{"nrhp_refnum":"95001167","name":"Allen, Ethan, House and Gun Shop","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"37 Waterville St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Grafton","county":"Worcester County","state":"MA","lat":42.23719569600004,"lon":-71.70562052193523,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1995-10-12","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Industry"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A brick Greek Revival house (ca. 1833) with an attached ell, wagon shed and barn, plus a separate nineteenth-century gun shop and mill remains, on adjacent lots at 37 Waterville Street in North Grafton, Massachusetts, beside Pratt's Pond.","why_significant":"The property is associated with inventor and gunmaker Ethan Allen and the region's early firearms industry, where he made his first guns and the pepperbox pistol. It is also architecturally significant: the house is the town's only grand brick Greek Revival residence, and the gun shop is a rare surviving example of 1830s vernacular industrial architecture.","narrative":"On Waterville Street in North Grafton, a brick Greek Revival house and a weathered gun shop sit on neighboring lots beside Pratt's Pond. The house, built about 1833, has a square plan, a broad gable roof, corner chimneys and a pediment facade with a central entry. It was converted to a two-family dwelling around 1900 and is joined to an ell, wagon shed and an 1898 barn. The gun shop, with its earliest section dating to 1830, retains a fieldstone dam, stone spillway, head and tail races, and an interior turbine. Here Ethan Allen, born in 1806, began producing guns after buying land in 1833. With his partner Charles Thurber he made single-shot pistols, a rifle and the pepperbox pistol, a self-cocking revolver, until moving to Connecticut in 1842. The property was listed for this link to the early firearms industry and for its rare surviving building types. Its period of significance runs from 1833 to 1940.","period_of_significance":"1833-1940","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Mid-19th Century: Greek Revival; Mid-19th Century: Other/Vernacular","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The house is currently used as a multiple dwelling and the gun shop for storage; the gun shop lot is partly overgrown, and a turbine and gearing remain beneath its first floor.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:03.886451-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/48/7975/63797548/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/95001167.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/95001167/308f8df7a0-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/95001167/308f8df7a0-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Susan Herbert Gorius","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ethan_Allen_House_and_Gun_Shop.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Susan Herbert Gorius</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:Ethan_Allen_House_and_Gun_Shop.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63797548","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Allen_House_and_Gun_Shop","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5402881"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/worcester-county/allen-ethan-house-and-gun-shop-95001167/"}