{"nrhp_refnum":"88000718","name":"Downtown Chelsea Residential Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Shurtleff, Marginal, and Division Sts. and Bellingham Sq.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Chelsea","county":"Suffolk County","state":"MA","lat":42.38910450000006,"lon":-71.03682368303566,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1988-06-22","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A twenty-acre urban residential historic district in downtown Chelsea, Massachusetts, roughly bounded by Shurtleff, Marginal and Division Streets and Bellingham Square, with 166 contributing buildings dating from about 1825 to the early 1930s.","why_significant":"The district documents Chelsea's residential growth from the early 19th century through the rebuilding that followed the Great Fire of 1908, which destroyed over half of its original buildings. It holds a concentration of well-preserved Greek Revival, Italianate and Georgian/Colonial Revival housing, and the 1909 Shurtleff School helped spur the post-fire redevelopment.","narrative":"Downtown Chelsea's residential district covers about twenty acres near Bellingham Square and contains 166 contributing buildings. It is split by the line of the Great Fire of 1908, which destroyed more than half of the earlier buildings. Areas the fire missed keep houses from about 1825 onward, including Federal-influenced houses, temple-front Greek Revival dwellings on Marginal Street from a former row known as Sea Captain's Row, brick rowhouses and mansard-roofed Italianate cottages. The burned portion was rebuilt between 1908 and the early 1930s with brick apartment blocks, bowfront rowhouses, wood-frame triple-deckers and corner-store buildings, mostly in Georgian and Classical Revival detail. The Shurtleff School, completed in 1909, was the first building erected in the Bellingham Square area after the fire and encouraged rebuilding nearby. Real estate speculation, rather than a citywide plan, drove much of the reconstruction. The district is regarded as visually cohesive and retains its integrity of location, design, setting, materials and workmanship.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Greek Revival, Italianate, Colonial Revival, Classical Revival, Tudor Revival, Moderne","criteria":[],"status_note":"Buildings are described as in fair to good condition overall; about 15% of lots are vacant, mostly on side streets and alleys in the area the 1908 fire missed.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:01.570609-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/47/7968/63796847/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/88000718.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88000718/6cc63fa6e6-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88000718/6cc63fa6e6-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Jameslwoodward","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Downtown_Chelsea_Residential_HD_Chelsea_MA_01.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Jameslwoodward</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:Downtown_Chelsea_Residential_HD_Chelsea_MA_01.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63796847","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Chelsea_Residential_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5303388"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/suffolk-county/downtown-chelsea-residential-historic-district-88000718/"}