CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – A landmark mansion built by the family of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife and once owned by the founder of Polaroid Corp. was destroyed by fire Thursday morning.

The nearly 200-year-old house on Brattle Street, near Harvard Square, went up in flames shortly after midnight. Firefighters worked in bitter cold to keep it from spreading to other landmark buildings in the neighborhood.

The home was vacant because new owners had been renovating the building, and no serious injuries were reported. The cause of the fire was under investigation, fire officials said.

The house once belonged to the instant photography pioneer Edwin Land and was known by neighbors as the “Polaroid House.” Land died in 1991.

Land’s family sold it in March to Herbert Schwind Wagner and Charlotte Cramer-Wagner, for just under $5 million. The couple did not immediately return a call to a listing in their names at another Cambridge address.

The 8,500-square-foot house was built in 1810 by members of the Appleton family, who built textile mills in Lowell that ushered in the Industrial Revolution in America, according to Fred Meyer, owner of University Real Estate in Harvard Square.

“It’s a real tragedy,” Meyer said. “The house was a historical treasure and a beautiful home.”

Longfellow, who was born in Portland, Maine, and taught at Harvard, married Frances Appleton. As a wedding present, her family gave the poet and his bride a mansion near the one that burned Thursday. That mansion that is now a national historic site.

The neighborhood, known as Tory Row because its wealthy residents sided with the British during the Revolution, is among the most affluent in Massachusetts.

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On the Net:

Longfellow House: http://www.nps.gov/long/