{"nrhp_refnum":"96000520","name":"Beck-Warren House","other_names":["Warren House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"1 Prescott St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Cambridge","county":"Middlesex County","state":"MA","lat":42.37252206100004,"lon":-71.11446366999996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1996-05-20","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Philosophy","Education","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-and-a-half story Greek Revival single-family house at 1 Prescott Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, built in 1833 for Harvard Latin professor Charles Beck, with a Colonial Revival remodelling from the 1890s.","why_significant":"It is nominated under Criteria B and C. It is associated with Charles Beck, a German-born Harvard classicist, and Henry Clarke Warren, a pioneering American scholar of Pali and Buddhism. It is an early local example of Greek Revival design with an unusual plan and a classically correct Doric portico. Its interior preserves features adapted for Warren's disability, and its 1897 rear porch has Grueby tile.","narrative":"Built in 1833 at 1 Prescott Street in Cambridge, this Greek Revival house was made for Charles Beck, a German-born Latin professor at Harvard. It has a five-bay, center-entrance plan, flanking one-and-a-half story wings, clapboard walls, a slate roof and a Greek Doric porch that was unusually correct for 1830s Cambridge. Henry Clarke Warren, a Sanskrit and Pali scholar, bought it in 1891. Disabled by a spinal injury in childhood, he had the interior remodelled in Colonial Revival taste to suit his needs. The changes included oak-panelled rooms, skylights, a raised sleeping platform with a tambour door, a tiled bath and built-in aquariums. In 1897 a brick rear porch with blue-green Grueby tile, designed by H. Langford Warren, was added. Warren left the house to Harvard in 1899, and it has since served the university for library and academic use. Beck's role in bringing German scholarship to Harvard and Warren's translations of Buddhist texts underpin its listing, along with its architecture.","period_of_significance":"1833 - 1946","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Mid-19th Century: Greek Revival; Late 19th and 20th Century Revivals: Colonial Revival","criteria":["B","C"],"status_note":"Owned by Harvard since 1899; used as a philological library and, since the early 20th century, as English department offices. Service areas have been converted to academic offices.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:04.295352-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/86/7913/63791386/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/96000520.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/96000520/1e6b948099-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/96000520/1e6b948099-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"User:Magicpiano","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CambridgeMA_BeckWarrenHouse.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">User:Magicpiano</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CambridgeMA_BeckWarrenHouse.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63791386","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck-Warren_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4878591"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/middlesex-county/beck-warren-house-96000520/"}