Monument Square Historic District (Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts)
| Monument Square Historic District | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| National Register of Historic Places | |||
| Historic District | |||
 The First Church of Jamaica Plain , 2008 |
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| location | Boston , Massachusetts , United States | ||
| Coordinates | 42 ° 18 '33.9 " N , 71 ° 6' 56.8" W | ||
| surface | 43 acres (17.4 ha ) | ||
| Built | 1755 until today | ||
| Architectural style | Various | ||
| NRHP number | 90001536 | ||
| Data | |||
| The NRHP added | October 11, 1990 | ||
| Declared as HD | October 11, 1990 | ||
The Monument Square Historic District (also Pondside ) is a 17.4 ha large area in Boston district Jamaica Plain in the state of Massachusetts of the United States , the 1990 Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places has been entered. The oldest buildings in this district date from 1755, the youngest from the present. Of the 194 structures, 166 were rated as contributing property ; this only applies to buildings that were built earlier than 1930 and have only been structurally changed slightly.
description
The Historic District is located near the center of Jamaica Plain and consists essentially of stand-alone homes that were built between 1860 and 1910. A few residential buildings date from 1755 to the present, and there are also some institutional buildings from the mid-19th century. The district is bordered to the west by Jamaica Pond , to the north and south by denser and younger residential developments and to the east by Center Street, the business center of the district.
The streets of the Historic District run radially from Jamaica Pond to Center Street and have only a few cross connections. This pattern goes back to the wedge-shaped property boundaries that existed there in the 19th century. The architectural styles of the houses are diverse and range from Federal Style and Greek Revival to Italianate and Colonial Revival to bungalows .
Only four buildings in the district are no residential buildings: The 1832 built Eliot School , built in the same year, the Eliot Hall , in the Gothic Revival held First Church of Jamaica Plain (6 Eliot Street) from 1854, and the First Baptist Church (633 Center Street), which was built from 1856 to 1859.
The Historic District was named after a nearly 10.5 m high war memorial ( English monument named) of granite, which is at the intersection of South and Center Street and on a pedestal a soldier in the Union Army shows.
Historical meaning
The Monument Square Historic District includes a well-preserved residential area from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its structure shows the changes in the adaptation of an original 17th and 18th century village that first became a site for large estates and then became a residential area of Boston. The diverse, visible architectural styles of the 19th and 20th centuries and the works of well-known Boston architects there are also significant. The National Park Service set the phase of historical importance to the period between 1755 (construction of the oldest surviving building in the district) and 1930, so that younger buildings are no longer included.
Before its incorporation, Jamaica Plain was part of Roxbury , which is now a Boston district itself. The western, sparsely populated part of the settlement consisted mostly of farms and provided the nearby Boston with food. This part of the former Roxbury was incorporated into Boston in 1851 as Jamaica Plain. Despite its name, the area is actually flat in only two places.
In 1689, John Eliot donated around 30 hectares of land to build a school and a house for a teacher. This area is still in the historic center of Jamaica Plain today, and two buildings and a street bear his name.
In the second half of the 18th century, wealthy Boston citizens (including John Hancock and Francis Bernard ) discovered rural Jamaica Plain and built country houses there to spend the summer months. Today only the Loring-Greenough House from 1760 remains .
With the establishment of the Boston and Providence Railroad in 1834, not only new growth impulses came into the city, but also commuters who settled in Jamaica Plain - starting with Eliot Street and Burrough Street - as they walk to the next Could reach the station.
When tram tracks were laid through Jamaica Plain in the 1870s to connect the area to Roxbury, more commuters moved to the area and by 1900 had 28,500 houses built in Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Dorchester, an unprecedented number of buildings . In order to achieve this, the previously large plots of land were divided into several smaller plots and sold separately, which can be seen very well in the district from Holbrook Street.
See also
literature
- Kim Withers Brengle, Betsy Friedberg: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. (PDF) United States Department of the Interior , National Park Service , June 1988, accessed on August 7, 2017 (English, accessible via the "NR" button).