Foxboro Grange Hall

The Foxboro Grange Hall is a late Victorian canmercial building in downtown Foxboro. It stands directly on the sidewalk of Bird Street, abutted by parking lots and an apartment building. The Town Carmon lies approximately 200 feet to the west. Sheathed in clapboard, the blocky wood frame structure is capped by an asphalt shingled roof. A granite ashlar foundation contains a full basement, while the roof frames a small slightly offset chimney and single, gabled dormers on the front (north) and back (south) . Although its roof height remains constant, the Grange Hall contains three stories in its forward section and - due to the exaggerated height of the second floor meeting roam - only two stories at the rear.

Plain corner boards and a simple frieze with cornice molding frame all elevations. The symmetrical facade (north side) rises fran two ground floor storefronts flanking, a central doorway. The plate glass store windows and recessed, canted entries are topped by glazed transans and framed by plain wooden posts, a simple entablature, and low vertical boarding. On the second floor are five 2/2 windows with a simple cornice molding, while the third floor contains five shorter 2/2 windows with plain architraves. The east and west sides of the forward part of the building have similar fenestration, substituting small rectangular windows with cornice moldinghigh of the first floor. Windows on the asymmetrical west side lack the decorative cornice molding.

The rear of the building projects eastward about five feet; it has regularly placed, unornamented 2/2 windows on the first floor and on the eastern side of the second floor. The rest of the second floor, which contained the original Grange hall, has taller 2/2 sash surmounted by two-light transans.

/Architect N/A Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Grange Hall is significant primarily for its association with the Foxboro Grange and with the regionally important straw hat industry. Secondarily, it remains as one of Foxboro's few extant and intact commercial blocks of the 19th century. The property meets Criterion A of the National Register, retaining integrity of design, materials, workmanship, setting, and location. The Grange Hall was built in 1897 as a meeting place for the Foxboro Grange, which occupied the second and third floors for 31 years. A grain store and other small retail businesses initially occupied the first f1o0r.

During the 19th century, Foxboro changed fran a small agricultural conmunity to a large industrial town - a result of the huge suocess of the straw hat industry. Membership in the Grange naturally fluctuated by the turn of the century, yet it remained an an important social organization to the people of Foxboro. Today the Grange Hall acts as a physical reminder of the town's agricultural heritage. The building's second historical association is with the straw hat industry, which daminated Foxbaro's ieconany in the 19th century. Smal1 scale manufacturing of hats began here in the 1930!'s, although the industry as a whole was. already in decline by then.

Francis Peterson, formerly an employee of the prominent Inman and Kimball Hat Factory, started his own hat business in the Grange Hall in 1937. Mrs. Wendell S. Young, Peterson's dau- ghter, still sells hats there today in the Foxboro Hat Shop. The building is one of the few sites remaining in Foxboro where straw hats were made. Although not stylistically distinctive, the Grange Hall is significant as an intact example of an important 19th century building type.