Town of Bolton, MA - Description of the Bolton Historical District

The Bolton Center Historic District is comprised of 73 acres that encompass the historic, institutional, commercial, and residential core of the community. It is situated around the approximate center of the residential and rural town of Bolton Massachusetts, along the major colonial and early 19th century transportation route, the Lancaster Road, (what is today, Route 117 and Main Street). The area still retains the much of the character of a traditional linear New England town center.

Most of its buildings, which span all the town's historic periods, are aligned along the winding main road, silhouetted against a backdrop of hilly woods and fields to the north, and lowlying plain and wetlands to the south. Contributing resources here include the 1850s town hall, three nineteenth-century schoolhouses, the early-twentieth-century public library, and the town's first modern elementary school, built in the 1920's. Remaining from the pre-railroad stagecoach era are several buildings associated with a prominent regional inn, and one of its wings.

In the western part of the district are two rare surviving commercial buildings -- and early-nineteenth-century hip-roofed brick store, and a tall, narrow clapboard Greek Revival building that was a tailor's shop, doctor's office, and post office. Most of the residences in the district are well-preserved examples of the late Colonial, Federal, and Greek Revival eras. Interspersed among them are a few later vernacular Italianate and Queen Anne houses, and several Craftsman cottages.

The outer ends of the district still form a transition from the clustered town center to its rural surroundings. Leaving I-495 (built 1964) behind, one enters the east end of the district through the two-hundred-year-old Samuel Blood Farm, passing between its hip-roofed houses built by one of the farm's early-twentieth-century owners. At the opposite end of the district are the farmstead and fields of another farm from the same era, which belonged to a succession of three ministers.

Throughout the district, barns and outbuildings, many dating to the nineteenth century, provide reminders of the area's agrarian and small-manufacturing past. At the center of the district, the foundations, dam, and millpond of a mid-nineteenth-century sawmill remain. preserved as part of a small park. scattered throughout the district and enhancing the character of the village as a whole are a considerable number of other structures and objects, including several historic roads and drives, a network of fieldstone walls, a fieldstone bridge, a stone marker that displayed the mileage to Boston in the days of the stagecoach, and a brick "powderhouse".

As is typical in a small rural town center, most of the buildings in the Bolton Center district are wood-frame, domestic in scale, 1 1/2" to 2 1/2-stories in height, with one or two wings or ells. The predominant feeling is residential, with even the stores and manufacturing shops nearly indistinguishable from the houses and barns. The main exceptions are the 1923 Emerson School a large, cupola'd brick building which was greatly expanded in 1952 and 1971 and the 1928 wood-frame First Parish Church, which dominates the slope on the north side of Main Street with its tall spire and extensive array of later wings and outbuildings. The 1853 brick Bolton Town House replete with an early-twentieth-century two-story Doric portico, is an emphatic symbol of Bolton's identity as a community, as is the fieldstone and tile Tudor Revival Bolton Public Library of 1903.

Intrusions in the district are few. Only a few houses have been covered with synthetic siding, as have the Blood Farm barns and the front of the Bolton Garage. Most of the seventeen modem, non-contributing buildings within the district boundaries have been designed to be compatible in scale, form, and materials to the older resources. These include several one- and two-car garages, a clapboarded store/restaurant complex, and two other one-story clapboarded buildings, a house and a small office building .

Reflecting Bolton's prosperity as an early farming community and the importance of the town center as a transportation focus along a major east-west route in the pre-railroad era, most of the contributing buildings in the district date to the late-eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. The result is a village center that is predominantly Federal and Greek Revival in character. Two buildings dating to the mid-eighteenth century, the Goss/Holman House of 1741 and the Joseph Sawyer House, built prior to 1760, were updated and enlarged during the Federal Period, and another eighteenth-century house that apparently originally stood on the north side of the road on the site of the second meetinghouse, the Houghton House (674 Main Street), was changed to Greek Revival in about 1840.

Several Federal house-types are represented, including both the lingering center-chimney and double-ridge-chimney forms, as well as a few examples with paired rear chimneys, and several of the hip-roofed, single end-wall-chimney type. The many Greek Revival houses include the 2 1/2-story, gable-end side-hall-entry house; its smaller relative, the 2-story gable-end cottage; three side-gabled 1 1/2-story cottages in which the main roof extends forward onto posts or columns, and two double-houses with projecting side-wall entries. Of the many barns that add an agricultural flavor to the district, some are free-standing in close proximity to the houses; several have become attached via an ell or wing to the main building to form true "extended farmhouses". Nearly all postdate 1830, and most, whether small or large, conform to the "New England" barn type with the main wagon door in the gable-end of the building.

The 2 1/2-story, five-bay center-chimney house was the dominant house form in the eastern part of Worcester County during the second half of the eighteenth century, continuing in diminished numbers through the early 1800's. The Bolton Center District has two well-preserved houses of the type, as well as at least two more where the chimney configuration was changed. The most intact center-chimney house, the 1798 Gen. Stephen Gardner House at 642 Main Street (Map #10), displays an elegantly-proportioned late Georgian entry with the tapered pilasters and triangular-pedimented entablature that is typical of designs in eighteenth-century builder's guides. 704 Main Street, the Dr. Amos Parker House (Map #35), is a larger, two-room-deep house with 6-over-9-sash windows. Built about 1800, it retains its center chimney, and has the district's only example of an enclosed pedimented, projecting entry "porch".

The Joseph Sawyer House at 698 Main Street (Map #32), which was standing by 1760, is another house of the same proportions that formerly had a center chimney. The chimney was removed in about 1870 to accommodate a new center hall, and the present paired ridge chimneys were installed. The doorway of the Sawyer House is another typical design of the late eighteenth century--with a four-pane transom and tapered, unfluted pilasters supporting a horizontal entablature. The interior of this house displays wall paintings attributed to muralist Rufus Porter. A double-house, the Jacob and Levi Houghton House at 8 Wataquadoc Road (Map #41), which has a pair of shallow rear side wings, also has a center chimney, though reduced in size. 674 Main Street (Map #23), which was apparently moved from the north side of the street in 1792 and radically changed to a side-hall-entry Greek Revival house ca. 1840, also displays the remains of its center chimney on the interior.

One late Georaian house, the ca. 1785 house of Bolton's third minister, the Rev. Phineas Wright at 763 Main Street (Map #60), was built as a large gable-roofed "double-pile" 2 112-story, gable-roofed, double-ridge-chimney house. In excellent condition, it has 12-over-12-sash windows and an entry with a high Georgian surround with a transom and fluted pilasters with bolection capitals. Another double-ridge-chimney house, the Holman Annex at 746 Main Street (Map #57), is a later example of this general house-type, probably built in the 1830's. Although it is 2 1/2 stories, it may have started out as a 1 1/2-story Cape Cod cottage. Its paneled comer pilasters and the tripartite surround of its four-paneled gable-end door are characteristic of early Greek Revival houses.

By the end of the eighteenth century, buildings with interior end chimneys were appearing in Bolton. The district has several examples-- all of them two stones, five bays wide-- with hipped roofs and a single pair of massive chimneys. The Samuel Blood House of ca. 1793 at 579 Main Street (Map #4) is the, largest. It is a high-style Federal building, with comer pilasters and a pilastered entry with an elliptical fanlight and double-leaf, four-paneled door that is obscured somewhat by an early-twentieth--century Tuscan-columned portico. While the Blood House has 6-over-6-sash windows, many of the others of this type were built with 12-over-12-sash.

The most lavish is the Goss/Holman House at 752 Main Street (Map #59), the home of Bolton's first ' minister. Its original section was built in 1741 as a typical 2 1/2-story five-bay house, which faced south toward the first meetinghouse. It was updated, probably about 1803, to a high-style, hip-roofed Federal house with 12-over-12-sash windows, with a new facade oriented north toward the Great Road (Main Street). It, too, has comer pilasters, along with a dentilated entablature. Its main, center entry has a six-paneled door, and a pilastered surround with a pediment, also embellished with dentils. As at the Blood House, an early twentieth-century porch adds to its elegance. This one is a side porch, supported on four massive, unfluted Doric columns. 702 Main Street (Map #33), a hybrid building that brought the pre-1810 store and house of Joseph Sawyer. Jr. under one wide hipped roof sometime after 1870, nonetheless conforms to this general building type-. Here the windows are 6-over-9-sash, and the 6-paneled entry door is surrounded by bead-molded boards instead of classical pilasters. The fourth building of -the type is one of the district's few brick buildings, the store originally built ca. 1820 by Woodbury & Holman at 718 Main Street (Map #43), called for generations the "Old Brick Store". (See Commercial Buildings)

The form of the latest hip-roofed building in the district, the William Chaplin House at 707 Main Street (Map #36), built between 1817 and 1822, is different from the other four. One room deep, with a long rear wing, it was apparently built with a pair of rear-wall chimneys, of which one remains. Although altered by synthetic siding, and by door and window replacement, it retains its general Federal-period appearance. There are two other paired-rear-chimney houses of the Federal period in the district, both with side-gabled roofs-- 694 and 714 Main Street. The former, the house of Joseph and Nathan Sawyer (Map #30), probably built during the 1820s, has 6-over-6-sash windows in the typical projecting surrounds of the Federal period. Its entry, which displays four-pane sidelights, has paneled-board pilasters. The entry of 714 Main Street, the Phineas Fairbanks House of ca. 1826 (Map #40), also has four--pane sidelights; the aprons under these have recessed, beaded panels. Inside the Fairbanks House are stencils attributed to either Moses Eaton or his son, Moses Eaton, Jr.

By the 1830s numerous central Massachusetts houses were beginning to appear with roofs oriented with the ridge perpendicular to the front wall, in the fully-developed gable-end, side-hall entry form that was to dominate residential building construction in the region through the end of the nineteenth century. There are three 2 1/2-story houses of this type in the district, all of them with Greek Revival details and 6-over-6-sash windows.

The most intact, in spite of the addition of a 1980s side wing, is the converted Houghton House at 674 Main Street (Map #23). Concealing its earlier structure, and reoriented gable-end to the street, this became a typical 2 1/2-story, three-bay building with a pedimented front gable and a wide side-hall entry with an unusual 8-panel door and 4-pane sidelights over paneled aprons. Two similar houses stand at 713 and 715 Main Street. 713, the Towne/Bigelow/Everett House (Map #39) of 1839, also has an 8-panel door, but in a surround with 5--paned, full-length sidelights, tapered pilasters, and a high frieze.

Although #715 (Map #44), is said to have been built by Caleb Wheeler as early as 1815, its similarity to #713 indicates that it is a replacement, or at least a radical renovation of the 1830's. Here, the entry also has a wide surround with tapered pilasters, but, like the Houghton House, continues the 4-paned sidelights above beaded-paneled aprons seen on the nearby houses of the Federal period.

The, largest number of houses in the district with a gable-end, side-hall-entry form and plan appear in the smaller, 1-1/2- or two-story gable-end cottage configuration. All seven of these houses have attached ells; six have attached barns. Two houses, at 621 and 631 Main Street (Map #s 8 and 9), were built ca. 1851 with recessed entries with full-length, 5-pane sidelights, as was the pedimented house at 749 Main Street (Map #58), built in 1849. The ca. 1855 S.K. Sawyer House at 708 Main Street (Map #37), also has full-length sidelights, but the 1842 house of Horatio Newton at 683 Main Street (Map #26), still has a 6-panel door flanked by 4-pane sidelights with paneled aprons below.

After 1855 houses were being built with 2-over-2-sash windows, and these appear at the two later gable-end cottages in the district--662 Main Street of 1869 (Map #18), and 725 (Map #49), built between 1870 and 1872. Both houses have details more characteristic of the vernacular Italianate style--662, the Warren Houghton House, has a door with two long glass lights over two panels, and 725, built for resale by William Robinson' has a polygonal bay window on the facade. Both display simple sawcut brackets at their overhanging entry canopies.

The Bolton Center District is fortunate to have five examples of the side-gabled, 1 1/2-story cottage, four of which appear as late versions of the two-room-deep Cape Cod cottage house-type. Three five-bay examples were-built in 1830 and 1831. The 1831 Simeon Cunningham House at 777 Main Street (Map #61) has a 6-panel door, 6-over-6-sash windows, and paired ridge chimneys. (Its shed--roofed facade dormer is a later addition.) An architectural highlight of the district is the pair of large, nearly identical houses that Gen. Stephen Gardner had built for his son and daughter in 1830-31, at 649 and 655 Main Street (Map #s 11 and 13). Both are deep, five-bay houses with a facade-width porch sheltered by the front overhang of the roof, which has thee small pedimented facade dormers. Both retain their 6-over-6-sash windows and a gothic-inspired pointed-arched window under each side-gable peak, covered with louvered shutters.

The facade of 649 Main Street, the Theodore Gardner House, has fluted Doric columns and 4-pane sidelights at the center entry; #655's columns are unfluted, and its entry also has short sidelights, but here they are divided into multiple, uneven panes. The facade of a little cottage at 607 Main Street (Map #6), another apparently built by Gen. Gardner in about 1830, is also recessed under the front plane of the roof, although its supporting columns have been replaced, and it now has a shed-roofed dormer over the facade. This house is four bays wide, with 6-over-6-sash windows. Just to its east at 601 Main Street (Map #5), is an earlier side-gabled, 1 1/2-story cottage, probably built in the late 1790s, which is now altered by changes in siding and windows, and by numerous additions.

Four houses known to have been built as multi-family residences stand in the district. The earliest was the Jacob and Levi Houghton House of 18 11, mentioned above. The others, all built in the 1830s and 1840s, are clustered in the west part of the district opposite the former Holman Inn site. Two, #720 Main Street (Map #46), built by Woodbury & Holman, owners of the Brick Store, and #726/728 (Map #50), apparently put up for rental by Amory Holman, are 2 1/2-story double-houses oriented with their four-bay gable-ends to the street, and a vestibuled entry on each side, sheltered by an open porch. The former retains several Greek Revival details, including Ionic pilasters at the house comers and Doric porch columns. 730 Great Road (Map #52), located behind 726/728 is now altered by porch enclosures, but may originally have been similar in form and plan to the other two.

The small number of late-nineteenth-century houses in Bolton Center reflects the decline in settlement that took place here with the demise of stage-coach travel and the eclipse of local manufacturing concerns in the late-industrial period. Only two houses were built here in the 1880s and 1890s. One, the Ellen Winde House of 1880 at 733 Main Street (Map #53), which was built on the site of the Holman Inn (demolished in 1874), is a tall, upright gable-end house with a few vernacular Italianate features, including a two-story polygonal bay window on the facade, and a scroll-bracketed canopy at the main entry. The 1890s Proctor/Powers House at 651 Main Street (Map #12), is another building of the same general form, with a 2-story polygonal facade bay and an elaborately-bracketed door hood. It shows the Queen Anne influence, however, in its projecting side-bay with patterned-shingle gable, and open--bracketed side porch.

Very late Queen Anne forms are evident at the 1912 Thomas Wetherbee House at #670 Main Street (Map #20), where the second-story facade bay projects forward from a 2 1/2-story side-gabled house over a first-story polygonal bay. This house also has the rubble foundation, diamond gable window, multi-paned colored glass stair window, large-paned "picture" window in the bay, and a large-light glass-and panel door that were popular at the time. A simpler early-twentieth-century two-story house is the two-bay, gable-end Sutton House of ca. 1918 at 723 Main Street (Map #48), also on a rubble foundation.

With the exception of a gambrel-roofed Cape Cod cottage at 615 Main Street (1942, Map #64), all the other pre-1950 houses in the district are small cottages and bungalows with Craftsman or subdued Colonial Revival accents. #550 Main Street (Map #1) is a 1 1/2-story side-gabled cottage of ca. 1919 with a center through-cornice wall dormer and pedimented entry portico; the gambrel-roofed 562 Main Street (Map #3) built about the same time, is an early example of a Dutch Colonial Revival cottage.

The small side-gabled version of the popular Craftsman bungalow with a wide dormer located over the facade porch is represented by the Pardee House at 608 Main Street (Map #7), the John Smith House of 1932 at 703 Main Street (Map #34), and one of the ca. 1919 Atwood farm employees' houses at 556 Main Street (Map #2). The best-preserved of these houses is the Pardee House, which still has its original 2-over-l -sash windows, a square stair window, single-light glass-and-panel door, and decorative exposed rafter ends.

As mentioned above, early district buildings built for commercial purposes usually took the same forms as the houses. Thus, a building such as Woodbury & Holman's "Old Brick Store" of ca. 1820 at 718 Main Street (Map #43), is today distinguished from a residence largely by its details. This store, for instance, has an open facade "piazza" on Tuscan columns with a granite floor. Its rarest surviving, features are the paneled shutters that remain on two of the facade windows. Complete with early iron latches and hinges, they still bear the words "West India Goods".

The former Holman Inn Harness Shop at 727 Main Street (Map #51), a tall, narrow gable-end building, was converted to a residence in the latter part of the nineteenth century. At that time it acquired a polygonal bay window on the east side, and, probably several years later, a wraparound porch on Tuscan columns.

Ebenezer Towne's Tailor Shop at 711 Main Street (Map #38), built in 1839, is even narrower than the harness shop. Characteristic of construction during the Greek Revival period, this building has a pedimented gable- end and 6-over-6-sash windows, some at the second floor, which contained living space. The first floor of the building was later the office of two doctors, and housed the Bolton Post Office beginning in 1893, after which it acquired its large, well-preserved two-pane display windows. The same type of windows grace the one-story "false-front" section that was added to the building's east side for the post office and a soda fountain in 1896.

The 2 1/2-story building at 664 Main Street (Map #19), part of which may pre-date 1829, was remodeled three times--first as the factory building of the Bolton Shoe Company in about 1837, and again just after the Civil War by William Robinson who converted it to a meeting hall, Robinson Hall with an auditorium on the second floor and a dining hall and kitchen on the first. The distinctive square corner tower, shingle-arched entrance, and grouped 2/2 and 4/4 windows may date to the period of Robinson's ownership, or be part of extensive renovations by Thomas Wetherbee, who remodeled the building into a house in about 1913.

The form of John Smith's little grocery store at 703 Main Street (Map #34), was completely changed to a Craftsman cottage in about 1932. By contrast, Harry Sutton's Bolton Garage at 719 Main Street (Map #45), a small early automobile garage that was greatly enlarged by John Smith in about 1927, still retains the form of a long, deep early-modern commercial garage of rock-faced concrete block with shallow-pitched roof and exposed rafter ends, and large 12-pane windows along the sides.

Characteristic of a true small-town center, the Bolton Center district includes buildings and structures put up by the town at several periods in its history, and their presence reflects the changing needs, attitudes, and circumstances of the community. The earliest extant is a little square brick powderhouse (Map #15), with pyramidal wood-shingle roof, built high on the hill on the north side of Main Street in 1812.

The Bolton Town House (Map #16), also brick, with a slate roof, was built in 1853. When pictured without its grand two-story Doric-like portico of 1910-1915, this is a plain, two-story building with few stylish accents. It stands gable-end to the street, with a one-bay facade that has a center entry with double-leaf four-panel door at the first story, a tripartite 6-over-6-sash window at the second, and a small Palladian window under the main gable. The original portion of the Town House has four bays of 12-over-12-sash over 8-over-8's along the sides; the building was extended to the rear by two bays in 1914.

Four public school buildings are located within the district. The earliest, Center School House #1, was originally built at the comer of Manor and Wataquadoc Roads in 1825 as a small one-story wood-frame schoolhouse. It was sold, moved to 689 Main Street (Map #27), in about 1865 and used for a general store. In the 1880's it was moved back a few feet on a new rubble and brick foundation, and about 1925 it was converted to a house.

That early Center School House was replaced as a school by a recycled building, the Baptist Meetinghouse, built,in about 1841 at 9 Wataquadoc Road (Map #42). A larger I 1/2-story, pedimented gable-end building, the exterior of this second Schoolhouse -41 has high-style Greek Revival detailing in its paneled comer pilasters, and a full Greek revival entablature with frieze, architrave, and echinus molding. Prominent alterations reflect the building's uses subsequent to 1900--the early-twentieth-century fire whistle over the front gable peak reveals that it was used for fire apparatus from ca. 1920 until 1964, while the large garage door on the facade indicates it stored both the fire apparatus and the town hearse.

In 1849, Bolton built its first high school, the Houghton School at 697 Main Street (Map #31). Still well within the prolific Greek Revival era of school construction, this is a large, two-story, pedimented building. Its window and door configuration has been changed, and it has lost some of its detail over the years, but retains the 12-over-12- and 8-over-12-sash windows of its side walls, a louvered lunette in the pediment, and a tripartite facade window and a bracketed cornice similar to those at the Town House.

The fourth school in the district is the two-story brick Colonial Revival Emerson School of 1923, at 692 Main Street (Map #29). Designed by architect Luther Greenleaf, this is a hip-roofed building with central lantern atop its slate roof, and a five-bay facade with round-arched openings and a full-height, Doric tetrastyle portico.

Both the Houghton and Emerson Schools were made possible through private donations. A third municipal building, the Bolton Public Library at 738 Main Street (Map #56), was also a gift, from the Whitney family. This little 1903 building, its English Tudor Revival style contrasting vividly with the native New England architecture around it, was designed by the architectural firm of Stone, Carpenter and Willson, and constructed of local Bolton fieldstone by mason Aden B. Allen. Little changed since it was built, the library is typical of the Tudor Revival style in its parapet end walls, massive chimneys, and its half-timbered, cross-gabled dormers and entry portico with pebble-dash stucco infill. Less typical is the red tile roof. The interior of the library is finished in oak, with considerable wall paneling and medieval-inspired mantelpieces at the two stone fireplaces.

One early-twentieth-century church is one of the main focal points of the district. The First Parish Church, since 1931 the Federated Church of Bolton was constructed in 1928 at 673 Main Street (Map #21), on the foundations of the Second Meetinghouse of 1793, which had burned down in December, 1926. Designed by architect Edwin T. Chapin of Worcester, the building is a graceful Colonial Revival structure with a tall, three-stage steeple and, perhaps in homage to the Town House facade, a Palladian window above a tetrastyle portico. A large east wing was added in 1957.

The rural atmosphere of the Bolton Center district is enhanced by a substantial number of surviving barns and other agricultural outbuildings. Commanding a view from a great distance, for instance, are the large connected, cupolaed dairy barns on the hillside at 579 Main Street. Most of those structures apparently date to ca. 1900 and slightly later. Behind them, a separate two-story wagon shed with pointed-arched windows probably dates to the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The earliest outbuilding in the district may be the low-eaved barn behind 694 Main Street, which stands on a high fieldstone foundation with a wide opening for wagons to pass through. Many barns are small, and nearly all are of the post-1830 "New England" type, built with a vertical-board sliding wagon door either centered or off-center in the main gable end. Some of the barns, like the well-preserved attached barn at 749 Main Street, are "banked", with a wagon run ascending to the main door, and a lower-level storage area with its entry at the opposite end of the building.

Several barns have vernacular details corresponding to a prevailing architectural style, such as the cornice brackets and the oculus or wheel window in the gable of the barn between 711 and 713 Main Street. The lowest level of the large mid--nineteenth-century banked barn at 683 Main Street has a wagon door in the side wall facing the road; its surround has the shallow pediment typical of the Greek Revival period. Few barns in the district have upper-level hay doors; an exception is the little attached barn at 662 Main Street, (now with modem garage doors), which has a shallow-arched, diagonal-board hay door in the gable.

Essentially the same gable-end building form was used for numerous artisans shops, such as Howard Atwood's early-twentieth-century board-and-batten blacksmith shop was moved to Bolton Historical Society property behind 676 Main Street in 1976. It is speculated that the little gable-end barn/garage standing close to the road at 714 Main Street may have been one of the eighteenth-century potash shops, known to have been moved to the site shortly before the building of the house in 1826.

Several automobile garages were built adjacent to the houses in the district in the early part of this century. A few, undoubtedly because of fire-safety considerations, are of masonry, with the typical hipped roof of the 1910s and 1920s. The three-car garage at 579 Main. Street is of fieldstone; the one-car garage at 664 Main Street is brick. Some later garages, such as the gabled 2-car garages at 670 and 733 Great Road are clad in the novelty beveled or "drop" siding that became popular in the 1930s.

One of the oldest small-manufacturing resources in the district survives only as a site, but its significance, at the heart of the district, continues as a town-owned park. This is Pond Park, (Map #28) established in 1905 to include the pond, dam, foundations and raceways of a mill site that was in use throughout most of the nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the remains of the Sawyer saw mill, along with two buildings that hung over the pond, Maloney's carriage-painting shop, and a wood-working shop, were all in deteriorating condition. A group of civic-minded citizens had the buildings torn down, and the new Village Improvement Society planted trees, shrubs and grass around the pond and on the impoundment of the raceways, with a wooden footbridge over the dam. (The bridge there today is a near-replica of that bridge). The fieldstone mill floor and foundations, dam abutments, and retaining walls of the raceways are broken down in some places, but they, the dam, and the pond remain as important reminders of the site's industrial significance in the heart of the village center. Even an overflow or secondary pond to the south of the dam still occasionally floods, and Great Road still crosses the north edge of the millpond on the old fieldstone causeway, which was raised on a rubble base early in this century, its curb capped with concrete and an iron-pipe railing.

The lines of two historic lanes and roads, perpendicular to Main Street, are still apparent. The path to the First Meetinghouse (Map #47), which can still be discerned just east of 720 Main Street, dates to as early as 1740; the nineteenth-century Old Townhouse Road (Map #14) is a stone-wall-lined path mounting the hill cast of the Town House. The Townhouse Road may even have continued south of the Great Road (Main Street), as it aligns with a wide fieldstone bridge over the Great Brook (Map #25).

No prehistoric sites are located within the district or in the general area (within one mile), however, sites may be present. Several prehistoric sites have been identified along the floodplain of the Nashua River and its tributaries including the Still River. Prehistoric sites have also been identified on upland terraces bordering the eastern margins of the floodplain. This area borders the Assabet River drainage to the east and south, all of which form part of the Merrimack River drainage, a known regional corridor of Native American settlement. Environmental characteristics of the district also include several locational criteria which are favorable for many types of prehistoric sites. Numerous well drained, level to moderately sloping terraced locales are present within the district in close proximity to wetlands. Great Brook and several of its tributaries including ponded areas are present within or near most of the district. Given the above factors, the size of the district (approximately 73 acres) and the availability of open space, a high potential exists that prehistoric sites are present.

A high potential also exists for the recovery of significant historic archaeological resources within the district. Structural remains may survive from many of the district's residential, agricultural, institutional and industrial components dating from the 18th through 20th centuries. Of particular interest is the fact that over two-thirds of the buildings standing in the district in 1831 are still extant indicating that one--third of those structures may survive as archaeological resources. Many of the structures no longer extant likely date from the 18th century settlement of the district.

Further documentary research combined with archaeological testing can identify the sites of 18th century residences located along the entire Main Street corridor. Original settlement was dispersed in -a linear pattern throughout this area as a result of the allocation of 20-acre house lots to the original settlers. Since few structures remain from this period, the potential for archaeological survivals is high. The potential for archaeological survival of 19th century residences is also high, however, in addition to single family privately owned residences, rental homes, often built by mill owners and referred to as "Corporation Houses" are also now present. At least one "Corporation House" built by Amory Holman is known to have burned in the Main Street area.

Other potential residential structures which may survive as archaeological resources include a structure which stood at the site of the present Pardee home at 608 Main Street and the original site of the William Woodbury house at 674 Main Street which was relocated to the south side of the road. Structural survivals from commercial structures should also be present in the district. Several inns dating to the 18th century were present in the Bolton area with two of the more notable inns, both of which are no longer extant, located within the district. The Holman Inn was located on the north side of the road between 711 and 715 Main Street. The Woodbury Inn originally stood on the site of 670 Main Street. The Gutterson Harness shop was present at 694 Main Street.

Archaeological survivals from industrial type sites should also survive in the Bolton Center Historic District. One of the more important areas includes the Pond Park locale which was a center of mill activity throughout most of the 19th century. As late as the beginning of the 20th century, the Sawyer Saw Mill along with two other buildings that hung over the pond were present but shortly thereafter were torn down. Surface evidence is present in this area including the fieldstone mill floor, foundations, dam abutments and retaining walls for raceways all of which are broken down in some places. These resources are located in the vicinity of a mill pond originally built by Joel Sawyer in the 1830s.

A second pond or overflow pond is located immediately below the first. Other potential industrial or manufacturing sites which may survive in the district include the Blood Hat Shop located in the turn of the 18th/19th Centuries at 579 Main Street at the east end of the district, the Cunningham Tannery originally located just north of the intersection of Main Street and Howard Road from 1806-1850s, the 3-story Holman Shoe Shop which originally stood behind 726/728 Great Road and, a relocated shoe shop which later burned at 725 Main Street.

Structural remains from several institutional type buildings may also be present in the district. Survivals from an earlier town hall (l 834) may be present at the site of the existing Bolton Town House built in 1853 at 633 Main Street. Structural survivals may also remain from the 1866 Baptist meetinghouse which was destroyed by fire in 1938. Evidence of the district's first school may survive at the site of the extant Center District Schoolhouse built in 1825 at the comer of Wataquadoc and Manor Roads. The First School was built in the vicinity of the original meetinghouse which also may survive in that area.

Outbuildings and occupational related features are yet another type of historic archaeological resources which may survive in the district. Structural survivals from barns are probably the more common type of outbuilding which survive in the district. Few, if any, barns survive from the 18th century indicating survivals from this period as particularly important.

One of the more important barns which may survive as an archaeological resource is the horse barn for the Holman Inn located near 730 Main Street. That barn was reportedly enormous in size containing up to 90 horses. The barn was likely also affiliated with the Bolton and Lancaster Stage Company which operated in 1827 and was also located at the inn. Additional types of outbuildings related to residences, agricultural uses and manufacturing should also be present. Smaller outbuildings including potash and blacksmith shops were used in the district as early as the 18th century. Occupational related features (trash pits, privies, wells) should also be present with all building types in the district locale. These features will also be present with structures still extant in the district.