National Park Service - Rhode Island Historical Preservation ...

NPS Form 10400. 0MB IC 1024-0018
Exp. 10-31-84
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Inventory-Nomination Form
Continuation sheet 1 Item number 7
Page 2
shore of Saugatucket Pond #15 and #17 but excludes the sites of
two demolished Hazard houses, including property along Kingstown
Road occupied by residential subdivisions developed after 1948.
The boundary includes Kingstown Road dwellings south of the
village center as far as School Street, where the north end of
Wakefield-oriented development begins. On the east it
encompasses the village-related section of Broad Rock Road and
the most important surviving Hazard family house, the Acorns
#71. The border skirts two groups of late twentieth-century
houses off the eastern end of Church Street on Rose Circle and
Steven Circle. School Street constitutes the district’s south
line for the reason noted above. On the west, the boundary
follows the Saugatucket River in order to include Peace Daleoriented
buildings on Columbia Street, then follows Church Street
westward as far as the former Peace Dale Congregational Church
parsonage #88, turning north again and following the back lot
lines ofhouses lining Railroad Street, omitting undeveloped
property to the west. At Railroad Street and Kingstown Road the
boundary includes the historic Railroad Street Bridge#78, then
jogs east and north again, omitting the vacant Narragansett Pier
Railroad right-of-way and several non-historic commercial.
buildings, continuing to the district’s northwest corner at the
Peace Dale School #1.
Topographically, Peace Dale presents a varied scene, with
lowest elevations in the stream bed valleys and highest
elevations along Railroad Street, Kersey Road, and Church Street
at Brown Street. Most of the district is well wooded. However,
the mill yard#37 is largely devoid of trees, as is the
industrial property and former railroad land to the south and
west #82, 90, 91. Other large open spaces include the
landscaped Green #41, the grounds of the Peace Dale School 1,
and the complex of school properties at the southwest corners of
the district #110, 113, and 115.
Village streets possess distinct visual and historic
characteristics. The main thoroughfare, Kingstown Road, winds
through Peace Dale from northwest to southeast. This is an
eighteenth-century highway, save for the tortured course it
follows around the mill complex. Until 1870 at least, Kingstown
Road ran straight through the mill site; when the factory complex
was enlarged in the ‘70s, the road was rerouted to accommodate
industrial expansion. Bordering the mills #37 on the south,
this section of Kingstown Road passes on the north a small group
of commercial buildings #19, #20, #23; the remnant of a small,
contiguous early nineteenth-century factory complex #22, and