Cato Hill Historic District - Woonsocket RI
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nomadwillie
N 42° 00.301 W 071° 30.827
19T E 291823 N 4653390
An early working class neighborhood, built generally from 1840 to 1890
Waymark Code: WMDVNJ
Location: Rhode Island, United States
Date Posted: 02/27/2012
Views: 3
Cato Hill District is well defined of an urban working-class neighborhood. Located on a hilltop site in the center of Woonsocket, its outerbounds are defined by the steep slopes descending to the commercial/industrial zone along Railroad St and the business district on Main St and Monument Square to the east. The district consists of 2 narrom crooked streets, Cato and Church linked by Boyden and Clarkin Lane.
Cato Hill was laid out in small house lots in about 1840 which, when possible, followed the 50X100 foot mode standard for urban residential neighborhoods. The only significant open space was a cemetery, but this was gone by 1895. In general Cato Hill remains densely built up.
Typically building are located close to the street. How the building were placed on the lots was somewhat sporadic and did not follow any standard placement. This gave rise to a hodge podge look on the crooked streets.
Architectually the buildings are quite simple and unpretentious. 56 of the 87 building are dated c.1840 and c.1875. Only 10 buildings are from the 20th century. All 19th century buildings are frame construction, originally clapboard clad and trimmed with the simpliest late Federal, Greek Revival, Bracketed or Queen Anne detailing.
The earliest buildings are Greek Revival. Those constructed in the 1860's and early 70's were Greek Revival, however a few showed the influence of the newer bracketed style. In the late 1870's the Greek Revival mode was abandoned for the bracketed style. In the late 1880's and early 90's Queen Anne adornments became popular.
Cato Hill is a representative mid 19th centry working class neighborhood built by individual property owners for themselves or inexpensive tenements for the wave of immigant families drawn to American industrial cities. The name is dervied from Cato Aldrich, a Black, who brought the property from the Arnold family, 17th founders of Woonsocket.
The Cato Hill area was half occupied by Irish immigrants and half Yankees. The end of the Civil War brought the French Canadians. In the early 20th century, a third ethnci group came from central Europe such as the Ukranians. They had little impact on the development of the area. As time goes by the Cato Hill becomes less and less of a particular ethnic group.
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