Williamsburg Center Historic District

Williamsburg Center is a compact village district of about 37 acres where the town's main roads meet beside the Mill River. Most of its 73 buildings are two-story wood-frame structures from the mid-nineteenth century, many in the Greek Revival style, alongside Federal houses and later Italianate, Second Empire and Queen Anne or Shingle Style examples. The district was the center of town life after settlement in the late eighteenth century and grew as a milling and transportation hub. Mills produced buttonmolds, furniture, clocks and hardware, and the first wooden buttonmolds in the United States were made here in 1826. Stagecoach, rail and streetcar links connected it to Northampton. Most buildings are simple vernacular designs, but a few were designed by architects. The First Congregational Church was remodeled in Georgian Revival style in 1895 by the Gardner firm of Springfield, and the Meekins Library, a granite Classical Revival building, was designed in 1895-97 by Putnam and Bayley of Northampton.