Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Maples Cottage
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
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.80001681- 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 48 fires within 5 miles of Maples Cottage between
2015 and 2020, burning about 32 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
15
Debris and open burning
12
Smoking
9
Recreation and ceremony
6
Arson/incendiarism
4
Equipment and vehicle use
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 1,166 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Maples Cottage between 1840 and
1975: 487 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 Maples Cottage: 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
Westborough, the town this property stands in, in 27 storm reports between 1998 and 2023: 16 thunderstorm wind, 6 hail, 2 lightning, 2 flood.
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.
A concentrated area of wind damage in Westborough was found by an NWS storm survey team around Chauncy and Oak Streets and extended ENE to the east shore of Chauncy Pond on the old Westborough State Hospital property and to the ESE along Flanders Street. Numerous hardwood and softwood trees, some very large, were uprooted or snapped off. A few landed on houses and vehicles. Most of the downed trees were lying in an easterly direction except more toward the ENE along the east shore of Chauncy Pond, consistent with what one might expect to be something of a divergent pattern with a microburst. At the southern edge of the damage swath no more than a quarter mile from downtown Westborough, the trees and branches seemed to be lying in a more ESE direction, again suggesting a hint of a divergent pattern. Several signs were blown down along Route 9, including a large restaurant sign and a billboard. A resident along Chauncy Street who took video looking out of his basement window showed an image that showed the storm approaching at 7:55 PM EDT and damage occurring at 8:02 PM EDT. The concentrated part of the microburst began about a half mile west of the Route 9 and Lyman Street intersection and ended about three quarters of a mile east of that point. The westernmost sign of damage observed was a tree down along Otis Street. It is possible that some damage occurred further west but was not part of the survey area. The team encountered one of the largest root balls they had ever seen on the old Westborough State Hospital grounds. Scattered damage was observed to the east into Southborough.
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
1,888 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 Maples Cottage is located on a rise, northwest of the junction of Park and Oak Streets. It is a two-story house of transitional Federal/Greek Revival design consisting of a rectangular plan front section with an ell located east of center on the structure's rear wall. The structure is covered throughout with clapboards. Front Section: The house's front section is of characteristic Federal design with a one- room deep floor plan, hammered granite foundation and low hip roof. The facade is on the south wall and consists, at the first story, of a center entrance flanked by two windows on each side and, at the second story, of five windows symmetrically placed.
The entrance is framed by Doric pilasters; set between the pilasters are three-pane side lights with arched heads and a panelled door with two arched lights (added ca. 1860). Extending across the facade is a one-story porch supported by four Doric columns. the front section of the house are pilasters which rise to moulded capitals and a broken entablature containing triglyphs. End walls, east and west, contain one window centered at each story, while the rear wall contains one window at the first story west of the ell, a blind window frame at the second story also to the west and no windows east of the ell. Windows of the front section are uniform by story, being oversized 6/6 sash set in moulded surrounds (ca. 1860) at the first story and 6/9 set in moulded surrounds at the second story.
Chimneys of the front section have either been capped below the roof or removed. Rear Ell: The rectangular plan rear ell which extends northward has panelled pilasters at its corners and an interior chimney slightly east of center on its end wall.
/Architect Builder unknown Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Maples Cottage possesses integrity of location, design, materials and workmanship as well as historical assocation with the early development of Westborough. Located in the original eighteenth century town center, its fine Federal/Greek Revival detail is represen- tative 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 Maples Cottage remains as an important example of this early period of prosperity.
Occupation of the Maples Cottage site dates back to 1725 when Ebenezer Parkman, Westborough's first minister, built a house in this location. During the prosperous of the early nineteenth century, this house was dismantled and between 1830 and 1832 William White constructed the Maples Cottage on its foundation, reportedly using materials salvaged from the earlier structure. White apparently farmed the surrounding land as had previous owners of the property. In 1884, the Maples cottage and its farm land (along with other properties in the area) was bought by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for use by the Lyman School, a reformatory for boys.
The Lyman School, which had been located on Lyman Street, Westborough, used Maples Cottage as a staff residence from the 1880's until the mid-twentieth. At the same time, surrounding land was farmed by the school as part of its curriculum. Changes in the school's program in the mid-twentieth century have led to the abandonment of farming on the property and the elimination of a residential staff. At present, the Maples Cottage is vacant.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80001681, 8 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.
Block
