Four-Unit Mill Housing

Four-Unit Mill Housing

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1851–1862. 1742–1748 Lonsdale Ave. and 9–11 Cook St.

Downhill from the joyous image of the Magoun House, a grimmer cluster: four-unit brick housing, built in the severe brick and granite mode of the factories. It typifies quarters built by the Lonsdale Company for its predominantly Irish, English, and Scottish work force here as well as in Berkeley and Ashton. But to those who came from housing of this kind in the English Midlands, these may have seemed at the time to be model quarters in having more space and more modern equipment than their British equivalents, as well as in the provision for a modicum of greenery in company-maintained lawns with trees bordering the street (the typical Midlands village had none). Here each family has its own narrow two-and-one-half-story slice through the housing block. The middle units are entered from two doors toward the center of the front elevation, with dormers to light the attic, while the outer units have entrances at the ends of the buildings and attic windows in the gable ends.

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