Update – In November 2025, Preservation Massachusetts listed the William Russell Allen House as one of the Most Endangered Historic Resources this year.  See details here.

The Allen House is a unique, stately mansion, the last of a row of elegant residences that lined a once fashionable street extending east from Park Square, Pittsfield’s city center. Its 1980 National Registry Listing calls the building “the finest example of Queen Ann Style extant in Pittsfield and one of the most important examples in Berkshire County.”

The home has been vacant since 1978 when the state purchased it from the Catholic Diocese which had used it since 1918 as a maternity hospital and then residences for the nuns who worked in a more modern hospital built next door. William Russell Allen, the great grandson of a founding Congregational minister, built the house in 1885 and used it as his primary residence until his death in 1916.

With funding from the Community Preservation Committee in Pittsfield and from the Berkshire County Historical Society, a study is underway to update two earlier reports assessing the structure of the building and potential re-uses. A 2003 study noted that the house was in “remarkably good condition considering its 25-year vacancy,” but it led to only nominal, urgent structural repairs. Twenty more years have lapsed, the building has remained vacant, and it is potentially reaching a point of no recovery if urgent attention is not given to its rehabilitation.

Finegold Alexander Architects from Boston expects to complete this updated study by the end of 2025.  With this information, a renewed campaign to save the William Russell Allen House can start.