407 Washington Street, Cambridge

A lot of house. Right in Cambridge.

Six bedrooms. Three full bathrooms. Four levels. Two staircases. Three decorative fireplaces. Nearly 2,500 square feet.

A Cambridge home with room for more than one kind of life.

Cambridge houses usually ask for compromise.

Wonderful location, tiny rooms.

Beautiful old details, but nowhere to put anything.

Enough bedrooms, but nowhere to get away from everyone.

407 Washington is different.

Behind its classic Cambridge exterior is nearly 2,500 square feet spread over four levels, with six bedrooms, three full bathrooms, three decorative fireplaces — and the wonderfully unusual addition of two staircases.

Six bedrooms. Or not.

One of the most interesting things about 407 Washington is that you don’t have to decide what every room is supposed to be.

Yes, there are six bedrooms.

But six bedrooms can also mean a serious home office. A library. A studio. A guest room. A music room. A room for projects that do not have to be packed away every night.

Or simply the luxury of an extra room whose job changes as your life does.

That flexibility is unusually valuable in Cambridge, where an extra door you can close can feel like a small miracle.

And then there are the staircases.

Two of them.

This is not something we need to turn into an “architectural flex.”

It is simply a wonderful old-house feature that also happens to be useful.

The two staircases create more than one way through the house and help four levels feel connected rather than stacked.

Different spaces can function differently while still belonging to one home.

A house built in 1904 can be surprisingly good at accommodating life in 2026.

The old-house things are still here.

Wood floors.

Original character.

Three decorative fireplaces.

Rooms that feel like rooms rather than sections carved out of one enormous rectangle.

There is history here, but the house doesn’t demand that you live in a museum.

The architecture gives the rooms warmth and personality while leaving plenty of room for the next owner to make the house entirely their own.

And then there is Cambridge.

MIT, Harvard, Kendall Square and the Red Line are all easily accessible. Shopping, restaurants, parks and the farmers market are nearby.

But Cambridge is more interesting than its résumé.

It is old houses and new ideas.

Professors and scientists and students and artists and people who have lived on the same street for forty years.

Research labs and community gardens.

Excellent food, strange little stores, neighborhood institutions, bikes chained to absolutely everything, books everywhere, serious arguments about zoning, and people growing tomatoes in implausibly small spaces.

There is a particular pleasure in living somewhere with that much going on around you.

407 Washington lets you be part of it — and then gives you enough house to retreat into when you’ve had enough Cambridge for the day.

Outside, too.

The porch gives the house another place to land:

Plants.

Coffee.

A book.

A conversation.

Or simply a little outdoor space attached to city life.

QUICK FACTS

407 Washington Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts

6 bedrooms

3 full bathrooms

2,479 square feet

4 levels

2 staircases

3 decorative fireplaces

Built in 1904

$1,700,000

Some houses ask you to fit your life into their floor plan.

This one gives you room to figure it out.