Acushnet Heights National Register Historic District

The Acushnet Heights National Register Historic District is comprised of approximately 560 properties and 100 acres of land. The buildings located in this district are historically affiliated with the working class community in New Bedford’s North End. The district is fairly rectangular in shape with Weld Street on the north, Summer Street on the west, Purchase Street on the east, and is anchored by Clasky Common Park on the south.

Acushnet Heights was first developed with large estates and modest single- family dwellings in the 1830s and 1840s and remained an area of dispersed settlement up to the 1860s until the onset of its transformation into an immigrant working class neighborhood of multi-family residences.Acushnet Heights residents were primarily associated with the city’s textile industry, especially the Wamsutta Mills factory. The historic district evolved from a community at the periphery of a growing city into an inner-city neighborhood. At the hear of the district is the Wamsutta Mills worker housing development, constructed in 1868.

Buildings in the district are of uniform scale, with no building being higher than four stories. Residential structures include architecturally elaborate single-family homes; modest vernacular cottages and houses; worker duplexes and tenements two-family homes; triple-deckers; and six-family apartment blocks. Secondary strucutres, mostly wood-frames or masonry garages, are scattered throughout the district. Acushnet Heights has several institutional buildings, including five churches, three former schools and a city fire station.

The residnetial buildings are vernacular interpretations of the Greek revivsal, Italianate, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revivals of the 19th century. Churches range from wood-frame vernacular to brick Gothic. Acushnet Heights has three individually listed National Register properties: the Union Atreet Railway Carbarn, the Bradford Smith building, and the Dawson Block/Eagles Home.