{"nrhp_refnum":"89002035","name":"Acushnet Heights Historic District","other_names":["See Also:Union Street Carbarn, Repair Shop","Dawson Building","S"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Summer, Weld, Purchase, Pope, County, and Robeson","address_restricted":false,"city":"New Bedford","county":"Bristol County","state":"MA","lat":41.648333500000064,"lon":-70.93162527950518,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1989-12-01","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Commerce","European","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A roughly 20-acre, densely settled urban residential district in the North End of New Bedford, Massachusetts, bounded by Purchase, Weld, Summer, County and Pearl Streets. It holds 566 buildings, 432 of them contributing, mostly built from the 1840s to about 1910.","why_significant":"The district is significant as a working-class, ethnically diverse neighborhood of French Canadian, English and Irish immigrants who worked in nearby textile mills, especially Wamsutta Mills. Its core is the multi-family worker housing the Wamsutta Mills Corporation built in 1868. It also preserves a range of vernacular 19th-century housing, churches, schools and commercial blocks showing the neighborhood's growth.","narrative":"Acushnet Heights is a compact, densely built neighborhood of about 20 acres in the North End of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It sits on a ridge above the Acushnet River and is anchored by Clasky Common Park, the city's original common, laid out in 1822. The district holds 566 buildings, of which 432 contribute to its character. Large estate houses and modest cottages appeared in the 1840s, but the area changed after the 1860s as immigrant mill workers, mainly French Canadian, English and Irish, settled here. At its center are the duplexes and six-family tenements the Wamsutta Mills Corporation built in 1868 for its employees. Triple deckers, two- and three-story wood-frame houses, five churches, three former schools, a fire station and brick commercial blocks on Purchase Street complete the neighborhood. Styles run from Greek Revival and Italianate to Queen Anne and Colonial Revival, mostly in vernacular form. The district records how a textile economy shaped an ethnically mixed working-class community.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"No Style; Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Romanesque, Shingle Style, Colonial Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"Most buildings remain in residential use; several businesses operate on Purchase Street. Three large County Street lots are vacant after the late-1960s demolition of Holy Name Church, Rectory and Convent.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:00.562521-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/46/7944/63794446/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/89002035.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89002035/d42510d422-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89002035/d42510d422-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"John Phelan","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linden_Street,_New_Bedford_MA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">John Phelan</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:Linden_Street,_New_Bedford_MA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63794446","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acushnet_Heights_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4677895"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/bristol-county/acushnet-heights-historic-district-89002035/"}