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H. H. Richardson Historic District of North Easton

Easton, MassachusettsGeography of Bristol County, MassachusettsHistoric districts in Bristol County, MassachusettsHistoric districts on the National Register of Historic Places in MassachusettsNRHP infobox with nocat
National Historic Landmarks in MassachusettsNational Register of Historic Places in Bristol County, MassachusettsRailroad-related National Historic LandmarksRichardsonian Romanesque architecture in MassachusettsRomanesque Revival architecture in MassachusettsUse mdy dates from August 2023
Oakes Ames Memorial Hall and Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA)
Oakes Ames Memorial Hall and Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA)

The H. H. Richardson Historic District of North Easton is a National Historic Landmark District in the village of North Easton in Easton, Massachusetts. It consists of five buildings designed by noted 19th-century architect Henry Hobson Richardson, and The Rockery, a war memorial designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.The landmark district is contained within the larger North Easton Historic District which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 3, 1972. It also contains the Old Colony Railroad Station which was individually listed on the NRHP on April 11, 1972.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article H. H. Richardson Historic District of North Easton (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

H. H. Richardson Historic District of North Easton
Pond Street,

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N 42.07 ° E -71.100555555556 °
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Pond Street
02356
Massachusetts, United States
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Oakes Ames Memorial Hall and Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA)
Oakes Ames Memorial Hall and Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA)
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The Rockery
The Rockery

The Rockery, also known as the Memorial Cairn, is an unusual war memorial designed by the noted American landscaper Frederick Law Olmsted. It is located at the center of North Easton Center in Easton, Massachusetts, where it forms the focal point for two adjacent H. H. Richardson buildings with their own Olmsted landscapes. The Rockery was created in 1882 as a memorial for North Easton's citizens lost in the American Civil War, a public area, and a carriage promenade with views of North Easton. It consists of boulders heaped into a long, asymmetric mound across a rustic archway that echoes those of H. H. Richardson's nearby Oakes Ames Memorial Hall. In April 1882 Olmsted wrote to Oakes Angier Ames that such cairns were of monuments "the oldest and most enduring in the world", and with "the beautiful plants that have become rooted in them and which spring out of their crannies or have grown over them. . . are far more interesting and pleasant to see than the greater number of those constructed of massive masonry and elaborate sculpture." He further explained that plants growing across the rocky buttress would symbolize peace taming war. Over the years, boulders loosened and toppled away, stairways crumbled, and the gardens filled with weeds. At one point, the Rockery was lowered from its original height of 25 feet and utility poles installed on its eastern tip. In recent years, however, the Rockery has been restored and is being actively maintained.

Ames Gate Lodge
Ames Gate Lodge

The Ames Gate Lodge is a celebrated work by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson. It is privately owned on an estate landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, but its north facade can be seen from the road at 135 Elm Street, North Easton, Massachusetts. In 2013, the Ames Gate Lodge was protected by a preservation easement held by Historic New England. The lodge was designed and constructed in 1880-1881 for Frederick Lothrop Ames, son of railway magnate Oliver Ames Jr., as the northern entrance to his Langwater estate. Although Langwater dated from 1859 with 1876 additions, its northern regions had until then remained unfinished. Ames thus engaged Richardson and Olmsted in collaboration on its creation. Olmsted's landscape designs were implemented in 1886–1887. The Gate Lodge is a remarkable synthesis of oversize stone wall, arched gate, and gatehouse building, perhaps based in part on Richardson's appreciation of the Central Park bridges designed by Calvert Vaux. It forms a long, low mass lying directly athwart the estate's entry road, which runs southward within its dominating, semicircular arch. The massive walls appear to be crude heaps of rounded boulders from the estate soil -- "cyclopean rubble" in Vincent Scully's memorable phrase—trimmed in Longmeadow brownstone. The blocky, two-story lodge proper stands west of the arch, and originally housed the estate gardener on the lower floor with rooms for bachelor guests above. Across the arch is a long, low wing ending in a circular bay, once used for storing plants through the winter. The lodge's public (northern) facade is relatively flat and austere; its southern facade, by contrast, is highly shaped with protrusions and a large porch featuring carvings by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Capping all is the lodge's prominent, hipped, reddish-tiled roof with its eyelid dormers. As Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote, "The presence of a building is in its roof, and what a roof the Ames Gate Lodge has!" The nearby F. L. Ames Gardener's Cottage (1884–85) was also designed by Richardson, and built some 400 feet (120 m) east of the Gate Lodge when the gardener's family outgrew the lodge. It was later enlarged by Richardson's successors, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, and has subsequently been shingled and otherwise modified.