Allen and Kenway was a partnership of Francis R. Allen and Herbert P. Kenway.  It was formed in about 1880 and continued until Kenway’s death in July of 1890.

In his Houses of Boston’s Back Bay, Bainbridge Bunting states that Allen and Kenway was “the most consistent exponent of the Romanesque tradition in the Back Bay, and they had a distinctive way of handling it.  In five of the ten Romanesque houses they designed in the district between 1881 and 1888, they substituted balustrades or heavy horizontal cornices for the usual gabled roofs and thereby sacrificed the picturesque massing which is one artistic merit of a good Romanesque design.  And perhaps they thought the broad Syrian arch was unsuited to the pinched, vertical quality of the usual city façade or because its heavy spandrels reduced available window areas, they also omitted this conspicuous Richardson element.  Instead, they capped their entrances with tight, stilted arches surrounded by heavy archivolts carved with an acanthus leaf pattern.  The firm was also fond of Auvergnat marquetry (colored stone set in geometric patterns) and areas of intricate Byzantine-like decoration carved in brownstone.”

Back Bay Work