Kendall Hotel

The Kendall Hotel
Hotel in 2010
Location in Massachusetts Show map of Massachusetts Location in United States Show map of the United States
General information
Coordinates	42.3622°N 71.0873°W / 42.3622; -71.0873
Opened	2002

The Kendall Hotel, or The Kendall Hotel, is a boutique hotel on Main St. in the Kendall Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It repurposed a firehouse built in 1895: it was once the Engine 7 Firehouse.

The Telegraph's online review terms it a "gorgeous Victorian firehouse turned boutique hotel near buzzy Kendall Square" and asserts that its "Black Sheep restaurant is a gem".[1]

The building was originally designed to support horse-drawn fire-fighting equipment. It served in fire protection from 1895 to 1993, its role replaced by a modern fire station in Central Square. The building was renovated starting in 2000. Renovation involved moving the original three-story firehouse closer to the street, adding a seven-story tower behind, and restoring two cupolas. After opening in 2002, it was expanded in 2007 with the addition of a second seven-story tower.[2]

The hotel is a member of the Historic Hotels of America.[3][4][note 1]

The owners have been honored by the Cambridge Historical Commission for the quality of their historic preservation efforts.[4]

The Washington Post in 2017 included "Kendall Hotel at the Engine 7 Firehouse" in a list of 23 American "hotel retrofits", as "part of a trend toward historic adaptive reuse that has travelers overnighting in former department stores, textile mills, an auto assembly plant and even a 19th-century jail.".[5]

In 2018, Boeing was to become a tenant next door.[6]

Bradford incident

On 8 August 1910, Gamaliel Bradford VII (18 June 1888–8 August 1910), a descendant of Pilgrim leader William Bradford, one of the first governors of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and the son of biographer Gamaliel Bradford VI, checked into the Kendall Hotel around 10:15 AM, and told clerk John Hogan that he "needed to rest". At 10:30 AM, Bradford shot himself and was transported to nearby Framingham Hospital, where he died four hours later. It is believed that Bradford committed suicide after a young woman who was engaged to another man refused to marry Bradford instead. Bradford was 22 at the time of his death.[7]

Notes

1. In 2020 the hotel's webpages claimed that it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (Kendall Hotel: About), but that claim appears to be incorrect. It is not individually listed in National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, nor as a contributing building in any historic district. Claims in travel websites appear to echo the hotel's own claim but seem not supported by National Park Service official mentions anywhere. It is not claimed to be NRHP-listed in any page of the Historic Hotels of America, which is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The false claim of NRHP listing is continued in Kendall Hotel's webpage in 2021 and has been repeated in The Telegraph in 2021.

References

1. "The Kendall Hotel / Boston, Massachusetts, United States". The Telegraph. Retrieved January 16, 2022. Part of Historic Hotels of America and also [falsely claimed to be] on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel is built around an 1895 red brick firehouse that was expanded to seven storeys around 2000. Along with antique firehouse memorabilia and intriguing antiques and collectibles, the hotel has a head-turning collection of folk art.
2. "Engine 7". Kendall Hotel. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
3. "Kendall Hotel: About us". Archived from the original on August 19, 2014. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
4. "The Kendall Hotel". Historic Hotels of America.
5. Powers, Rebecca (April 27, 2017). "Historic firehouse to hot hotel: Repurposed buildings revel in their colorful pasts". Washington Post.
6. Steve Bradt (August 1, 2018). "Boeing will be Kendall Square Initiative's first major tenant". MIT News.
7. "YOUNG BRADFORD A SUICIDE.; Gamaliel, 3d, Shoots Himself In Hotel -- Young Woman Refused to Wed Him". The New York Times. 9 August 1910. Retrieved 26 April 2024.