Jefferson Land Association Historic District

Bristol's northern edge holds five blocks of brick rowhouses and five corner commercial buildings, all put up in 1917 and 1918 on land the Jefferson Land Association had owned since the 1890s. The rows are two stories high under flat roofs, with golden Roman brick on the front facades and a single continuous porch across each block supported by concrete Ionic columns. Each house has a three-sided second-story bay, and the three flatiron-shaped corner buildings lack the porches and bays. Most of the buildings have had their bays re-sided and some cornices boxed in, but the group still reads as one composition. The district is significant as a privately financed response to the worker housing shortage that followed the mobilization of local mills and factories for wartime production. Its single-developer, block-long construction contrasted sharply with the small-scale housing typical of the town.