Old Town
Old Town Historic District
The Old Town Historic District is a well-preserved rural Crossroads settlement on the Old Post Road that possesses historical significance as the earliest town center in the old Town of Attleborough, as well as architectural significance for its valuable examples of domestic, religious and public architecture.
Established around the time of old Attenborough's incorporation (1694), Old Town is the site of several religious and public buildings important in the early history of Attleborough, including the First Congregational Church, built in 1827; the third home to the congregation, established in 1710; the Town Powder House, built in 1768; and the Town Schoolhouse, which replaced an earlier schoolhouse. The historic district also includes a large Concentration of historic houses and buildings dating from the Initial settlement period up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the electric street railway prompted a small burst of suburban building.
The integrity of the district is enhanced by the relatively large amount of farmland and woodland that helps preserve the hamlet's rural character. This open land also encompasses a number of archeological sites significant in the historical development of Old Town and the old town of Attleborough.
The Old Town Historic District is a formerly rural, now suburban, neighborhood where the patterns of buildings and landscape preserve the salient features of nearly three centuries of history from the original colonial settlement, from its central cluster of community buildings and periphery of farmsteads to the early 20th-century suburban blend of residential, agricultural and industrial activities. Located on Old Post Road where it leaves Attleborough and enters the southwest corner of North Attleborough, Old Town contains thirty-one houses, twenty-four outbuildings, a church, a powder house, a former schoolhouse, a factory, a family burying ground, a stone bridge, a dam, and numerous domestic, religious, commercial and industrial archeological sites on approximately 135 acres of land, all significant features in the district's historical development.
The district consists of the linear settlement that grew up along the mile-and-a-quarter stretch of Old Post Road and its intersecting roads north of Red Rock Hill. Old Post Road, Allen Avenue, Mount Hope Street, Linden/Rock Lawn Avenue and Draper Avenue date from the colonial period, and the first three probably had their origins in footpaths established by Native Americans.