{"nrhp_refnum":"83000611","name":"Rockdale Common Housing District","other_names":["Paul Whitin Manufacturing Company Housing District"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"4-20 McBride, 46-58 Plantation, and 37-42 Taft Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Northbridge","county":"Worcester County","state":"MA","lat":42.152650414500044,"lon":-71.64680433510236,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-03-31","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Community Planning and Development","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A district of six adjacent wood-frame company tenements at 4-20 McBride, 46-58 Plantation and 37-42 Taft Streets in the village of Rockdale, Northbridge, Massachusetts, built between about 1880 and 1917 for the Paul Whitin Manufacturing Company.","why_significant":"The district is presented as the best surviving grouping of company-built tenements from the textile mill's last and most prosperous growth period. It shows the shift from late 19th-century to early 20th-century tenement design and holds the largest, most cohesive cluster of triple-deckers in Rockdale. It is also the only known cluster of three-story tenements in Northbridge.","narrative":"Six wood-frame tenements on McBride, Plantation and Taft Streets make up this housing group in Rockdale, a mill village in Northbridge. The Paul Whitin Manufacturing Company built them between about 1880 and 1917 to house workers, many of them French-Canadian immigrants recruited for the textile mill. The oldest is a vernacular Italianate building with decorative gable brackets. Four three-story Colonial Revival triple-deckers, built in 1917, form the dominant mass around a shared open yard, and a six-unit Colonial Revival rowhouse on Taft Street dates from about 1912. The buildings are valued as the best example in the village of company housing from the mill's peak growth, and as the largest and most cohesive cluster of triple-deckers in Rockdale. They show local carpentry and the move toward larger tenement forms. The mill sold the buildings in 1935. At the time of listing they were unoccupied and being renovated as low-income housing, with exteriors to be restored to their original appearance.","period_of_significance":"1880-1917","architect_builder":"Paul Whitin Manufacturing Co. (no particular architect or builder; vernacular design by local carpenters)","architectural_style":"Italianate to Colonial Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"At the time of the form the buildings were unoccupied and under renovation as low-income family and elderly housing; they had deteriorated but were little altered.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:11:56.81863-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/74/7973/63797374/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/83000611.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83000611/3e2e3d7b8a-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83000611/3e2e3d7b8a-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"C.S. Imming","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:18-20_McBride_Street_housing.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">C.S. Imming</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:18-20_McBride_Street_housing.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63797374","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockdale_Common_Housing_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14715833"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/worcester-county/rockdale-common-housing-district-83000611/"}