BlockFrom the record
One of 1,353 National Register listings published here for Middlesex County · listed in 1989 · category: Building.
Sources: the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service
Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Downer Rowhouses (Central Street)
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1893.
The listing
- What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 5 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
- Address. 192--200 Central St., Somerville, 02145
- When was it listed? 1989-09-18
- Category. building
- Also known as. Somerville MPS
- City. Somerville city
- National Register reference number. 89001241 - 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.
The ground it stands on
55,107 wordsThe chapter on Somerville City in History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 names Somerville. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
The surface is uneven, and rises into no less than eight considerable elevations, of which Prospect, Winter, Spring, and Central hills, and Mount Benedict are the principal. The soil is various, and in many places excellent for cultivation. Good sand for building purposes is abundant, and a vein of clay, suitable for brickmaking, underlies much of the surface. The only stratified rock to be found in Somerville is slate. The intrusive rocks, cropping out in numerous ledges, in which occur an unusual variety of minerals, are entirely diabase. The formation is particularly rich in dikes.
Passage source: History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880.
At the founding of Charlestown in 1628, and for the first ten years, the area of the peninsula generally sufficed for the wants of the settlers; but when, in 1637, land became so scarce within the neck tiiat new-comers were rarely granted more than a citizensliip, purchases were made of the Indians, and settlements began to extend upon the mainland. Tiie territory north and east of the Charles River was then owned by the Pawtucket Indians ; and by payment of thirty-six shillings in 16-37, and twenty-one coats, nineteen fathoms of wampum, and three bushels of corn, two years later to Squa Sachem and Webcowit, rulers of the tribe, the latter were well satisfied to relinquish to the town of Charlestown all the territory that is now Somerville. A few settlers had established themselves on the mainland from the earliest period.
Passage source: History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880.
Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.
Read the whole chapter on Somerville City - 55,107 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.
Fires near this property
88 since 2015Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 88 fires within 5 miles of Downer Rowhouses (Central Street) between 2015 and 2020, burning about 114 acres in total. None started naturally. 30 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 |
|---|---|
| Arson/incendiarism | 30 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 21 |
| Debris and open burning | 15 |
| Recreation and ceremony | 14 |
| Smoking | 6 |
| Equipment and vehicle use | 1 |
| Misuse of fire by a minor | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2018 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 4 September 2018 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 3 September 2018 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 23 September 2019 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 23 September 2019 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 22 September 2019 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 21 September 2020 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 2 September 2018 | Equipment and vehicle use | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | BROOKLINE |
Specimens collected near this property
12 of 1,684 shownRegional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 1,684 specimens collected within 10 miles of Downer Rowhouses (Central Street) between 1898 and 1975: 735 Animalia, 514 Plantae, 371 Fungi, 27 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 12 Chromista, 8 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper 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.
| Image | Species | Year | Collected by | Where, as recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Trientalis borealis Raf. | 1900 | A. P. Chute | |
| Aglaospora profusa (Fr.) De Not. | 1898 | Collector unspecified | ||
 | Bulbostylis capillaris var. crebra Fernald | 1898 | C. H. Knowlton | Boston. |
 | Cantharellus cinnabarinus (Schwein.) Schwein. | 1898 | not recorded | Newton. |
 | Cantharellus infundibuliformis (Scop.) Fr. | 1898 | not recorded | Melrose. |
 | Cladonia coccifera (L.) Willd. | 1898 | Francis P Daniels | Cambridge |
 | Cladonia rangiferina (L.) Weber | 1898 | Francis P Daniels | Arlington Heights |
 | Cordyceps capitata (Holmsk.) Link | 1898 | Conant, [?] F. | Middlesex Fells |
 | Crataegus coccinea L. | 1898 | not recorded | Harvard University Arboretum |
 | Ctenidium malacodes Mitt. | 1898 | not recorded | |
 | Acanthis flammea flammea (Linnaeus, 1758) | 1900 | ZAPPEY, W R | ROSLINDALE |
 | Acer carpinifolium Siebold & Zucc. | 1900 | A. K. Harrison | Harvard Botanic Garden, Cambridge. |
All 1,684 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
Mines and quarries near this property
10 of 13 shownRegional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 13 workings within 5 miles of Downer Rowhouses (Central Street): 9 plants, 2 past producers, 1 unknown, 1 producer. 10 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Lead, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Gypsum-Anhydrite. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Where | Site | Commodity | Status | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Facility) Vulcan Smelter--Chelsea, Ma. | Copper, Lead | Plant | ||
| C. J. Mabardy | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Past Producer | ||
| Syncor Prdts Co--Malden, Ma. | Silica | Plant | ||
| Us Gypsum Co--Boston | Gypsum-Anhydrite | Past Producer | ||
| Whittemore Prdts Inc--Boston | Perlite | Plant | ||
| Malden Quarry | Stone, Crushed/Broken | Unknown | ||
| Malden Quarry | Stone, Crushed/Broken | Producer | ||
| (Facility) Cambridge Smelter Co | Lead | Plant | ||
| General Metals & Smelting--Boston | Lead | Plant | ||
| Industrial Serv. Centers--Cambridge | Iron | Plant |
Storms near this property
7 since 2006Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Somerville, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 2006 and 2021: 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 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.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2014 | Flood | Somerville | $30,000 | Water flooded Medford Street up to the roof of a vehicle. Two vehicles were stuck in flood waters on Medford Street. In addition, a large sinkhole opened up as a result of the flooding. This resulted in the street closing through Wednesday, December 10 while crews figured out how to repair the sinkhole. |
| July 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Somerville | $10,000 | no account filed |
| June 2017 | Thunderstorm Wind | Somerville | $4,000 | At 427 PM EST, a member of the public reported several trees uprooted in the Winter Hill section of Somerville. |
| June 2017 | Thunderstorm Wind | Somerville | $1,500 | At 428 PM EST, a tree and wires were reported down on Heath Street in Somerville. |
| June 2017 | Thunderstorm Wind | Somerville | $1,500 | At 429 PM EST, a tree and wires were downed on Bow Street in Medford. |
| August 2021 | Thunderstorm Wind | Somerville | $500 | In Somerville, a tree was down on the 40 block of Derby St. |
| October 2018 | Flood | Somerville | - | Water bursting out of manhole covers on Mystic Avenue, south of Route 16. |
Maps showing this location
17 surveysUnited 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.
- 1893 USGS Boston quadrangle1:62500 - 4 printings
- 1903 USGS Boston quadrangle1:62500 - 13 printings
- 1943 USGS Boston quadrangle1:125000
- 1943 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:24000
- 1946 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:31680 - 2 printings
- 1948 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
- 1949 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:31680
- 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000 - 6 printings
- 1956 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:24000 - 3 printings
- 1958 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
- 1961 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
- 1971 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:24000
- 1971 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:25000
- 1977 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:25000
- 1985 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000
- 1985 USGS Boston North quadrangle1:25000 - 3 printings
- 1989 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000 - 2 printings
From the nomination file
980 words on recordWhen 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 reproduced in full on its own page, word for word and 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.
The whole case file for this property - 980 words, 8 pages, reproduced complete.
Quoted from the National Register nomination for reference 89001241, 8 pages, held by the National Archives in Record Group 79. See the catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 milesOther 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.
| Photograph | Property | Distance | Listed |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Broadway Winter Hill Congregational Church | under 500 feet | 1989 |
 | Downer Rowhouses (Adams Street) | under 500 feet | 1989 |
 | Adams, Charles-Woodbury Locke House | under 500 feet | 1989 |
 | Amos Keyes House | 0.1 miles | 1989 |
 | Adams-Magoun House | 0.1 miles | 1989 |
 | Langmaid Terrace | 0.2 miles | 1989 |
Sources for this property
| National Archives record | The nomination case file for reference 89001241 in Record Group 79. |
| Middlesex County | All 1353 listed properties in this county. |
Provenance
- 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.