Main Street Historic District

Main Street Historic District occupies the north bank of the Blackstone River in Millville, Massachusetts, near the Rhode Island border. It takes in Main, Lincoln, Preston and Walnut Streets, Chestnut Hill Road and Burns Avenue, and contains 148 contributing resources. Most are houses, along with a few commercial buildings, a church, landscape features and the site of the U.S. Rubber Company factory. The district grew in stages. Early Federal and Greek Revival homes of mill owners faced the county road completed in 1831. After 1854, as growth shifted to the south side of the river, the hillside streets filled with worker housing: low one-story duplexes, larger two-story double houses and multi-unit tenements, many built by local property speculators. Later Queen Anne and Gothic Revival double houses appeared around 1890. A Greek Revival store at 5 Lincoln Street is a rare regional survivor. The district shows how housing, religion and commerce reflected a mill village's class structure.