Fort Hill Historic District

Six clapboard houses line South Street in southeast Northampton, Massachusetts, forming a compact residential enclave on about 2.2 acres between the Mill River and a wide marsh. The earliest is the Charles Clapp House of 1753, followed by homes of 1792, 1797, and about 1800, with two early Greek Revival houses from about 1830. A multi-car garage from the twentieth century is the only noncontributing building. The houses were built by or for early settler families, including the Clapp, Bartlett, and Strong families, and have been lived in continuously for over two centuries. The area takes its name from an Indian fortification on Fort Hill. The district was listed because it records the early settlement of Northampton and because it is the town's only surviving contiguous group of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century houses. Architects are unknown; local builders likely used pattern books or accepted conventions, producing cohesive Colonial, Federal, and Greek Revival buildings.