Indian Hill-North Village is a residential
historic district encompassing the largest planned worker housing community in
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...
. Located in the suburban northern part of the city, it was developed in the 1910s by the
Norton Company
Norton Abrasives of Worcester, Massachusetts, USA is the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of abrasives for commercial applications, household, and automotive refinishing usage.
Norton Company was founded in 1885 by a group of ceramists ...
, then the city's largest employer. 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 ...
in 1980.
Description and history
The North Village of Indian Hill is located in northern Worcester, just west of
Interstate 190 and south of Ararat Street. It includes houses located on a roughly rectangular grid of streets bounded by Ararat Street, Delaval Road, Heroult Street, and Marconi Road. Roughly bisecting the area are Watt Road and Westinghouse Parkway; the latter is a divided road with a tree-lined median.
The company-designed houses in this area fall into two broad categories. The first type, which are the most common, are 1-1/2 story wood frame structures, with steeply pitched slate-covered gable roofs, a three-bay facade with center entrance, and a porch sheltering the entrance. The second type, of which only two examples exist on Watt Road at Westinghouse Parkway, are type 1 cottages with a single-story ell projecting from the rear. The district also includes four ahistorical ranch houses on Heroult Road dating to the 1960s. There are two originally non-residential buildings in the district: the former community hall at 24-26 Watt Road, and the community store at 8-10 Watt Road.
[
The village was created as a model planned company town for its workers by the ]Norton Grinding Company
Norton Abrasives of Worcester, Massachusetts, USA is the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of abrasives for commercial applications, household, and automotive refinishing usage.
Norton Company was founded in 1885 by a group of ceramists ...
in 1915.Grosvenor Atterbury
Grosvenor Atterbury (July 7, 1869 in Detroit, MI – October 18, 1956 in Southampton, NY) was an American architect, urban planner and writer. He studied at Yale University, where he was an editor of campus humor magazine ''The Yale Record'' After ...
, who designed the South Village (since compromised by the construction of I-190), and the home of Aldus Higgins, then president of the Norton Company. The company established the Indian Hill Company as a worker real estate subsidiary in 1914, when the South Village was developed. The exact construction dates of the North Village complex is not known, but it probably took place with great rapidity during World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, when there was an acute housing shortage. Unlike the South Village, whose properties were immediately sold (at cost) to company employees, the company retained ownership of most of the North Village until the 1920s. The complex is unique in Worcester, whose other major employers have no history of similar developments.[
]
See also
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References
{{National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Historic districts in Worcester, Massachusetts
1915 establishments in Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places in Worcester, Massachusetts
Neighborhoods in Worcester, Massachusetts
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Company housing