Farnams Village Historic District

Farnams Village is a limestone mining community in southwestern Cheshire, set in the foothills of Mount Greylock beside Cheshire Reservoir. The district covers about 1,400 acres and includes two quarries, remnants of quarrying equipment, a stone dynamite shed, frame houses, a limestone paymaster's office built in 1921, a dairy barn and the remains of rail lines. Quarrying began in the nineteenth century under the Farnam family. After 1906 the Farnam-Cheshire Lime Company, run by C. J. Curtin, expanded the operation and built nine houses for workers between about 1910 and 1925. Most were two- and four-family buildings in a plain Queen Anne manner, with two Craftsman bungalows. Italian immigrants, many from the Alps, the Veneto and Sicily, came to work in the quarry and mill, and they brought their traditions to the village. The district was listed for this combined industrial, social and architectural record, along with its landscape. Conditions range from good to poor, though the village retains much of its historic character.