{"nrhp_refnum":"89001300","name":"Somerville Journal Building","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"8--10 Walnut St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Somerville","county":"Middlesex County","state":"MA","lat":42.38139782500008,"lon":-71.09702751499998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1989-09-18","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A three-story brick commercial building at 8-10 Walnut Street near Union Square in Somerville, Massachusetts, built in 1894 by the Somerville Journal Company as a newspaper publishing plant. The architect is unknown.","why_significant":"The building is tied to the Somerville Journal, a local newspaper founded in 1870 that is still published. It is also representative of small business blocks built at the end of the 19th century. The form says it retains integrity and meets Criteria A and C at the local level.","narrative":"Built in 1894 at the bottom of Walnut Street near Union Square in Somerville, this three-story brick building was constructed by the Somerville Journal Company to house its newspaper operations. The Journal had been founded in 1870 and previously operated from the Hill Building in the square. The new plant was designed for three large fast-running presses, four job presses, and folding, cutting and mailing machines, and the paper employed fifty people at the time. The building sits on a raised basement with a brownstone stringcourse and keeps its corbelled cornice, six arcaded upper-story windows, commercial storefront and recessed entrance, with eight bays of windows with relieving arches along the sides. Its style is described as Renaissance Revival mixed with vernacular commercial design. It is considered a typical small business block of the late 19th century and a reminder of Union Square's growth as a commercial center. The building was recorded as vacant, in poor to fair condition, after vandalism in the 1980s.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Renaissance Revival/vernacular commercial","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Present use is given as vacant; condition is poor-fair, with vandalism in the 1980s.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:00.791901-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/4/7915/63791504/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/89001300.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89001300/d3bcda73e9-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89001300/d3bcda73e9-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Edward Augustus Samuels, Henry Hastings Kimball","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Somerville_Journal_Building_1897.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Edward Augustus Samuels, Henry Hastings Kimball</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Somerville_Journal_Building_1897.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63791504","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerville_Journal_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7559978"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/middlesex-county/somerville-journal-building-89001300/"}