Seeking help in locating unique architectural styles in New England

[MadRiver]

Dear Knowledgeable Ones:

I am taking an American Architectural History course at PSU that is a part of the M.A. in Historic Preservation. One component of the course is to complete a self-led field trip & photo essay covering an interesting or unique architectural style of the region. In your travels heading to some far off trailhead, if you would be so kind as to take a mental note of communities with a historic district, or a building type in multiple communities, collection of old dwellings, industrial buildings, historic churches, tobacco barns, etc.

Simply post the name of the town and type of structure to this thread.

Thank You.

 

[Jason Berard]

Check out Lambert Packard. He designed buildings all over New England, including he Fairbanks Museum in St. J and Rollins Chapel in Hanover. I know he designed many more than that, but off the top of my head, those two come to mind. He'll show up on a google search. Generally, his buildings are Richardsonian Romanesque. Think Trinity Church in Boston.
Sounds like a fun course!

 

[Creag Nan Drochaid]

Shakers in Enfield and Canterbury

The title of my post says it all. I don't know much about the Shaker community in Canterbury and include it only because it is only an hour from PSU, the same distance as the one in Enfield. The latter includes one of their barns, a stone mill building that was powered by a waterwheel fed from a reservoir wherein were collected the waters from several brooks that followed an aqueduct along the hillside that still carries water.
The centerpiece of the community is the Great Stone Dwelling, now home to the Shaker Museum etc.
If you seek a locally developed style, here is an example, IMHO.

 

[Tom_Murphy]

Three-deckers in Worcester and Dorchester.

http://college.holycross.edu/projects/worcester/immigration/3deckers.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker

 

[peakbagger]

For architectural diversity, its hard to beat Berlin NH. Not many other Russian Orthodox churches around. John Calvin Stevens designed many of the managers houses in Berlin. There are Italian, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, and of course french neighborhoods in town. The old Brown Company R&d building is one of the first structural concrete buidlings in the state. The Riverside Mill building is still standing at the old Pulp Mill, its is one of the older papermill buildings in NH, plus the filter plant building is basically the same building built in the 1890's which is still being operated to the original design.

Unfortunately many of the larger residential buildings have been neglected for years and converted into apartments, plus many suffer from being covered with vinyl.

There used to be a tour of historica buildings in Berlin that identified the most significant structures. It might be worth stopping at the Berln Historical Society to see if they are aware of it.

 

[Amicus]

A couple of segments of the Bay Circuit Trail in eastern Mass. might suit you. It goes along the banks of Thoreau's Merrimack River from No. Tewksbury to downtown Lowell, which it enters at the confluence of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. It then takes you through Kerouac Park and the Lowell National Historical Park, which centers on the great Boott Cotton Mill, a big part of our Industrial Revolution:

If you like Lowell's Jack Kerouac, you can pay an homage to his grave, in SW Lowell, on a proposed stretch of the BCT:

A spur in Easton will take you to the Ames shovel factory, said to be the first mass-production assembly-line in the USA, if not the world, and to have been the source for 70% of the world's shovels, at its peak in the latter 19th Century:

The Ames family poured much of its shovel riches into beautifying downtown Easton, in particular with five red sandstone Romanesque beauties by H. H. Richardson, well known for Copley Square's Trinity Church, among other wonderful buildings. My favorite is Oakes Ames Memorial Hall:

 

[Lou Hale]

If I was taking the course, I would focus on the "cape (cod)" style of house. While not as fashionable as many others, I would call it " New England's house name and all. I am working in a whole village of them right now in Montague Center MA. Cape's have been being built since the 1600's and are still built to this day

There were several other great suggestions as well. There are still many H.H Richardson train stations stands that may be unique to New England especially on old B&M & MEC lines. I don't know if I would consider the mills an architectural style as I think their form followed their function not the other way around. That being said they are most likely unique to the rivers of New England. Holyoke MA still has many of it's old paper mills standing

 

[erugs]

From Brian, There is a web site called lost and abandoned airfields filled with pictures and history of airports from every state

 

[Andrew]

Harrisville, NH

Many assume Milan, NH was named after the place in Italy. I discovered that it is actually named for Milan Harris who designed the millworks of Harrisville, also a namesake.

So the european pronunciation often applied to Milan is not only humorous to locals, but also erroneous.

The brickwork mill and dwellings may not be unique, but certainly classic.

 

[MadRiver]

Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions. Although the course begins Sept 7th, I didn’t want to wait until the last minute before choosing a topic for my photo essay and research paper.

Unique might be a misnomer, in that, the course wants we to focus on the unfamiliar, rather than the ordinary. I used the word unique to give it a distinctive quality to the structure or style, which might be somewhat misleading.

Thanks again.

 

[DougPaul]

There is a round barn at Hancock Shaker Village in western MA. The Village is a National Historic Landmark District with some additional unique buildings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_Shaker_Village

Doug

 

[Raymond]

What about all those stone buildings in Chester, Vermont? I think they’re pretty interesting.

There used to be a company in Bolton, Massachusetts, called Bow House; the roofs of its houses were curved like the bow of a ship. There were at least six of them along Longley Road in Groton, Mass.

And there was a real odd-looking house on Cleaves Hill Road in Harvard, Mass. It looked like it had dozens of little additions sticking out at all angles along the front. I probably have a picture of it somewhere, but I haven’t been up there in years to see what it looks like now.

The old Exchange Hall in South Acton, Mass., has a spring dance floor upstairs. It apparently bounces up and down when a lot of people dance on it.

 

[Tom_Murphy]

There used to be a company in Bolton, Massachusetts, called Bow House; the roofs of its houses were curved like the bow of a ship. There were at least six of them along Longley Road in Groton, Mass.

http://www.bowrafterfactory.com/

 

[Chip]

I'm not sure what unfamiliar vs ordinary is but I'll toss this out:

The Maplewood Golf Course in Bethlehem: The club house was a casino in the "railroad day" there;

Also in the woods on their property is the still recognizable former train station, a unique looking structure;

http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?27370-WMUR-TV-Video-About-the-Old-Bethlehem-Train-Station

Another resource, though you may already have this: http://www.nhpr.org/post/new-hampshire-preservation-alliance

 

[rup]

For houses, Royal Barry Wills, and Merton Stewart Barrows, can't be beat for repros. Many of their houses N of Boston.

 

[nartreb]

I was trying to think of something a little less obvious than HH Richardson, and I got to thinking about buildings that had to face a lot of functional constraints. Railroad stations, for example, but again that's a little obvious. Fire towers, but that's probably been researched to death. Here's a category of buildings, one that's not unique to New England but which should be more common around here than in much of the US: powder houses. There should be plenty still in existence, since they were designed to be indestructable. Also, they were scattered near towns all over the region, so you should be able to find some near you. I don't know whether there's enough "style" there to talk about for more than a few pages, or whether designs changed much over time, but I suspect there's enough to tell a story about. These are big structures that required significant investment, I bet somebody devoted some effort to trying to improve them either sylistically or functionally.

Another idea, more concentrated in the larger cities: water towers. There's the obvious story about construction techniques and materials, but there are a lot of stylistic flourishes too. For instance, there's one in the Quincy hills with a facade of Quincy granite; looks like a castle turret, almost like a powderhouse.