000284/908170b000-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/75000284/908170b000-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 3.0","author":"John Phelan","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brown_Square_House,_Newburyport_MA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">John Phelan</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brown_Square_House,_Newburyport_MA.jpg"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"84002411","name":"Newburyport Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/massachusetts/newburyport-historic-district-84002411/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63794726","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Square_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4976268"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/essex-county/brown-square-house-75000284/"}