Theodore W. Richards House

The Theodore W. Richards House is a National Historic Landmark at 15 Follen Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1900, it was the home until his death of Theodore William Richards (1868-1928), the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Richards was a leading experimental chemist of his day, measuring (as precisely as instruments of the day permitted) the atomic weights of a large number of elements. He was also responsible for the growth of Harvard University's graduate chemistry program to one of the finest in the nation. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.Description and historyThe Richards House was nominally designed by Warren, Smith & Biscoe of Boston, but Richards made specific demands in the design. It is a two story structure, using steel beams as its principal supports, one of Richards' requests. The ground floor exterior walls consist of five courses of brick, with seaweed sandwiched between the courses in a bid to provide improved insulation to the structure. The second floor of the house is clad in shingles. The main facade is three bays wide, with a symmetrical appearance. The main entry is accessed by a walk lined with brick walls the join to the house walls. The entry, recessed into the brick wall, is flanked by sidelight windows. The outside of the recess is framed by pilasters and topped by an entablature and a segmented-arch pediment. Above the entrance is a Palladian window, which rises into an eyebrow gable on the modillioned roofline. The first-floor bays flanking the entry are both projecting polygonal bays with four sash windows, and there are paired sash windows above them on the second floor. Two decoratively corbelled chimneys pierce the roof. The house interior follows a typical central-hall plan.