Floor diagrams. The 1896 Cambridge YMCA building.

[dsaklad@gnu.org]

Would any of you kind folks have any hints, tips, pointers for existing diagrams, floor plans, architectural drawings for the 1896 Cambridge YMCA building?... Young Men's Christian Association 820 Massachusetts Ave, Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. Henry Walker Hartwell (1833-?). William Cummings Richardson (1854-1935). James Driver (1859 1923).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartwell_and_Richardson

...for developing building user simplified floor diagrams for finding your way through a complicated irregular network of passages, paths, maze, labyrinth of exercise facilities, rooms, studios on the 1st and lower floors.

 

[Lurker]

Cambridge should have some plans on file either at City Hall or part of the Cambridge Public Library's collection. Otherwise you could check with Harvard, MIT, The Boston Architectural College, and the Boston Public Library so see if the plans or any documentation from the firm may have been donated to those libraries collections. There's a slim possibility that the YMCA itself may have documentation on their properties archived as well.

Edit: Richardson I believe is the same Richardson from SBRA, so they might actually have something in their archives if he did any later work on that building once he moved onto that firm.