Saco-Lowell Shops Housing Historic District

Fourteen houses on two small blocks near Oak Street in Newton Upper Falls make up this district, which is the only known enclave of twentieth-century workers' housing in Newton. Eight of the houses are small brick dwellings built in 1919 and 1920 for the Saco-Lowell Shops, the textile machinery company that grew from Otis Pettee's 1831 works and was Newton's largest employer by the 1890s. The company proposed the development in 1919, using a plan by Maurice Roscoe of The Housing Company. The houses are brick variants of the Colonial style, with gabled, gambrel and lean-to roofs, segmental window openings and small scale. Larger two- and three-family buildings add Greek Revival-type entry surrounds with sidelights and cast stone lintels. Six older wood-frame houses and the surrounding mix of nineteenth-century and later housing differ in character. The district is significant for its workers' housing and for its architecture.