National Historic Landmark

Bridgman, Percy, House

Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Listed
May 14, 1975
Type
Building
Period
Industrial
Ref No.
75000298

About this property

The Percy W. Bridgman House is an historic house at 10 Buckingham Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is a National Historic Landmark, notable for its associations with Dr. Percy Williams Bridgman, a physicist, Nobel Prize winner, and Harvard University professor. It is now part of the Buckingham Browne & Nichols (BBN) Lower School campus. The house is an architecturally undistinguished 21⁄2 story house built about 1920 in a Neo-Rationalist style. At the time of its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1975, the house had not been significantly altered since Dr. Bridgman's death in 1961. It was acquired by the BBN School not long after his death, which has used it for a variety of purposes, including as a faculty residence and lounge. It is used for school offices. Percy Bridgman (1882–1961) was born in Cambridge, raised in Newton, and educated at Harvard. After receiving his Ph.D. in physics in 1908, he was invited to join the Harvard physics faculty, where he remained for the rest of his life. Bridgman's primary area of research was high pressure physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (the fifth American to be so honored) in 1946 for his development of equipment for advancing research in that field. He also wrote extensively on the epistemology of physics and the sciences, advancing an idea that became known as operationalism, the view that the concept underlying any measurement was synonymous with a corresponding set of operations performed in making the measurement. Bridgman moved into this house in 1928, and lived there for the rest of his life.

Location

10 Buckingham Pl.
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
42.37917, -71.12869

Categories

SCIENCE
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Historic Sites

Old Cambridge Historic District
Listed
0 mi
Birkhoff, George D., House
Industrial
0.1 mi
Howells, William Dean, House
Industrial
0.1 mi
Higginson, Col. Thomas Wentworth, House
Industrial
0.1 mi
Dodge, Edward, House
Industrial
0.1 mi

Nearby Battles

Siege of Boston – Cambridge Lines
1775Revolutionary War
1 mi

Questions about this property

When was Bridgman, Percy, House listed on the National Register?

Bridgman, Percy, House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 14, 1975.

What type of historic resource is Bridgman, Percy, House?

Bridgman, Percy, House is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

Is Bridgman, Percy, House a National Historic Landmark?

Yes. Bridgman, Percy, House has been designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL), the highest level of federal recognition for historic properties in the United States.

What is the period of significance for Bridgman, Percy, House?

The period of significance for Bridgman, Percy, House is recorded as the industrial era.

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