Northside Village Historic District

Northside Village is a 70-acre rural district in northern Charlton, strung along the old Stafford and Worcester Turnpike and two side roads. It holds 13 buildings and four archaeological or former building sites. Most buildings are houses from the 18th and early 19th centuries, with two 20th-century exceptions. The oldest is the 1735 Jonothan Wheelock House; Wheelock began the village tanning industry and kept a distillery and tavern. The three-story Rider Tavern, begun in 1797, dominated village life with its ballroom and rooftop garden, and hosted the Marquis de Lafayette. The Waters-Morton House was the boyhood home of Dr. William T. G. Morton, who demonstrated ether anesthesia in 1846. Other sites mark a distillery, a tannery, a one-room school and a store and post office. The 1848 Greek Revival Northside School stands where a Baptist meetinghouse once stood, and its belfry holds a bell cast in 1719 for a Boston church. The district shows how a farming settlement grew into a trading village.