Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Eddy Block
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1980. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Just as the last sheets of the Appendix were going through the press, the Reporter learning, for the first time, that Professor Webster had made a formal apology to Messrs. Sohier, an extract from such a letter; the same letter containing allusions to other matters which Mr.”
Report of the Case of John W. Webster, Indicted for the Murder of George Parkman, Before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts : Including the Hearing on the Petition for a Writ of Error, the Prisoner's Confessional Statements and Application for a Commutation of Sentence, and an Appendix Containing Several Interesting Matters Never Before Published (1850). Machine-read text.
one of 500 National Register listings in Worcester County · listed in 1980 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Worcester County.
National Register reference number.80000470- 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.
We compile from two of the newspapers of the day, the Boston Daily Evening Transcript and the Boston Daily Evening Traveller, some particulars of the last hours and execution of Prof. Webster, which we deem not inappropriate, in this connection, to the present volume. We have taken pains to verify the statements by a reference to eye-witnesses present at the scenes or interviews, and have made an occasional alteration for the sake of greater exactness. - Rep.
Professor Webster was visited as usual by his family yesterday afternoon, and they remained with him nearly four hours. There is every reason to believe that they left entirely ignorant as to the day of the execution. The prisoner had felt great anxiety in regard to this closing interview, lest he should betray himself. When it was over, he felt greatly relieved, and spoke cheerfully. He had detected no sign of a recognition of the fact that this was their last interview in the demeanor of his family : neither had the jailer. To the latter, as they left the cell, they addressed some remarks plainly indicating their expectation of re-visiting the prisoner. An immense crowd had assembled in Leverett street, and about the jail, to see the unhappy family as they went out ; but Mr. Andrews took Mrs. Webster and her family through his own house to a door opening on Lowell street, where a carriage was waiting, and they thus escaped the scrutiny and remarks of the multitude.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 47 fires within 5 miles of Eddy Block between
2007 and 2020, burning about 18 acres in total. None 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
Debris and open burning
23
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
10
Recreation and ceremony
7
Arson/incendiarism
2
Smoking
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Railroad operations and maintenance
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 407 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Eddy Block between 1857 and
1975: 208 Animalia, 157 Plantae, 29 Fungi, 10 Protozoa, 2 Chromista, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. S. Pease, Agassiz, Agassiz, Alexander Emanuel Rodolphe 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
15 workings within 5 miles of Eddy Block: 13 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. 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
Webster, the town this property stands in, in 21 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 13 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 2 flood, 2 tornado.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
In just about one minute, an EF-1 tornado, with maximum winds estimated at 110 mph, wreaked havoc in the easternmost portion of Dudley, MA and in the downtown portion of Webster, MA. It touched down along Route 12 (Schofield Avenue) to the west of Laprise Court in Dudley and traveled northeastward onto Main Street in Webster, then lifted near the French River by Oxford Avenue. ||Many trees were snapped and debarked. In Webster, a gas station overhang was twisted. An old brick rooftop was damaged, with bricks having fallen onto Main Street. The rubber roof covering of another building was peeled completely off. Windows were blown out at a business on Main Street and the street was littered with broken glass. The side walls of an apartment complex were bent slightly outward toward the tornado. Window screens were sucked outward. A car windshield and side mirror was damaged. There were other reports of trees fallen onto cars. Utility poles were snapped and numerous wires were downed. According to MEMA, at least 3 buildings were condemned and at least 5 were uninhabitable.||Nearly everyone that our survey team spoke with had heard the warning via the Wireless Emergency Alert on their cell phones as much as 20+ minutes in advance of the touchdown! This undoubtedly played a big role in the fact that there were no fatalities. According to media reports, there was one minor injury when part of a roof fell on top of a woman's car.
In Webster at 411 PM EDT (311 PM EST), lightning caused a house fire on Colonial Road. Subsequent follow-up with the fire department revealed that there was $100,000 in water damage to the home from extinguishing the fire.
A weak tornado touched town in the town of |Thompson in northern Windham County, Connecticut. A NWS |meteorologist conducted a storm survey following tips from amateur |radio operators and local broadcast meteorologists. The following |information summarizes all of the reports. ||The tornado touched down near a red barn near the intersection of |Quinebaug Road (Route 131) and Riverside Drive (Route 12). It was |reported to be about 50 yards wide and tracked northeastward in a |discontinuous path, impacting areas just south of Ryler Court at |Riverside Drive, Wilsonville Road, Wagher Road, and Denis Drive at |Labby Road. It then crossed the Massachusetts/Connecticut state |line and ended as a waterspout in Lake Chaubunagungamaug. Although |discontinuous, the total path length was 4.7 miles. The approximate |path width was 50 yards. Damage photos led to estimates of maximum |wind speeds of 80 to 85 mph, which puts this on the upper end of |the EF0 category of the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The time, based on |radar and eyewitness accounts, was from 1015 AM to 1024 AM EDT. ||More specifically, when the tornado touched down near Backwater |Brook, it snapped several trees in half in a convergent fashion. |It caused minor backyard damage at a nearby property before felling |numerous trees and power lines near the intersection of Riverside |Drive and Ryler Court. Tree damage was also reported at Wilsonville |Road and several trees were snapped in the backyard of a house near |Wagher Road and Forest Hill Drive. A tree was partially snapped near |Denis Drive at Labby Road before causing minor damage near Woods |Grove. Finally, multiple residents witnessed a waterspout over Lake |Chaubunagungamaug before dissipating near Killdeer Island.
In Webster, multiple trees and wires were down on Highland Street. One tree fell onto the side of a house. One utility pole was snapped. Also, multiple wires were down on School Street.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,572 words on record
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 Eddy Block is located in Webster's central business district at the northeast corner of Main and Davis Streets where it occupies a lot bounded by Main Street (south), Davis Street (west), an attached wood-frame structure (north), and an alley (east). The Block is made up of two separate structures connected by two wood-frame passageways. The larger (main) part of the block occupies the southern two-thirds of the lot, while the smaller of the two sections occupies the rear of the lot. Botn sections of the Biock are three-stories high, built of red brick and trimmed with brown sandstone.
The main part of the Eddy Block has an irregular five-sided floorplan (conforming to lot lines) and is enclosed partially by a flat roof (southern half) and partially by a high truncated hip roof (northern half). The block's south and west elevations are finished as faces, while the north and east elevations are more utilitarian and undecorated in their design. Windows throughout (unless otherwise noted) consist of 2/2 sash set in brick surrounded with a sandstone lintel and a low arched brick head with sandstone springers and keystone. All sandstone trim is rock-faced with a dressed border. The major facade (south) is symmetrical; at its base are three store fronts, the center one of which is flanked by two narrow entries which provide access to the upper floors.
Although all store fronts have been rebuilt with modern windows and trim, each is framed by brick piers (covered with modern materials) which rise to a continuous stone cornice. At the building's west end, a one storey brick addition (ca. 1920-1930) contains a fourth store front. The facade's upper floors are divided by two brick piers into a wide central panel, flanked by two narrower, outer panels.
(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect Unknown The L.R. Edây Block possess integrity of design, materials and site, as well as historical associations with a variety ot businesses and uses which characterized the diversity of activity in Webster's central business district. Located opposite the former Webster Railroad Depot, the Eddy Block stands on the former site of the Mechanic Block, a hotel and commercial block which was built in 1840 after the opening of the railroad had brought commerical development to Depot Village (now the Webster central business district). Following a fire which destroyed the Mechanic Block on September 30, 1876, the property was purchased by Lyman R.
Eddy, who had the main portion of the block built in 1878; it is unclear whether original plans called for the construction of the block's rear section or whether the rear section was built shortly after the main block had proven itself profitable. completion, the main section of the block contained four store fronts in which were located the town's post office, the clothing store of James Rawson, the Center Store and Hobart & Thompson's clothiers. Upper floors contained offices which were occupied, in part, by the Masonic Lodge, the Webster Times, the temperance reading room of Reverend Langdon Stewardson (after 1881) and the local District Court (turn of the century).
Original occupants of the rear section of the block are not known; however, this part of the structure contained two stores and either apartments or boarding houses on the upper floors. In addition to owning the Eddy Block, Lyman Eddy was the owner of various local businesses, including a restaurant (1858) and a commercial steam- boat on Lake Webster (1883); in 1888-1892, Eddy served as a Webster seiectman.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80000470, 11 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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