{"nrhp_refnum":"90000121","name":"Mason, William P., House","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"5 Mason St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Swansea","county":"Bristol County","state":"MA","lat":41.772670712000036,"lon":-71.27280514699999,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1990-08-08","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Transportation","Politics/Government","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 1½-story, clapboarded Gothic Revival house at 5 Mason Street (corner of Old Providence Road) in the Barneyville area of northwestern Swansea, Massachusetts, built about 1860.","why_significant":"It is an intact vernacular example of the Gothic Revival style, which is rare in a town dominated by Greek Revival and Italianate forms. It also served the village of Barneyville as a hotel, store and post office in the late 19th century.","narrative":"Built around 1860 on Old Providence Road in the Barneyville section of northwestern Swansea, this 1½-story clapboarded house blends Gothic Revival details into the standard local three-quarter cottage form. Features include an off-center cross gable, a bracketed pitched door hood with a decorative truss, overhanging eaves, bracketed pent hoods over first-floor windows, and a rear ell with a turned-post porch. Few intact Gothic Revival buildings survive in a town where Greek Revival and Italianate styles prevailed. The house occupies the site of a stagecoach tavern known as Graham's tavern around 1850. In the early 1870s William P. Mason ran a hotel and store here and became Barneyville's postmaster in 1872; by 1895 the village's branch post office had moved into the building. It likely returned to residential use in the early 20th century as jewelry manufacturing and the street railway declined. It is still a residence today.","period_of_significance":"c. 1860-c. 1900","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Gothic Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Present use is residence; condition is described as fair, with no major alterations. A garage and shed (ca. 1930) are noncontributing.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:04.07149-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/43/7896/63789643/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/90000121.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90000121/50cdc768e9-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90000121/50cdc768e9-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Tim Pierce","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_P._Mason_House.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Tim Pierce</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:William_P._Mason_House.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63789643","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Mason_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8016485"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/bristol-county/mason-william-p-house-90000121/"}