The City of Somerville created this small park in 1890 when Nathan Tufts offered the ancient powder house to the city to protect it from encroaching urban subdivision. Begun in the early eighteenth century as a windmill on the edge of the Two Penny Brook Quarry, which furnished the stone for its rubble walls, this cylindrical structure with conical roof was converted to the storage of gunpowder in 1747 by the colonial government. British general Thomas Gage raided the powder house in
Keith N. Morgan, "Nathan Tufts Park and Powder House", [Somerville, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-SM13.
Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, Keith N. Morgan, with Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Roger G. Reed, and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 404-405.
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