This altered, yet significant building on Bow Street in Somerville’s Union Square commercial district, was built in 1908 as the Somerville National Bank. The Somerville National Bank was chartered in 1892 and was the city’s first and only local bank until the 1930s. After nearly two decades of renting space in another building, the bank hired the architectural firm of Gay & Proctor, to furnish plans for this handsome suburban bank building. Constructed of brick with stone trim, the building originally featured a large, arched window at the facade, which was replaced by a more contemporary opening. Classical Revival details remain, from the monumental gable pediment with dentils, to the parapet with classical moldings. The bank has been repurposed into mixed use space, with a cafe on the ground floor and yoga and wellness studio above.
Union Square is the oldest and largest commercial district in Somerville, and its growth is tied to the residential and commercial growth of the City. The three main streets that form Union Square—Somerville Avenue, Bow Street, and Washington Street—were originally 17th- and 18th-century trade routes used by farmers in Somerville to transport products, mostly dairy and produce, to larger markets in Charlestown and Boston. As the region grew, so did Union Square, with later hotels, civic buildings, churches and later, more car-centric uses like automobile garages and gas stations. By the 1920s, prosperity stagnated and one-story commercial blocks replaced larger, more ornate structures. This small building, the Cities Service Refining Co. Fuel Station at 69-71 Bow Street, was built in the mid-1920s and is an example of the wave of automobile-oriented development that occured here at the time. Before WWII, many service station companies created brand-identities by designing the appearance of their service stations like the Cities Service Stations and Beacon Oil Company, who regionally, developed distinctive Colonial Revival cottage prototypes for their chains to fit better within local context. This small service station, now 100 years old, is Colonial Revival in style with a hipped roof with cupola, symmetrical facade, and fanlight transom over the center entrance. When a developer proposed to demolish the station, the local preservation commission found the building preferrably preserved, initiating a delay on the demolition, forcing the developer to either wait out the delay or incorporate the structure into the new building. They chose the latter, and now we can visually see the layering of history on this site in Union Square, incorporating preservation with a 24-unit passive house development with the old station used as a mailroom. What do you think of this story?
Somerville, Massachusetts, was long part of Charlestown, until it incorporated as a separate town in 1842. From the 1840s until just after the Civil War, Somerville went from a sleepy farming village to manufacturing center, spurring a sharp influx of immigrants to the city, industry boomed and brick manufacturing became the predominant trade. The town of Somerville incorporated as a city in 1872, and one of the first civic buildings constructed as a new city, was this Victorian Gothic building on Bow Street in Union Square to house the growing Somerville Police Station. Built in 1874 from plans by architect, George Albert Clough, a prominent and busy local designer. The handsome station was in use until the new Police Headquarters further east in Union Square was built in 1932. This building was sold off by the city and became offices and housed meeting spaces for a local boy’s club and an American Legion Post until it was converted into housing in the late 20th century.
The Highland Apartments, on Highland Avenue in Somerville, is one of the city’s most architecturally distinguished and significant late 19th century apartment buildings. Richardsonian Romanesque in style, the building is constructed of brick with brownstone trimmings, a rounded corner tower with conical roof, and Romanesque arched entrances. The building even retains its name, “Highland”, carved in brownstone at the corner. The building contained 12 units, all with multiple windows and views of the adjacent park or ever-growing Boston from its hilltop location. The architect, Samuel Dudley Kelley, was a noted designer of apartment buildings at the time. The Highland remains an important, preserved example of late 19th century multi-family housing, and showcases how far we have fallen when designing such structures today.
Buildings of New England 