Lyndeborough Center Historic District

About this property

The Lyndeborough Center Historic District, located in the town of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, United States, consists of three structures: the Town Pound, Town Hall, and Congregational Church. The district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. In 2010, by town meeting vote, this district became part of a larger, officially zoned local historic district. The Town Pound is a square-shaped stone structure, open at the top and entered through a gate. It was constructed in 1774, and originally was topped with a wooden enclosure. The Town Hall is Lyndeborough's third completed hall, and the second to occupy a site in the Historic District. (The town's second Town Hall, a two-story, 50-by-40-foot (15 by 12 m) meetinghouse, occupied roughly the same site from c. 1769 until 1845.) The current hall is a 1+1⁄2-story Greek Revival building, constructed in 1845-46 as a 35-by-40-foot (11 by 12 m) building with a meeting hall and one anteroom at the southeast corner. In 1883, the town significantly enlarged the building by removing the west wall and adding a 12.5-foot-deep (3.8 m) addition to the back of the building and installing partitions to create the northeast anteroom (now used as a kitchen)and a small entry foyer. In 1890, apparently at the urging of and with the help of the Pinnacle Grange (the local chapter of The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry), the town increased the pitch of the roof, thereby adding space in the attic for dinners and other functions, and added an ell to the southwest corner. At this time a metal roof was added to the building, though it was removed in 1919. A metal ceiling was installed in the meeting room in 1913, an Arts-and-Crafts-style stage sometime between 1913 and 1919, and a second chimney behind the stage in 1920. (The piano now sitting against the stage wall dates from 1919.) A storage area was added to the back of the building in 1913. The attic was remodeled in 1934, and electricity was installed in the building in 1937. Since 1975, the building has appeared on Lyndeborough's unofficial town seal. The Greek Revival-style Congregational Church dates from 1837, when pressure from the Baptist Society resulted in the church moving out of the third town hall. According to Donovan and Woodward, in their History of Lyndeborough, the church steeple was shortened sometime in the nineteenth century when it was hit by lightning; in fact, exterior details suggest the entire steeple may have been rebuilt prior to or during the mid-1850s, when the church bell was added. The interior of the church was extensively remodeled in the 1890s, and the entire structure underwent major structural repairs in the mid-1980s. Since the merging of the Baptist and Congregationalist churches in town, the church has been under the control of the United Church of Lyndeborough. Currently it is used for summer services, as the building is not heated.

Location

Categories

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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