Memorial Square District

Memorial Square sits where Main and Plainfield Streets meet in northwestern Springfield, Massachusetts. The district groups seven buildings, a small triangular park and a traffic island around this junction. Memorial Church, a granite Gothic Revival building with brownstone trim designed by Richard Upjohn and his son and completed in 1866, is the focal point. Nearby are a 1914 Italian Renaissance library, an 1897 trolley barn and office building, a 1911 six-story apartment and store block, an 1894 Classical Revival parish house, and two Queen Anne houses from the 1880s. A bronze Spanish-American War statue stands in the park. The district was listed because it served as the center of the Brightwood and North End neighborhoods and because of its architecture, which includes work by nationally known and leading local architects. The buildings have changed little, although Round Hill was levelled and highway and urban renewal projects reshaped the surroundings.