Abbott Lowell Cummings, Author of “The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay”

Featured image: Abbott Lowell Cummings, photo courtesy of Historic New England.

Abbott Lowell Cummings (1923 –2017) was the leading authority on seventeenth and early eighteenth-century “First Period” architecture in the American Northeast and author of The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay (Harvard University Press, 1979). An outstanding teacher at Boston University, Yale University, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Cummings mentored dozens of young scholars. In 1970, Cummings succeeded Bertram K. Little as director of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA, now known as Historic New England). In 1984, he was appointed Yale’s first Charles F. Montgomery professor of American decorative arts, a position he held until his retirement in 1992.

Cumming’s book, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625-1725 (Harvard Univ. Press, 1979), is the definitive source of information about First Period architecture. Read a Tribute To Abbott Lowell Cummings.