WOONSOCKET – A seventh city district has won designation to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Federal Street Historic District, which includes six properties along Federal and Clinton streets, has been recognized by the National Park Service for significance in American history, architecture and culture, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission announced on Thursday.
The six buildings on the property were built between 1907 and 1930, and were largely used for religious, recreational and educational purposes, as well as social functions.
"That these six institutional buildings on Federal Street have endured a century of change is part of what makes them worthy of protection," the commission said in its announcement. Meanwhile, many surrounding buildings were razed for new construction and parking lots over the years.
"With every passing decade, the carriage houses, livery stables, and blacksmiths’ shops of old Woonsocket were converted to new uses or disappeared altogether," the commission continued. "Modern urbanites were traveling by electric trolley and taxi, and they were buying automobiles."
The national historic designation helps make the city more attractive overall, said
Jeffrey Emidy, executive director of the commission, but has particularly concrete benefits for developers.
“It’s good for the city to say that it has historic properties, and that we continue to list historic properties,” Emidy told PBN. “Historic tourism is a driver of the state’s economy. While these aren’t the types of buildings where tourists are going to come to see them, if people are looking for a historic place to visit, this puts Woonsocket out there in the public consciousness.”
Meanwhile, properties listed in the National Register become eligible for federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives, which Emidy says can be “a make or break” for building rehabilitation and repurposing projects.
One such project is currently underway in the Federal Street Historic District, where a developer is converting three of the old buildings into a total of 33 residential housing units.
Many of the state's aging properties have benefited from this incentive, Emidy said, with large mill complexes primarily targeted in the first wave of redevelopments. But some of those mills, and numerous smaller properties, remain in line for repurposing.
“This kind of listing and economic redevelopment brings attention to these historic properties in a good way, and reminds us that they can still have value and be useful to us,” Emidy said, “sometimes in different ways [from their previous usages] that can still work.”
Rhode Island has a particularly high density of historic buildings and districts compared to the rest of the U.S., Emidy says, with 177 districts and around 21,000 properties included in the National Register of Historic Places.
In Woonsocket, the most recently named district includes the following buildings:
- Joseph Grenon's Garage/Stadium Garage/International Trades Union Building at 122 Clinton St./53 Federal St. (built 1925)
- Masonic Temple at 142 Clinton St. (1929)
- Firestone Services Stores, Inc. at 160 Clinton St. (1930, with additions around 1965)
- First Methodist Episcopal Church at 1 Federal St. (1907-1908)
- YMCA at 43 Federal St. (1910-1911)
- Woonsocket Commercial School/School of Commercial Sciences/Hill College at 77 Federal St. (around 1923)
Elsewhere in the city, the Cato Hill, Allen Street, Main Street, North End, South Main Street and Island Place districts also belong to the register.
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
