Looking Back: 1725?

It seemed like it would be an easy story, a quick piece about an old house that Harvard has owned for more than seven decades. But as anyone who has ever looked into the history of an old house knows, the research can be spotty.

This is true for Read House, the yellow clapboard building next to Gutman Library, that houses Sponsored Projects. Although some documents, including from the Cambridge Historical Society, say the house was built in 1772, other documents — burial records, reports from Harvard libraries, and the Historic Guide to Cambridge, published in 1907 by the Daughters of the American Revolution — indicate that it was built much earlier, in 1725.

All records agree that the house was named after a James Read. Here’s where the confusion with dates may come in. The original James Read was a tanner born in Kent, England. Read married Mary Oldham. The Historic Guide indicates that Read bought land from Captain Josiah Parker in 1725 and soon after, he likely built the house at the corner of Brattle and Farwell, where today the used book table stands. Records of the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge, just around the corner from the Ed School, show that this James Read died in 1734.

However, he wasn’t the only James Read. Before the original James died, he and Mary had a son, James Jr., who also became a tanner and eventually married Hannah Stacey. They had several children, including two sons, James III and Joseph Stacey, who lived in the house during the American Revolution with their mother, Hannah, after James Jr. died. They were both soldiers. Joseph, apparently, was also a postmaster in Harvard Square. In 1759, a piece of the Read garden behind the house was sold to Christ Church as construction of the church began. The house stayed in the Read family until 1826, when it was sold to Levi Farwell, who later had a street renamed after him. (Farwell Place, once School Court — the dead end behind Gutman, with the row of townhouses and a well-cared-for black and white homeless cat.) Eventually, Radcliffe bought the house in 1943, to use as a dormitory.

So when exactly was the house built? Assuming it was built when James Sr. was alive, it had to be well before 1772. If it was built by his descendants, one of the many Jameses, it would have happened after his death. One fact we do know, for sure: In 1961, Read House and its neighbor, Nichols, were sold to the Ed School and moved a few years later to the current, tucked-in location, to make room for the construction of a building that would become the heart of the school: Gutman Library.