Longmeadow Historic District

Longmeadow's historic center is organized around a half-mile-long Village Green on a plateau east of the Connecticut River. Settlers received house lots along the highway in 1703 after trouble with flooding and conflict in the lowland meadows, and the former sand drift was gradually cultivated into the present lawn. Cottage industries and shops once crowded the Green, but the area was cleared of structures in 1898 and returned to open space. Around it stand 51 buildings, including the Town Hall, First Church of Christ, schools, a library, a historical museum, an old country store and 43 residences. The houses show a broad range of styles: the brick Georgian Nathaniel Ely House of 1785, a Gothic Revival cottage based on Andrew Jackson Downing's designs, an Italianate villa by Calvert Vaux, and many Colonial Revival buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. Together they document the town's growth from the early eighteenth century into the twentieth.