By Iselin Bratz
Saturday, October 11, 2025
Cambridge Historical CommissionA rendering of an option for a hotel and homes plan in Cambridge’s Harvard Square.
Designs for an eight-story hotel-and-homes project incorporating the historic Harriet Jacobs House in Harvard Square drew debate Thursday at a Cambridge Historical Commission meeting, which ended with a 7-0 vote for design work to continue with a “certificate of appropriateness with a condition.”
That means the project continues while considering compromises with its neighbors, and under a label that is a step forward from the vote at a Sept. 4 meeting. That one ended with the granting of a “certificate of appropriateness in principle,” meaning members were supportive enough to want more details.
Committee members expressed frustration at having to facilitate a political conversation, though. Member Liz Lyster said that their job is to assess public good and historical preservation, but the debate had become about the transition of the building into the neighborhood separate from the restoration of the Jacobs House.
“This is so frustrating that we’re in this position of litigating a political issue. It just sucks,” Lyster said.
Neighbors on Hilliard Street worry about what the building will look like and how it will affect their homes and privacy, and those concerns are having an effect on the project, moving the proposed structure back 8 feet from a fence line from the previous plan of 5 feet, removing balconies from the second and third stories and recessing or “chamfering” as many as five stories – creating stepbacks that reduce the building’s mass.
With the loss in square footage, the balance of uses is changing too, developers said. While the project was once described as having as many as 67 hotel rooms and 50 condominiums, now the ratio has switched to being predominantly homes.
“The setup right now looks closer to like 70-30 in terms of housing versus hotel,” developer Patrick Barrett told commissioners, “as a ratio, because we haven’t designed the units yet.”
Under city zoning laws, 15 to 16 of the possibly 50 residences would be inclusionary – identical to other units but set aside for people with lower incomes – and two of those would be three-bedroom homes, Barrett said. Three-bedroom homes are understood to be family-friendly.
“Our goal was 50,” Barrett said of residences. “I think we can do better … the last time 50-plus units dropped into Harvard Square, it was the 1900s, as my kids like to say. It was just a long time ago, and we haven’t really seen that kind of development here for lots of different reasons.”
The plan, with developers operating under the name 17 Story Street, involves demolishing a building at 129 Mount Auburn St., across a small corner parking lot from the Regency-style home built in 1846 that once belonged to the writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs. The Jacobs house would be moved 30 feet from 17 Story St. to the corner of Story and Mount Auburn streets to be restored. In addition to using the interior to honor Jacobs, abolitionist and author of the 1861 memoir “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” a cafe would be added connect the house and building behind it. Also, “it will have hotel rooms or lodging house rooms on the second and third floor,” Barrett said.
In putting up the eight-story structure, developers would minimize tree removal, limit outdoor lighting and ensure the building would meet “passive house” standards, with insulation to reduce noise, they said.
Looking for more change
Neighbors say the changes are not enough.
“You asked the development team for meaningful changes to height and setback,” said Nicole Bryant, a resident on Hilliard Street, to commissioners. “This project remains essentially unchanged today from that which you saw one month ago.”
Another resident of Hilliard Street said conversations with developers had been futile.
“These meetings seem to have been little more than boxes to check off for them,” the resident said.
Their own architect
Noah Nathan, one of the Hilliard residents, referred to developer plans in telling commissioners, “The choice before you is not simply this exact design as drawn versus nothing. You have the latitude to seek a more appropriate scale, and I hope you continue to take it by imposing specific dimensional requirements.”
Bryant and other neighbors asking for height reductions and other changes said they had enlisted an architect of their own to show that more changes could be made. “The proposal we put together shows that there are viable designs that have greater setbacks and less overall mass of the project than the one that has been presented today,” another resident said.
Developers spoke against changes to the dimensions of the building, saying any decrease would have a detrimental effect on the amount of housing available and risk the project’s financial feasibility.
Plan for housing has fans
There was also support heard for the developer plans.
Jess Sheehan, a Central Square resident, argued that a shorter building, as Hilliard Street residents wanted, would mean fewer homes and that any delay in plans could increase costs. She said that with this, homes within the building would be made more expensive, which would go against inclusionary affordable housing.
“I don’t think the abutters are bad people, I don’t think they have bad intent,” Sheehan said. “But they are definitionally people who live in Harvard Square, and in asking you to mandate the removal of potential homes, they are asking you to deny to other families what they themselves already have.”
Steven Ortega, a resident of West Cambridge, said, “If it’s true that there’ll be 15 to 16 units built, then that’ll be 15 to 16 individuals or families who will have places to live.”
Source: Google Street View
