Lasell Neighborhood Historic District

Lasell Neighborhood Historic District covers about 50 acres in Auburndale, in western Newton, Massachusetts. It is made up mainly of houses built between the mid- and late 1800s, along with a few buildings of Lasell Junior College. The area grew after railroad service reached the village in the 1830s and 1850s, when land south of the tracks was developed by local investors. Some of those investors also backed the Auburndale Female Seminary, which opened in 1851 and later became the college. Over time the school bought nearby houses for dormitories and classrooms. The district shows many styles of the period, including Italianate, Mansard, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Shingle and Georgian Revival. Its best-known building is the Winslow-Haskell mansion, called The Castle, a Victorian Gothic residence built in 1870 and already listed separately. The district was listed because of the seminary's influence on the village and because the buildings form a cohesive group of the area's typical architecture.