Center Village District

Center Village is the historic core of Lancaster, Massachusetts, stretching about eight-tenths of a mile along Main Street north of the Nashua River. Eighty-eight numbered buildings surround a rectangular town green, including seventy-one houses and seventeen public buildings. Styles range from Federal and Greek Revival to Italianate, Renaissance Revival, Georgian Revival and Colonial Revival. Its centerpiece is the 1816 meeting house by Charles Bulfinch, now the First Church of Christ Unitarian, regarded as a masterpiece of church design. Boston architect A.W. Longfellow designed the 1908 brick Town Hall, and Herbert Hale designed the 1904 Center School. Lancaster was settled in 1643 and incorporated in 1653, and the railroad arrived in 1849, bringing rapid growth and many small businesses. Most of those businesses are gone, and the center is now mainly residential. The district was listed for the unity of its wood-frame houses, civic buildings and rural setting, which keep a nineteenth century New England character.