Institutional Buildings
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.