The Otis Putnam House is a historic house at 25 Harvard Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. Built in 1887 to a design by Fuller & Delano for a prominent local department store owner, it is a fine local example of Queen Anne architecture executed in brick. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[1] It now houses offices.
Description and history
Otis Earle Putnam (1831–1911)
The Putnam House is located on the west side of Harvard Street, a north–south road paralleling downtown Worcester's Main Street on a rise to the west, southwest of its corner with Dix Street, and adjacent to the Jerome Marble House. It is a 2+1⁄2-story brick building, with a front-facing gable roof and a stone foundation. It is roughly rectangular in plan, with asymmetrical projecting sections to the sides. On its east-facing front facade, a two-story porch is recessed under the gable, with the first-floor section projecting beyond, with a shed roof across part of its width, and a gable above the granite steps. The second-floor porch has turned posts set on shingled piers, with a latticework frieze between them at the top. The main gable is framed in wood and finished in shingles set in a wavy pattern, with a projecting bay at the center with two round-arch windows in the front. First-floor windows are set in segmented-arch openings capped by brick lintels, while second floor windows are in square openings with stone lintels. A band of decorative brickwork acts as a frieze below the roofline.[2]
The house was built in 1887 to a design by Fuller & Delano, and is one of the city's finer examples of Queen Anne brickwork. It was built for Otis Putnam, a native of nearby Leicester who worked his way through the ranks to become a leading partner in one of the city's largest department stores. He also served as a director of the local electric company, and of the Worcester and Holden Street Railway Company.[2]
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