John Nutting built Elmwood about 1767 for Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver, and the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House still centers a National Historic Landmark District in Cambridge. This Georgian house was built about 1767 by John Nutting for Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver (1734–1815) on what was originally a 100-acre estate. The house has weathered dramatic turns: Oliver, a royal lieutenant governor and member of a wealthy merchant family in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, abandoned it at the outset of the American Revolutionary War and the state of Massachusetts confiscated the property.
Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, later Vice President of the United States and the namesake of the term "gerrymandering," purchased the house and lived here with his family until his death in 1814. The property then passed to the Lowell family; it was the birthplace and longtime home of James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), the American writer, poet, and foreign diplomat. During Lowell's ownership significant portions of the original estate were sold off, changing the land around you.
Picture James Russell Lowell, born within these walls on what was once a 100-acre estate.