National Register of Historic Places

Roxbury High Fort

Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Listed
April 22, 1973
Type
Site
Period
Early Republic
Ref No.
73000856

About this property

Roxbury High Fort is a historic fort site on Beech Glen Street at Fort Avenue in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The site now contains a small park and the Cochituate Standpipe, also known as Fort Hill Tower, built in 1869. The fort site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The site inspired the name of the Fort Hill neighborhood, which surrounds the area of the High Fort. The Roxbury High Fort site once contained earthwork fortifications of the Continental Army during the Siege of Boston during the American Revolutionary War. At that time Roxbury was an independent town connected to Boston by a narrow neck of land. The hill offered a great vantage of the entire area. In 1868 Roxbury was annexed to Boston. In 1869, the 70-foot-tall (21 m) Cochituate Standpipe was built atop Fort Hill by the Cochichuate Water Company. Eventually the water tower was abandoned with other expansions to the Boston water system. By the 1960s, the tower fell into disrepair. The original cast iron balcony was removed. In the early 1980s the City of Boston restored the tower. The area is also today known as Highland Park. National Register of Historic Places listings in southern Boston, Massachusetts Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. MA-25, "Boston Water Works, Roxbury Standpipe, Fort Avenue, Highland Park, Boston, Suffolk County, MA", 1 photo, 1 color transparency, 3 data pages, 2 photo caption pages

Location

Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
42.32129, -71.08957

Categories

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTUREARCHITECTURE
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Native Heritage
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Nearby Historic Sites

Malcolm X-Ella Little Collins House
Industrial
0.2 mi
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church Complex
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0.2 mi
Dimock Community Health Center Complex
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0.4 mi
Abbotsford
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0.4 mi
Garrison, William Lloyd, House
Industrial
0.4 mi

Nearby Battles

Siege of Boston – Roxbury Lines
1775Revolutionary War
0.9 mi
Siege of Boston — Dorchester Heights
1776Revolutionary War
2.5 mi

Questions about this property

When was Roxbury High Fort listed on the National Register?

Roxbury High Fort was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 22, 1973.

What type of historic resource is Roxbury High Fort?

Roxbury High Fort is classified as a site in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Roxbury High Fort?

The period of significance for Roxbury High Fort is recorded as the early_republic era.

Can I research the history near Roxbury High Fort?

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