Hartwell and Richardson

The firm contributed significantly to the current building stock and architecture of the greater Boston area.

[3] Richardson, twenty years younger than Hartwell, studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Richardson was the principal designer in the firm, and Hartwell took care of the engineering and oversaw construction.

Even in informal styles such as the Queen Anne or Shingle-Style, that allowed for enormous freedom, Richardson's designs were conservative, sometimes even symmetrical, but beautifully detailed.

The firm's grandest surviving house is "Osgood Hill" (1886), the Moses T. Stevens estate in North Andover, Massachusetts.

The Central Congregational Church (1895) in Newton, Massachusetts, composed of similar elements, is a more formal, Romanesque-Revival building, that would be symmetrical, absent the adjacent tower.