{"nrhp_refnum":"97001296","name":"Bolton Center Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly along Main St., between Harvard Rd. and I-495","address_restricted":false,"city":"Bolton","county":"Worcester County","state":"MA","lat":42.43371100000007,"lon":-71.60542838778453,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1997-11-17","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Commerce","Community Planning and Development","Politics/Government","Religion","Education","Transportation"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 73-acre historic district covering the institutional, commercial and residential core of Bolton, Worcester County, Massachusetts, strung along Main Street (Route 117), the old Lancaster Road. It contains about 90 contributing resources dating from the 1740s to the early twentieth century.","why_significant":"The district is a well-preserved linear New England town center that has served as Bolton's center for over two centuries. Its buildings span all of the town's historic periods and are predominantly Federal and Greek Revival. The form notes that the district retains integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. The surviving farms, stagecoach-era inn buildings, civic buildings and houses reflect the town's agricultural and transportation history.","narrative":"Bolton Center is the 73-acre historic core of Bolton, Massachusetts, laid out along Main Street (Route 117), formerly the Lancaster Road, a major colonial and early nineteenth-century route. Buildings line the winding road against wooded hills to the north and low wetlands to the south. The district holds about 90 contributing resources, including a brick town house of 1853, a fieldstone and tile Tudor Revival library of 1903, the 1923 Emerson School, and a Colonial Revival church of 1928. Most houses date from the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, giving the center a largely Federal and Greek Revival character, with scattered Italianate, Queen Anne and Craftsman houses. Remnants of a stagecoach-era inn, two early commercial buildings, working farmsteads, barns, stone walls, a mill site and a stagecoach mileage marker recall the town's farming and transportation past. Few intrusions disturb the village, which has served as the town center since Bolton's incorporation in 1738.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Colonial (Georgian), Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial and Tudor Revival, Bungalow/Craftsman","criteria":[],"status_note":"Many buildings remain in use as homes, a town hall, library, school and church; the document describes the district as retaining integrity, with few intrusions.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:03.813625-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/48/7972/63797248/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/97001296.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/97001296/6298f4446d-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/97001296/6298f4446d-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"John Phelan","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Parish,_Bolton_MA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">John Phelan</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Parish,_Bolton_MA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63797248","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolton_Center_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14715410"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/worcester-county/bolton-center-historic-district-97001296/"}