Tory Row
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Tory Row is the nickname historically given by some to the part of Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where many Loyalists had mansions at the time of the American Revolutionary War, and given by others to seven Colonial mansions along Brattle Street. Its historic buildings from the 18th century include the William Brattle House (42 Brattle Street) and the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site (105 Brattle Street). Samuel Atkins Eliot, writing in 1913 of the seven Colonial mansions making up Tory Row, called the area "not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most historic streets in America."[1] Owners of Caribbean slave plantations, including the Vassall and Royall families, built the mansions as a statement of the "incredible wealth" they had amassed from slave labor in Jamaica and Antigua, and they enslaved an unusually high number of people on the premises.[2]
The seven houses described by Eliot as making up Tory Row are as follows:[1]
- The Brattle estate (42 Brattle Street) also known as the William Brattle House, now the home of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education
- Estate of Mrs. Henry Vassall (94 Brattle Street) also known as the Henry Vassall House[3][4]
- Estate of Mr. John Vassal (105 Brattle Street) also known as the "Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House,"[3] now the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site)
- Lechmere-Sewall house (149 Brattle Street) also known as the "Lechmere-Riedesel House" or the "Lechmere-Sewall-Riedesel House"[5]
- Judge Joseph Lee's house (159 Brattle Street) now the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, home to History Cambridge, formerly the Cambridge Historical Society[6]
- Fayerweather House (175 Brattle Street), built by George Ruggles, also called the Ruggles-Fayerweather House[7]
- Thomas Oliver house (33 Elmwood Avenue), also known as the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House or as Elmwood.[8] This house, although considered a part of Brattle Street's Tory Row, has its address on nearby Elmwood Avenue, which had formerly been part of Brattle Street.