Bradford-Union Street Historic District

Sloping down toward Plymouth Harbor, this neighborhood of about thirty-nine buildings was once home to the mariners and tradesmen who supported the town's maritime economy. Most buildings are modest 19th-century houses: Greek Revival dwellings built for sea captains, small Cape Cod cottages, and a group of compact Gothic Revival cottages with carved eave trim. Many of the cottages came from a late-1840s development by Ansel Harlow, in partnership with Captain Samuel Doten, and were sold largely to Irish immigrants. Cod fishing, flake yards, fish houses, boatbuilding and an iron foundry shaped the area, and the surviving brick portion of the foundry is now part of a marine company. Economic decline set in late in the century, and by the 1930s the waterfront was no longer an active commercial harbor. Later infill and a yacht club have replaced much of the industrial fabric, but the dense, cohesive 19th-century streetscape remains, which supported the district's listing for its history and architecture.