The Franklin Common Historic District is a
historic district
A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...
encompassing the traditional village center of
Franklin, Massachusetts
The Town of Franklin is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Franklin is one of thirteen Massachusetts municipalities that have applied for, and been granted, city forms of government but wish to retain "The town of" in their o ...
. The primary focus of the district is the
town common
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person who has a r ...
, a roughly triangular green which took shape in the mid-18th century. The district includes the buildings that abut the green, and extends northward along Main Street to its junction with Lincoln Street, where the
Red Brick School is located. The
Dean Junior College Historic District abuts this district to the south. The district is predominantly residential in character, with several civic and religious institutional buildings facing the common. The latter group are dominated by the Federated Church (Shingle style, built 1895), and the Roman Catholic St. Mary's Church complex, which includes three buildings from the 1920s to 1955.
The district was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 2005.
See also
*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Norfolk County, Massachusetts
References
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places in Norfolk County, Massachusetts
Franklin, Massachusetts
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