Harvard Shaker Village Historic District

The Adam Dziewonski Observatory was put in service in 1960 to measure ground displacement and shaking that is caused by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Seismometers are the instruments that are used to capture ground motion. For twenty years, two Bosch-Omori horizontal pendulum instruments were working in the basement of the Geological Museum at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1928, the station was moved to the Oak Ridge Observatory at Harvard, Massachusetts.

The Oak Ridge Observatory (ORO, code: 801), also known as the George R. Agassiz Station, is located at 42 Pinnacle Road, Harvard, Massachusetts. It was operated by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian as a facility of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) from 1933 until August 19, 2005.

Pingryville is a village in the towns of Ayer and Littleton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Massachusetts Route 2A and Massachusetts Route 110 pass through the community. It is named after John Pingry VIII (1799-1860) who was a local farmer and deacon of the church.The community was mentioned in the song "Massachusetts" by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis.

The Sandy Pond School is a historic school building at 150 Sandy Pond Road in Ayer, Massachusetts. Built in 1868, it is the only surviving district school building in the town. Now a local museum, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.

Community Memorial Hospital is a historic hospital building at 15 Winthrop Avenue in Ayer, Massachusetts. The brick and stone Colonial Revival building was constructed in 1929, and expanded in the 1950s. It was designed by the Fitchburg architectural firm of Haynes & Mason, and was the first hospital building dedicated to serving the town of Ayer. The organization that operated the hospital was created by the merger of the Ayer Hospital Association, founded in 1912, and the Ayer Private Hospital, founded 1924. This organization operated the facility until 1957, when it was merged with the Groton Community Hospital. This group continued to operate the facility until 1971, when it moved to new premises and vacated this building.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. The building is currently (2018) being operated as Nashoba Valley Assisted Living.

Ayer Shirley Regional High School is a high school located in Ayer, Massachusetts. The school colors are maroon and white, and the mascot is the Panther. The student body contains about 350 students in 9th-12th grade.

Ayer is a census-designated place (CDP) and the primary settlement in the town of Ayer in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of the CDP was 2,986 at the 2020 census, out of 8,479 in the entire town.

The Ayer Main Street Historic District encompasses most of the historic central business district of Ayer, Massachusetts. It extends along Main Street between Park and Columbia Streets, and was mostly developed between 1872 and 1898 as a hub of railroad and roadway-based economic activity. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

Ayer station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station located off Main Street (Route 2A/111) in the Ayer Main Street Historic District of Ayer, Massachusetts. It serves the Fitchburg Line. There are three tracks through the station, two of which are served by a pair of low-level side platforms, which are not accessible. There is a shelter on the inbound platform. Ayer has been a major railroad interchange since the Fitchburg Railroad opened through South Groton in 1845, followed by the Stony Brook Railroad, Worcester and Nashua Railroad, and Peterborough and Shirley Railroad in 1848. The original depot was replaced with a union station with a large trainshed in 1848. Land speculation and industrial development spurred by the railroad access expanded the tiny farm village into the independent town of Ayer. A new station was constructed in 1896. By 1900, the town was served by five lines all controlled by the Boston and Maine Railroad, with service to Boston, Worcester, and Lowell plus New York, New Hampshire, and Maine. Passenger service ended on all of the lines except the Fitchburg mainline between 1931 and 1961. After a brief disruption in early 1965, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority began subsidizing commuter rail service to Ayer as part of what would become the Fitchburg Line. The station and part of the line was closed in 1975, but reopened in 1980. CSX Transportation also runs freight trains through the town to various destinations. Planning began in 2003 for a parking structure to serve park-and-ride commuters at the station. After delays caused by disagreements with a property owner, the property to ensure a public access route to the station was acquired by the town in June 2016, allowing the parking expansion to proceed. The garage opened in 2019, with improvements to the station entrance constructed in 2020–21.

Harvard is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 25 miles west-northwest of Boston, in eastern Massachusetts. It is mostly bounded by I-495 to the east and Route 2 to the north. A farming community settled in 1658 and incorporated in 1732, it has been home to several non-traditional communities, such as Harvard Shaker Village and the utopian transcendentalist center Fruitlands. It is also home to St. Benedict Abbey, a traditional Catholic monastery, and for over seventy years was home to Harvard University's Oak Ridge Observatory, at one time the most extensively equipped observatory in the Eastern United States. It is now a rural and residential town noted for its public schools. The population was 6,851 at the 2020 census.

The Nourse-Farwell House is located in the Harvard Center Historic District, a U.S. Historic District in the center of Harvard, Massachusetts. The house is believed to have been built in c. 1800 by Harvard resident Benjamin Nourse. The house was sold in 1833 to John Farwell who served as a Harvard town selectman in 1854 and assessor from 1860 to 1863.The house still stands today located on Elm Street located off of the Harvard Town Common.

Ayer ( AIR) is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Originally part of Groton, it was incorporated February 14, 1871, and became a major commercial railroad junction. The town was home to Camp Stevens, a training camp for Massachusetts volunteers during the American Civil War. Later, Fort Devens was established by the federal government to train New England soldiers for World War I. Fort Devens is a major influence on the area, although it is considerably smaller than when it was first closed in the mid-1990s. The town's population was 8,479 at the 2020 census.