Moody Street Historic District

Moody Street in Waltham's South Side holds a compact group of eight commercial blocks built between 1887 and about 1950. Seven contribute to the district and one, a c1950 building, does not. Growth along the street followed the 1847 Moody Street bridge over the Charles River and the 1854 founding of the Waltham Watch Company, whose workers became the area's shoppers. Between the mid-1880s and World War II, three- and four-story masonry blocks replaced earlier wood-frame shops and houses. Examples include the Romanesque Revival Lincoln Building and Ancient Order of United Workers Building (both 1887), a Georgian Revival block of 1900, the 1929 Hall Building, the Grover Cronin department store with its 1938 Art Deco facade, and the 1948-49 Woolworth building. The blocks housed department stores, chain stores and fraternal groups. Storefronts have been replaced with aluminum fronts and signs, yet the upper stories largely survive. The district was drawn around the only contiguous intact group of significant buildings.