Dean Junior College Historic District

Along Main Street in Franklin, Massachusetts, a group of ten buildings forms a well-preserved Victorian enclave of about seven acres. Houses, a library, a funeral home and college buildings share similar massing and setbacks, softened by shade trees, lawns and brick and iron fences. Styles range from the Chateauesque Dean Administration Building of 1870 to a Queen Anne house with a circular tower, a Stick style house, the neoclassic Ray Memorial Library of 1904 in Milford marble, and two Ray family houses of 1870, one later remodeled in Italian Renaissance Revival manner. The district matters for its architecture and for its links to the Ray family, Franklin's most important philanthropists, who gave the science building and the library. Dean Academy was founded here as a coeducational Universalist preparatory school funded by a bequest from Dr. Oliver Dean. Other buildings were built for local straw and piano manufacturers. Two modern college buildings are the main intrusions in an otherwise little-altered setting.