One-room schoolhouses, boarding house, Revolutionary War-era causeway and stone culvert among the properties newly listed in NH State Register of Historic Places

The New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources has announced that the State Historical Resources Council has added ten properties to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places, as well as approved a framework for properties in one municipality to be added to the Register in the future.

Part of one of the first range roads in Deerfield, the Upper Deerfield Road Causeway and Culvert are a structurally unchanged example of 1777 road and culvert construction. The combination of both stone box culvert and elevated roadway makes it even more rare than an historical culvert or causeway alone.

Ashuelot Manufacturing Company Boarding House in Winchester was built in two phases – one circa 1825 in late Federal/early Greek Revival style and the other circa 1868 as mainly Greek Revival with Italianate influences. The brick structure was owned by various mill owners and lived in by mill workers, including Irish, English, French-Canadian and Polish immigrants, for nearly a century.

The following churches in three communities were also added to the State Register:

The Eaton Center Church, also called “The Little White Church,” was part of the Freewill Baptist denomination that in 1880 had 99 congregations in New Hampshire. Built in 1879, it has an uncommon belfry/steeple feature that differs from the later version of the Greek Revival style most commonly used in Freewill Baptist churches in the nineteenth century. 

Jaffrey’s Greek Revival-style First Universalist Church has served as a central meeting place for the town’s Factory Village/East Jaffrey from the time it was dedicated 1845. Originally known as the “Union Church,” in 1939 it was gifted to the East Jaffrey Women’s Club, which renamed it the Cutler Memorial Building. 

The one-story West Milan Methodist Church was built in 1897 from lumber donated by the Androscoggin Lumber Company. Although the Methodist conference did not grant full clergy rights to women until 1956, the congregation had three female ministers preach there in the decades prior: Elizabeth Barker (1912-15), Agnes Ellingwood (1922-27) and Doris Wadsworth (1929-30).

Two former Enfield schools also recently attained State Register designation:

District 4 School/Lockehaven Schoolhouse is the only existing one-room schoolhouse in Enfield. The one-story, timber-framed school, which closed in 1921 after serving students for approximately 100 years, reflects typical rural schoolhouse architecture and a rare degree of intactness due to it being converted to a museum in the 1940s.

Built in 1851 to accommodate the town’s growing student population, the Greek Revival-style Enfield Center School was sold to the philanthropic Earnest Workers Club in 1947 and was transferred to the Enfield Historical Society in 1983, which today uses it to house its collections and to host occasional programs.

The State Historical Resources Council also announced that it has approved a Multiple Property Area Form that provides property owners in Randolph with a framework to list their properties individually in the Register in the future. The form focuses on several historic contexts: farms and taverns, summer tourism (including hotels and cottages), recreation, conservation and more.

Properties in Randolph newly added to the Register are:

The circa 1860 District #1 Schoolhouse/Public Library Annex was once one of three one-room schoolhouses in town and the only one existing that resembles its original design. A schoolhouse until 1920, it served as a seasonal library until 2008 and is now a library annex.

One-and-a-half stories tall with a multi-gable asphalt roof – including a clipped gable on the side façade – the Shingle-style Fay-Fount Cottage was constructed in 1903 by local builder John Boothman and is a representative example of early twentieth-century summer homes built in the White Mountains.

Built in 1923-24 of log with stone abutments, Pathmaker’s Memorial Bridge crosses over Cold Brook along the Link Trail. Randolph dedicated Cold Brook Falls with its surrounding balsam firs as a memorial to early pathmakers who were responsible for many of the trails in the Presidential Range.

Anyone wishing to nominate a property to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places must research the history of the nominated property and document it on an individual inventory form from the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources. Having a property listed in the Register does not impose restrictions on property owners. For more information, visit nhdhr.dncr.nh.gov.

New Hampshire's Division of Historical Resources, the State Historic Preservation Office, was established in 1974 and is part of the NH Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. NHDHR’s mission is to preserve and celebrate New Hampshire’s irreplaceable historic resources through programs and services that provide education, stewardship, and protection. For more information, visit us online at nhdhr.dncr.nh.gov or by calling 603-271-3483.

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