Hanover Center Historic District

Hanover Center is the historic heart of a Massachusetts town, a 42-acre area where Hanover, Silver, Main and Center Streets meet. Its widely spaced buildings, shade trees and surrounding woods and pastures have kept a rural feel since the town was incorporated in 1727. The oldest resources are the Stetson House and barn, dating to about 1700, and the Hanover Cemetery, whose gravestones span New England carving styles from the early 1700s onward. The Italianate First Congregational Church and Town Hall were both built in 1863 after a fire destroyed their predecessors. A granite Civil War monument followed in 1878, the John Curtis Library in 1907, and the Sylvester School, the town's first high school, in 1927. Together these buildings record the town's religious, civic and educational development. Later additions and a few modern buildings at the edges do not outweigh the district's overall integrity as a well-preserved town center.