The 1810 house, pictured here in 1962, burned to the ground on Dec. 8. (Cambridge Historical Commission)

Last week, a 195-year-old mansion in Cambridge, Mass., burned to the ground. No one was injured in the Dec. 8 fire, but it destroyed the 8,500-square-foot house, which was the home of Polaroid inventor Edwin Land from the 1940s until 1991.

The city's fire department is still trying to determine the cause of the blaze.

The new owners of the vacant Polaroid Mansion, Charlotte and Herbert Wagner, bought the house for $5 million last March and were in the midst of a renovation. Their contractor had removed windowpanes and plaster from the walls, leaving bare wood that burned very quickly. In several hours, little remained but part of a wall.

Located on Brattle Street in the Old Cambridge Historic District, the house, built in 1810 by diplomat John Appleton, was one of the first to be constructed in the city after the American Revolution.

"Until the middle of the 19th century, there wasn't a lot out here," says Karen Davis, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Society. "We had about seven mansions. After the American Revolution, there were a couple more built, and this was one of them."

Last summer the Wagners visited the society several times to research the history of their new house, Davis says. "Off and on, someone came in and tried to get information," Davis says. "They loved the whole history that it embodied, and they're just devastated by the loss—as are all of us, to lose a significant house on a significant street."

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