Lonsdale Hall

Lonsdale Hall

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1869. 1661 Lonsdale Ave.

North on Lonsdale Avenue is one of the more extensive collections in the state of a wide range of mill housing types, from Greek Revival through the early twentieth century, much of it quite well preserved. The three Greek Revival units diagonally across the street from Christ Church and closest to the corner, at 1662–1664 Lonsdale Avenue (
LI2.1), have been resurfaced but are recognizable, with transomed doors and narrow trapdoor monitors. Although they appear from the front to be duplexes, like many such houses each contains four apartments, including an attic bedroom for each of the upstairs units, designed to accommodate larger families than those below. Then, at 1672–1674 Lonsdale Avenue, is a Victorian duplex, with bracketed doors (
LI2.2).

Opposite is the forceful brick block of Lonsdale Hall, built by the corporation as a community center to house a meeting space, library, reading room, and shops, the last seriously compromised by remodelings. Opposite this and farther along (see especially 1700–1702 Lonsdale Avenue) are Queen Anne duplexes and four-unit brick houses (
LI2.3), well preserved even to their slate roofs, with long roof dormers and pitched roof porches, which recall attempts at cozy picturesqueness in early twentieth-century housing derived from model industrial towns in England.

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