North Bedford Historic District

North Bedford is a dense residential neighborhood of about 400 buildings in New Bedford, Massachusetts, set on a hillside above the Acushnet River. Most houses are two to two and a half stories, wood-framed and clapboarded or shingled, set on small lots close to the sidewalk. Federal, Greek Revival and Italianate houses dominate the southern part, while Second Empire, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival examples appear toward the north. The district was listed because it preserves the look of a nineteenth-century middle-class community shaped by the city's whaling and later textile economies. Caulkers, blacksmiths, housewrights, grocers and other tradespeople built modest homes here, and more elaborate manufacturers' houses were mixed in among them. Twentieth-century economic decline and the small number of modern intrusions helped keep the area intact, even as urban renewal cleared much of the surrounding land. Some buildings now hold two or more households, but the exteriors have changed little.