A fire early Wednesday morning damaged a vacant house at 18 West Main St.

The mid-19th century house is in the village’s historic district.

Cambridge Fire Chief Tom Gray said the department was dispatched at 12:45 a.m. The house is diagonally across the street from the village firehouse.

Firefighters found “heavy fire throughout the structure,” a frame Italianate-style house, Gray said.

The building, which had been vacant for several years, was under renovation and had been mostly gutted. Although the house remains standing, flames damaged the upper walls, roof and cupola. No other buildings were affected.

Cambridge received mutual aid from Greenwich, Shushan, Salem, Cossayuna, Middle Falls, Hoosick Falls, White Creek and Buskirk fire companies for water and fire personnel, Gray said. The Cambridge Valley Rescue Squad stood by.

Firefighters were able to leave around 9 a.m. Wednesday. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

County records show that the house was bought earlier this year by Allan Morrison of Greenwich. He paid $28,500 for the house, which was assessed at $92,300 as an apartment building.

Local historian Ken Gottry said the once-ornate house appears on a 1866 map of the village as the A.B. McNish house.

“He was a very, very prominent man in the village,” Gottry said. “He had a dry goods store in the Hubbard block,” west of Hubbard Hall.

The local American Legion post purchased the building in the mid 1940s, Gottry said, and met and held events there until it moved in 1967 to a new building on Route 22. The house was converted to four apartments sometime after that. By the time Morrison bought it, the house was in an advanced state of neglect.

It was the second late night in a row for the Cambridge Fire Department. Gray said the department was dispatched to a fire in a hay barn on county Route 62 at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. The barn was in poor repair and county fire investigators “are leaning toward electrical” as the cause, Gray said.

Greenwich, Shushan, Salem, Cossayuna, Buskirk and Arlington, Vermont, sent mutual aid, with medical coverage from the Cambridge Valley Rescue Squad. Firefighters were able to leave by 8 a.m. Tuesday.