Franklin Common Historic District

Franklin Common Historic District occupies the geographic center of Franklin, Massachusetts, around a wedge-shaped, roughly 5.5-acre Common. It contains 56 principal buildings, 24 outbuildings, and the Common's monuments and bandstand. Houses on half-acre lots range from Federal and Greek Revival to Tudor Revival, and institutional buildings include the 1895 Shingle Style First Congregational Church, the Gothic Revival St. Mary's Church completed in 1927, and the 1833 Red Brick School. The Common holds nine war memorials, among them the 1903 Civil War Soldiers' Monument and the 1929 Doughboy World War I monument, plus a 1917 Craftsman-style bandstand. The neighborhood grew rapidly after the railroad reached Franklin in 1849, when straw goods and felting mills made the town prosperous. Families such as the Morses, Fishers and Thayers, who worked in straw goods, built many of the surrounding houses. The district records the town's civic, religious and residential development.