The Naugatuck Center Historic District encompasses the historic civic and business center of

Naugatuck, Connecticut Naugatuck is a consolidated borough and town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The town spans both sides of the Naugatuck River just south of Waterbury and includes the communities of Union City on the east side of the river, which ...

. Centered around the town green, the district includes churches, schools and municipal buildings, many from the late 19th or early 20th centuries, as well as a diversity of residential architecture. 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 1999.

Description and history

The town of Naugatuck was settled in the 17th century, and developed primarily as an area of dispersed industrial activity, with saw and gristmills powered by the

Naugatuck River The Naugatuck River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 river in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Its waters carve out the Naugatuck River Valley in the wes ...

and its tributaries. It was incorporated in 1844. Unlike many New England communities, its town center did not form around a church site, but developed around the green, which was donated to the town by an innkeeper in 1831. Two church congregations then moved their buildings there, and it then developed as a civic and business center. Its built infrastructure is dominated by industrial successes of the late 19th century, predominantly in the manufacture of rubber products by

Charles Goodyear Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) was an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15, 1844. ...

, and in

malleable iron Malleable iron is cast as white iron, the structure being a metastable carbide in a pearlitic matrix. Through an annealing heat treatment, the brittle structure as first cast is transformed into the malleable form. Carbon agglomerates into small ...

products manufactured by John Whittemore and Bronson Tuttle. Whittemore made many civic contributions, retaining

McKim, Mead & White McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wil ...

to design no less than eleven civic and private buildings in the town. The historic district encompasses much of the civic and institutional core of downtown Naugatuck. It extends south from the junction of Church, Water, and Meadow Streets, all of which eventually run south, forming spines of the district. Terrace Avenue and Fairview Avenue form the western side of the district, whose southern boundary is an east-west line roughly at Pleasant View Avenue. A finger extends eastward along Cedar Street to include the town's Spanish Revival railroad station. Prominent buildings in the district include the Whittemore Library, a McKim, Mead & White design, the main post office, like the railroad station in a Spanish Revival style, and the

Bronson B. Tuttle House The Bronson B. Tuttle House is a historic house at 380 Church Street in Naugatuck, Connecticut. Built in 1879 for a prominent local industrialist, it is a fine example of Queen Anne architecture in brick, and a well-preserved reminder of its 19 ...

, located at the northernmost end of the district. The Tuttle House is a fine brick Victorian mansion, and the only major industrialist's residence to survive in the city.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places National Register of Historic Places in New Haven County, Connecticut Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut Naugatuck, Connecticut

Description and history

See also

References