Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Lothrop, Joseph, House
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
“In June, 1728, a part of Sutton land, about nineteen hundred acres, having ten settlers upon it, was laid to us ; and there have been some small additions of land from other towns since ; from places from the southeast part of Shrewsbury ; and tluree from the northwest part of Upton.”
The History of Westborough, Massachusetts. Part I. The Early History. By Heman Packard De Forest. Part II. The Later History. By Edward Craig Bates (1891). 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.80001680- 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.
In June, 1728, a part of Sutton land, about nineteen hundred acres, having ten settlers upon it, was laid to us ; and there have been some small additions of land from other towns since ; from places from the southeast part of Shrewsbury ; and tluree from the northwest part of Upton.
In June, 1728, a part of Sutton land, about nineteen hundred acres, having ten settlers upon it, was laid to us ; and there have been some small additions of land from other towns since ; from places from the southeast part of Shrewsbury ; and three from the northwest part of Upton.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 42 fires within 5 miles of Lothrop, Joseph, House between
2015 and 2020, burning about 29 acres in total. None started naturally. 4 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
12
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
11
Smoking
8
Recreation and ceremony
6
Arson/incendiarism
4
Equipment and vehicle use
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 1,164 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Lothrop, Joseph, House between 1840 and
1975: 485 Plantae, 478 Animalia, 191 Fungi, 5 Chromista, 3 Protozoa, 2 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A E WOODHEAD, A. B. Seymour, A. H. Chivers 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
3 workings within 5 miles of Lothrop, Joseph, House: 2 producers, 1 unknown.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Shrewsbury, the town this property stands in, in 22 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 10 thunderstorm wind, 5 hail, 4 flood, 2 flash flood.
The reports record 3 injuries. 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 Shrewsbury, Route 9 from the Worcester/Shrewsbury line to Route 140 was flooded. In Worcester, flash flooding resulted in motorists being rescued from their cars and homeowners trying to get water out of their basements. Sunderland Road and Bowman Lane were both closed due to flooding, while Lake Street had three feet of water standing in the street. Water on a side street to Hamilton Street overtopped the roof of a car stalled in the road. Flood waters inundated at least 70 basements with water standing 12 to 18 inches deep.
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
1,816 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 Joseph Lothrop House is located at the southeast corner of the Boston-Worcester Turnpike (Route 9) and Park Street. Although still on its original lot, the house was moved back (south) approximately 50-100 feet in 1931 to allow the widening of Route 9. Original House: The Lothrop House is a square-plan, Federal style house to which additions have been made along the south wall and at the southeast corner. It rests ona concrete block foundation, is covered with clapboards, and is enclosed by a hip roof covered with wood shingles, through which the house's twin interior chimneys rise. Trim of the original section consists of narrow cornerboards, moulded cornices and moulded windows surrounded with louvred shutters. All sash in this section is 12/12.
The facade which faces Route 9 contains a center entry flanked by two windows on each side at the first storey and five windows, symmetrically placed,at the second storey. The entry contains a door of six panels flanked by sidelights and surmounted by an elliptical fanlight. Framing the entry are two narrow pilasters which support an entablature. The west wall contains four windows at each storey, grouped in pairs, reflecting interior room arrangement. east wall is identical to the west wall, except that the southernmost window of the first storey has been covered by a one-storey addition. Also, centered on the first storey of the east wall is a doorway consisting of a six sunken panel door set in a moulded architrave.
The rear wall of the original structure is largely obscured by later additions; the only visible portion contains three windows on the eastem three-fifths of the second storey and a gabled twentieth century dormer on the roof.
/Architect Builders unknown Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Joseph Lothrop House possesses integrity of location, design, materials and work- manship as well as historical association with the early development of Westborough. Located in the original eighteenth century town center, its fine Federal detail is re- presentative of this area's major period of significance. Although Westborough was established as a town in 1717, there was little stimulus for growth until the opening of the Boston-Worcester Turnpike (Route 9) in 1810. The installation of the Boston-Albany Railroad in 1834, however, curtailed development and shifted the town center southward. The Lothrop House remains as an important example of this early period of prosperity.
Evidence from deeds, Lothrop's commercial ventures, and stylistic features suggest a construction date of ca. 1825 for this house. Its original owner, Joseeh Lothrop and his brother-in-law Nathan Fisher, opened Westborough's first retail store at that time in an addition to Fisher's house (potential N.R.). Later, the two opened a thread factory on Fisher's property and were the first manufacturers in Westborough to use steam power. The high quality of the Lothrop and Fisher houses reflects their owners' standing within the community. The Lothrop House is important in a regional showing the impact which the Boston-Worcester Turnpike had on the communities which it traversed.
It is one of the few buildings remaining along its length which remain to indicate the wealth which the turnpike brought. EX! S 0SIE1O 9.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80001680, 10 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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