Dwight Manufacturing Company Housing District

Brick boarding houses and family dwellings in Chicopee Center preserve part of a planned textile community built for workers of the Dwight Manufacturing Company. The houses along Front, Dwight, Exchange, Depot and Chestnut Streets date mostly from the 1830s and 1840s and were largely the work of builder Charles McClallan, whose Greek Revival designs feature handsome brickwork. Types include a three-and-a-half-story boarding house with a Doric portico, smaller two-story double houses with patterned gables, and single-family homes. A Stick Style boarding house was added in the 1870s. The company housed young female mill workers in supervised boarding houses until about 1845, then rented to immigrant families. The mills closed in 1927, and the tenements were sold to private owners. Many original houses were demolished for commercial development, but the surviving group is mostly in good condition and still used as homes. The district is considered notable as a rare early industrial housing group and as an example of factory-owner paternalism.