Bridgewater Historic District

Bridgewater's historic district preserves the core of a Shenandoah Valley turnpike town seven miles southwest of Harrisonburg. It follows Main Street north from North River and takes in College Street, West Bank Street, West High Street, Wyant Place and the oldest part of Bridgewater College. Of 156 major structures, most are houses, including brick I-houses built around 1820 by town founders John and Jacob Dinkle. Later buildings reflect the 1880s boom: the Gothic Revival J. S. Loose House, taken from a pattern book, Queen Anne dwellings, brick commercial blocks at Main and College Streets, and five brick college buildings from 1903 to 1910. A 1911 Colonial Revival consolidated school and a mid-nineteenth-century town cemetery also fall within the boundaries. Together they show how water power, farmland and the turnpike shaped one of Rockingham County's most prosperous communities through about 1910, with some modern commercial infill along North Main Street.