About the building
84 Prescott Street is a four-storey apartment house on the corner of Prescott Street and Broadway in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was built in 1909 as Bromley Court, to designs by the Boston architects Newhall & Blevins, and its floor plans were published in The American Architect on 22 December 1909.
The plan
The building wraps a courtyard that opens onto Prescott Street. Each floor holds seven apartments, one in each of seven stacks, so a number like 27 means the second floor, stack 7: twenty-eight homes, and a twenty-ninth, B1, in the basement under the north wing. Two porches in the courtyard lead in. Each opens into a square vestibule, then through a leaded glass door into an entrance hall and the stair hall beyond. The 1909 plan calls for mosaic floors and oak panelling in these halls. The south wing turns about a curved stair; the north entrance rises by a straight one.
Inside, each apartment runs from a small entrance hall to a living room, a dining room or library, one or two chambers, a bath and a kitchen or kitchenette. Many rooms have a fireplace set across a corner, and a few corners hold built-in china cabinets.
The facts
- Built
- 1909, as Bromley Court
- Architects
- Newhall & Blevins, Boston
- Storeys
- 4 floors over a raised garden level
- Homes
- 28, seven to a floor
- Roof line
- 47 ft above grade (city survey)
- Highest point
- 62.1 ft (city survey)
- Floor plate
- About 8,110 sq ft a floor, a U around a courtyard on Prescott St
- Style
- Jacobethan: red brick, cast-stone quoins and window surrounds, Flemish gables with copper coping
How the model was made
The footprint and heights come from the City of Cambridge's building survey. Rooms, walls, doors and fixtures are read from the 1909 plans as straight runs, then checked by residents spot by spot: eighty places where the drawing could be read two ways, each now settled by someone who lives here. Streets, kerbs and bike lanes come from the city's GIS layers and residents' photos.
Old photographs, stories or documents about the building are welcome. The Cambridge Historical Commission and History Cambridge keep records of buildings like this one.
Sources
- The American Architect, 22 December 1909: typical and first-floor plans of Bromley Court
- City of Cambridge GIS: building footprint 325-5, roof heights, kerbs, sidewalks and bike facilities
- Residents' photographs and answers, October 2026