Newton Lower Falls Historic District

Fifteen properties on a six-acre block in Lower Falls, Newton, make up a surviving fragment of a 19th-century paper-milling village. Bounded by Concord, Grove, Washington and Hagar streets, the district centers on St. Mary's Episcopal Church, built in 1813 and the oldest religious building in Newton, with its burying ground. The c.1755 Baury House is the oldest building in the village. Along Grove Street stand modest Greek Revival houses and cottages built between 1835 and 1855, many for mill workers and mill-related businessmen; Needham builder William Lyon is credited with several. Hose House #6, a brick Renaissance Revival building of 1900, was the last structure added. Highway construction in the 1950s and urban renewal in the 1970s removed most other mill-era buildings, so this block is the only remaining concentration of pre-Civil War architecture in the village. That survival, tied to the paper industry that shaped Lower Falls, is the basis for its recognition.