Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. 21 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1887.
From the record
“The Deacon Willard Lewis House is a historic house at 33 West Street in Walpole, Massachusetts. The wood-frame house was built c. 1826 by Horatio Wood.”
Wikipedia article Deacon Willard Lewis House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1975 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.75000297- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Alfound in examining the old records and the old annals | the great cedar swamp spoken of, and spoken of at a very early time. It is conceded by all the Dedham historians that that cedar swamp is the cedar swamp between the plain and South Walpole. The lumber which could be procured there was a necessity to the settlers, and was early sought for. As early as 1646, ten years after the people first established the town, Ralph Day was allowed twenty shillings for beating the drum at the meeting-house, to be paid in cedar _ boards. On the 4th of May, 1658, an agreement was made between the town and Eleazer Lusher and Joshua Fisher to erect a saw-mill on the Neponset In 1674 it passed into the possession of Thomas Clapp, and a highway was soon after laid out from the town to the cedar swamp near the saw-mill. It is said this mill stood where the mill of Caleb Ellis afterwards did, but after an examination of the records, I am pretty thoroughly convinced it stood within the limits of the present town of Walpole.
Incorporation of Town. - In 1721 a petition was presented to the General Court of the colonies, praying that the south part of Dedham, which doubtless included what is now Walpole, might be incorporated as a parish for the purpose of supporting religious This petition was opposed and defeated, but four years afterwards it was renewed, and Walpole I have not been able to find at the State-House the original petition for the incorporation the upland was mainly covered with timber. meadows were open and could be mowed. from the meadows that they derived their principal stock of hay for their cattle. The woods were filled with animals, and as late as the incorporation of this town a bounty was paid for the destruction of wolves,
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 141 fires within 5 miles of Deacon Willard Lewis House
between 2007 and 2020, burning about 50 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Recreation and ceremony
50
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
40
Smoking
29
Debris and open burning
13
Equipment and vehicle use
3
Arson/incendiarism
2
Railroad operations and maintenance
2
Natural
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 5,607 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Deacon Willard Lewis House between 1846 and 1975: 2,612 Animalia, 1,497 Plantae, 1,319 Fungi, 128 Protozoa, 24 Chromista, 22 Unrecorded, 5 Bacteria.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
21 workings within 5 miles of Deacon Willard Lewis House: 12 past producers, 7 producers, 1 unknown, 1 occurrence.
7 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Granite, Iron, Stone. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Walpole, the town this property stands in, in 31 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 15 thunderstorm wind, 6 flash flood, 4 hail, 3 flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Lightning struck an eight unit condominium building setting fire to the attic. The fire engulfed the entire building, destroying the condos. One firefighter suffered from heat exhaustion while trying to extinguish the fire.
Numerous trees down throughout Walpole, including on School, Mason, Maple, Kendall, Alton, Rockwood, and Washington Streets. A tree fell on a house on Park Lane.
One to two feet of water closed the West Street Bridge in Walpole. Elm and East Streets also were closed due to flooding. In Norfolk, Valley Street and Route 1A were closed with 18 inches of water flowing over the roads. Five and a half inches of rain fell in Wrentham in less than three hours. The power plant was flooded forcing some evacuations. Common Street, Route 1A and Route 140 (North of Thurston Street) were all closed due to flooding. The park was under one foot of water.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Deacon Willard Lewis House is located on the southern half of a small block bounded by West Street, Station Street and Elm Street. To the rear of the house behind a row of trees is the Kendall Company parking lot, and to the west and east across Station and Elm Streets are commercial buildings. To the south of the house is the town common, which is now the center of walpole's downtown area and therefore greatly altered from its nineteenth century condition. The Lewis House is the oldest house on the common, and the last remnant of walpole common's early nineteenth century development. The house is a 2 story ridge roof clapboard building, five bays wide and three deep, with a five bay ell to the west. Built c.
1826, the house was altered in the late nineteenth century, and again very recently. The facade has five wiae ana ro on 6/6 windows on the second floor and two floor length bay windows with heavy dentiled cornices flanking a modern central doorway. There is another bay window on the west facade of house, similar in detailing to the front bays, but without full length windows. The ell to the west has five irregularly spaced 2/2 windows and an off-center entrance, and five small 3/3 windows on the second floor. The music room, built c. 1870-80, extends across the rear elevation of the main house. This addition has a full brick basement and a low pitched roof.
The front boundary of the house is marked by a low cut granite wall which was the foundation of a fence built the same time the music room was added.
c. 1826; 1863 BUILDER/ARCHITECT The Deacon Willard Lewis House is significant as one of the last remaining buildings associated with the colonial and federal development of the town of walpole. It gains further significance through its association with Deacon Willard Lewis, one of Walpole's outstanding nineteenth century industrialists. The Lewis House, which fronts directly on the town common, was built on a parcel of land known as the Rev. Phillips Payson schoolhouse pasture. The house was built next to the sixth water-power privilege on the Neponset River, which was Walpole's original source of power, thus making the site important to the early development of the town.
Deacon Willard Lewis, who bought the house and the sixth water-power privilege in 1863, was born in West Roxbury in 1808, and moved with his family to walpole when he was very young. Lewis, who was a prominent member of Walpole's business community, conceived the idea of making lint by machine for bandages, and manufactured these bandages for the Civil War effort. Lewis was also a deacon at the Walpole Orthodox Church and represented Walpole's interests in the Massachusetts General Court in 1872-83. After purchasing the water-power privilege in 1863, Willard continued to manufacture lint bandages for the U.S. Government and began to make carpet lining, cotton batting and cotton percolator.
His business thrived and by 1875 his mill employed 70 people and turned out two tons of batting a day. The house remains today as a reminder of the development around the town common and of the contribution Deacon Willard Lewis made to the growth of the community.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75000297, 9 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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