Fisher School-High Street Historic District

Along High Street in Westwood, Massachusetts, a small group of twenty contributing resources preserves the character of the former West Dedham village. Most are two-and-one-half-story, center-entrance houses from the first half of the nineteenth century, blending Federal and Greek Revival forms with later Italianate touches such as bracketed doorhoods and projecting bays. Several keep their attached barns. Institutional buildings include the First Baptist Church, whose timbers date to a 1731 meetinghouse reassembled in 1809 and moved again in 1989, and the 1845 one-room Fisher School, relocated to protect the town's last rural schoolhouse. The 1939 high school, now a middle school, adds a later chapter. The West Dedham Cemetery, in use since 1752, is enclosed by a wrought iron fence made in 1843 by Benjamin Tubbs at his foundry within the district. Together these resources illustrate architectural change and the community's development from 1752 to 1950.