Shawsheen Village Historic District is a historic district in northern

Andover, Massachusetts Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646."Andover" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th ed., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 387. As of th ...

. Shawsheen Village was completed in the early 1920s as a planned corporate community. Conceived by

William Madison Wood William Madison Wood (June 18, 1858 – February 2, 1926) was an American textile mill owner of Lawrence, Massachusetts who was considered to be an expert in efficiency. He made a good deal of his fortune through being hired by mill owners to tu ...

of the

American Woolen Company The American Woolen Company is a designer, manufacturer and distributor of men’s and women’s worsted and woolen fabrics. Based in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, the company operates from the 160-year-old Warren Mills, which it acquired from Lo ...

, the village was designed a team of architects including Adden & Parker,

Clifford Allbright Clifford may refer to: People *Clifford (name), an English given name and surname, includes a list of people with that name * William Kingdon Clifford *Baron Clifford * Baron Clifford of Chudleigh *Baron de Clifford * Clifford baronets *Clifford f ...

and Ripley & LeBoutillier of Boston and James E. Allen of Lawrence. John Franklin, a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

for the American Woolen Company was responsible for designing the village, under the direction of

Wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

. Buildings from the original Frye Village were also incorporated into the design which included a railroad station, shops, apartment buildings, factories, parks and numerous single-family dwellings. The village was located just up the road from the Company's main factories in nearby

Lawrence Lawrence may refer to: Education Colleges and universities * Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States * Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States Preparator ...

. The village was roughly divided into three sections. The westernmost of these sections, around the junction of Main Street (

Massachusetts Route 28 Route 28 is a nominally south–north state highway in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, running from the town of Eastham via Boston to the New Hampshire state line in Methuen. Following the route from its nominally southern end, Route 28 ...

) with

Massachusetts Route 133 Route 133 is a east–west Massachusetts state route that runs from Route 38 and Route 110 in Lowell to Route 127 in Gloucester. Route description Route 133 begins at the junction of Route 38 and Route 110 in Lowell, where Route 110 begins ...

(Lowell Street to the west, Haverhill Street to the east), was the village center, with shops, a post office. Immediately east of this area, descending to the

Shawsheen River The Shawsheen River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 3, 2011 tributary of the Merrimack River in northeast Massachusetts. The name has had various spellings. ...

, was the industrial area. One residential area was primarily north and west of this central area, and it provided housing for the upper level executives of the Company. The third area was east and south of the industrial area, spilling across the railroad tracks and river, where middle class worker housing was provided. Sprinkled throughout were old houses from the Frye Village settlement that were relocated according to Wood's vision. Although the company community was well conceived, it was short-lived. William Wood committed suicide in 1926, and the single ownership strategy of the community began to fall apart. Most of the company's properties were purchased by a realty trust in 1932 and resold, often to the tenants of the property. 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 1979.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts American Woolen Company Andover, Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Andover, Massachusetts Company housing

See also

References