West Newton Village Center Historic District

About this property

The West Newton Village Center Historic District encompasses the heart of the village of West Newton, in the city of Newton, Massachusetts in the United States. It extends along Washington Street between Lucas Court in the west and Davis Court in the east, and includes a few properties on immediately adjacent side streets, including Watertown Street and Waltham Street. The village is the second-largest of Newton's commercial centers (after Newton Corner) and is the best-preserved of its late 19th and early 20th century village centers. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. This section of Washington Street was first laid out in the 1690s, alongside John Fuller's 1000-acre farm. The earliest structure still standing is the house of Dr. Samuel Warren (1716) on Cherry Street; originally a block away on Washington Street, the house was built by William Williams, a cousin of the founder of Williams College. The growth of the village continued with the arrival of Congregationalists, and the establishment of the Second Church in Newton in 1764, splitting off from the first Congregational church in Newton Center. An old nickname for West Newton, "Squash End", arose from that period. Soon thereafter the West Parish Burying Ground was established, where graves of some of the early settlers of the village are found; this is one of three early cemeteries in Newton. In 1781, the Second (or West) Parish was officially incorporated. Washington Street was from the early days a major east-west road. The railroad was constructed alongside it, opening in West Newton in 1834, which became a stop on the Boston and Albany line. Coaches connected West Newton to Waltham to the north and Newton Lower Falls to the south. The availability of transport spurred development of the area. One of the oldest buildings in the district is the Railroad Hotel, also known as the Davis Tavern, built in 1831 by entrepreneur, educator and civic leader Seth Davis, and now serving as a retail and office space. Here, on April 7, 1834, the directors of the Boston and Worcester Railroad and 50 guests, gathered at the Davis Tavern to celebrate their first train journey coming west from Boston. From that time, the train brought suburban commuters to West Newton. Seth Davis had arrived in Newton in 1802, built his house nearby on Eden Avenue, founded a school, and planted thousands of trees throughout the neighborhood. Photographs remain of the widely-attended celebration of his 100th birthday in 1887, and several nearby streets are named after him. The Railroad Hotel was designated a Newton City Landmark in 2019.

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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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