South Egremont Village Historic District

South Egremont Village is a compact Berkshire County settlement of about 375 acres stretched along Routes 23 and 41 beside Karner Brook. Its roughly fifty-nine historic buildings range from a 1761 brick gambrel-roofed cottage, the only one of its type in the county, to Federal and Greek Revival houses, a church built in 1832-33, and the 1831-32 Mount Everett Academy. Local carpenters James Reasoner, Abner Hull and Jona Baldwin built several houses sharing a distinctive elongated fanlight detail. The village grew around mills, a marble business, shoemaking and, from 1845, David Dalzell's axle factory, whose workers' housing on Shop Hill still stands. Decline in the 1920s gave way to a preservation-minded revival in the 1930s led by Major Hugh Smiley, who promoted the village to tourists. Because so much of the 19th century streetscape survives, the district was listed for its architecture, its notable residents and its picture of rural community development. The Dalzell factory site also holds archaeological potential.