Old Shipbuilder's Historic District

Along Washington Street in Duxbury Village, beside Duxbury Bay, a two-mile district preserves one of the best collections of Federal-period architecture in Massachusetts. More than forty Federal-style houses were built here between about 1790 and 1830 for shipbuilders and sea captains, alongside earlier gambrel-roofed cottages and later Greek Revival homes, churches, a bank and a store. Highlights include the Second Nathaniel Winsor House of 1807, a three-story brick-ended mansion, and a row of shipbuilders' houses on Powder Point Avenue. Duxbury's shipyards peaked around 1840, then major builders moved to Boston and the town's economy declined sharply. Little new construction followed, so the houses survived largely unchanged. Summer residents arriving after the 1871 railroad added some Shingle Style and Colonial Revival dwellings. The district is significant as a visible record of the town's short maritime boom, and it also has high potential for archaeological remains of shipyards and homesites.