Bow Street Historic District

Bow Street in Somerville, Massachusetts, is a compact district of seventeen buildings on about three acres, mixing churches, municipal, commercial and residential structures from the late nineteenth century. Its highlights include the Prospect Hill Congregational Church, designed by Henry S. McKay in 1887 in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the Gothic Revival First United Methodist Church, the 1874 Police Station, the curved Faulkner Apartment Block, and a row of Stick Style cottages known as Doctors' Row. The street follows an early cart track and took its bowed shape from nearby marshland. It was travelled during the events of April 1775, when British troops stopped for water on their way to Lexington. After street railways arrived, doctors who founded Somerville Hospital settled here. Many buildings along Somerville Avenue were heavily altered in the twentieth century, but Bow Street kept its streetscape and architectural integrity, and it was recognized as one of the best late nineteenth-century groupings in the city.