Billerica Town Common District

Billerica's town common and the buildings around it form a district of about twenty acres. The common is a triangular green of just over two acres, with a bandstand from 1890 and a granite watering trough from 1881. Around it stand Federal houses from 1796, 1804 and 1811, Greek Revival churches and a house, an Italianate Masonic Temple, a Second Empire manse, a Victorian Gothic library and an 1895 brick town hall. The site was the earliest part of town to be settled, in 1655, when land was set aside as a common. Early meetinghouses stood here, and the local militia mustered on the common before marching toward Concord in April 1775. After the Revolution, prominent residents built substantial houses nearby, including the physician who built the house at 1 Concord Road. The district is valued for its varied architecture and for the common's continuity as the town's center.