{"nrhp_refnum":"89001222","name":"Spring Hill Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Summer, Central, Atherton, and Spring","address_restricted":false,"city":"Somerville","county":"Middlesex County","state":"MA","lat":42.38568200000003,"lon":-71.10834887356023,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1989-09-18","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A residential historic district of about 12 acres in Somerville, Massachusetts, laid out as a planned subdivision in 1843 on a south-facing hill. It contains 69 properties (53 contributing and 20 non-contributing buildings), mostly dating from about 1845 to 1910.","why_significant":"The nomination calls it Somerville's largest and most intact pre-Civil War residential district. Its success was tied to the arrival of public transportation in 1841, and its grid street plan, laid out for real estate dealer George Brastow by Alexander Wadsworth, survives. Later three-deckers and Queen Anne and Shingle Style houses were added as infill. It meets criteria A and C at the local level.","narrative":"Spring Hill is a residential neighborhood in Somerville, Massachusetts, covering about 12 acres on a hill that looks south toward Cambridge. In 1843 real estate dealer George Brastow hired Alexander Wadsworth to lay out a grid of building lots around Harvard Street, and horsecar and rail service made the slope attractive to Boston and Charlestown businessmen. Eight double Greek Revival houses went up around 1845 to 1848, followed by villas, Gothic Revival cottages and the circular Round House built in 1856 by inventor Enoch Robinson. Late nineteenth-century Queen Anne and Shingle Style houses followed, including the 1895 Edward Crane House by George A. Loring. Around the turn of the century, large estates were subdivided and three-deckers and apartment buildings filled in. The district holds 69 properties, most of them contributing, and keeps its original street plan. It was listed as Somerville's largest and most intact pre-Civil War residential district.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Alexander Wadsworth (surveyor/designer of the subdivision plan); George Brastow (developer); Enoch Robinson (builder of the Round House); George A. Loring of Loring and Phipps (Edward Crane House)","architectural_style":"Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Shingle Style and Colonial Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"General condition fair/good; present use residential. The Martin S. Carr School has been rehabilitated as apartments.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:00.601497-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/32/7917/63791732/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/89001222.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89001222/e16c0e4316-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89001222/e16c0e4316-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"User:Magicpiano","credit_html":"User:Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SomervilleMA_SpringHillHistoricDistrictAthertonSt.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63791732","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Hill_Historic_District_(Somerville,_Massachusetts)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7580588"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/middlesex-county/spring-hill-historic-district-89001222/"}