Crystal Lake and Pleasant Street Historic District

Crystal Lake and Pleasant Street Historic District is a residential neighborhood of about 8.3 acres in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, covering houses along Pleasant Street and along Lake Avenue at the north edge of Crystal Lake. Once mostly farmland and woods, the area began to develop after the Charles River Branch railroad was extended through Newton and Beacon Street was pushed westward. Roswell Turner, who had assembled land here in the 1840s, helped lay out Lake Avenue, and later Charles Davis, a piano manufacturer, bought several of his properties. The Pleasant Street houses date from the 1860s and the Lake Avenue houses from the 1880s and 1890s. The district contains the city's best group of Carpenter Gothic cottages, with scroll-sawn ornament inspired by A.J. Downing's pattern books. Italianate, Mansard, Stick Style, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival houses show how the neighborhood grew into a fashionable commuter suburb. Of 23 buildings, 3 are non-contributing.