Marlborough Center Historic District

Marlborough Center Historic District covers twenty-three acres at the heart of the Massachusetts city, stretching mainly along both sides of Main Street with short spurs onto adjoining streets. It holds 38 contributing buildings, along with sites, a structure and objects dating from early settlement to the 1940s. Commercial blocks built between 1870 and 1948 include four banks that reflect the city's former prosperity as a shoe-manufacturing center. Civic landmarks include the 1905 Beaux Arts City Hall, the 1912 post office, the 1904 library and the 1898 high school. Four churches, several Victorian houses, a 1706 cemetery, war memorials and the John Brown Bell add variety. Urban renewal and a highway bypass removed older buildings south of Main Street, yet the remaining streetscape preserves a layered record of the community's growth. Local revitalization efforts have worked to stabilize and upgrade the downtown.