Alstead’s Vilas Pool Park among 4 properties added to New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places

By Jordan J. Phelan
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
ALSTEAD — Vilas Pool Park in Alstead is among four properties throughout the Granite State spanning two centuries of history that have recently been added to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places.

The New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, established in 1974 and part of the New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, announced on Wednesday via a news release that the state Historical Resources Council has recognized the following locations:

Vilas Pool Park Constructed primarily between 1925 and 1926, the park was gifted to the town of Alstead by native Charles Nathaniel Vilas and is significant both as a well-preserved example of an early 20th century recreational area and for its architecture and landscape architecture. The park’s manmade pool is formed by a dam that slows the flowing Cold River. Other features include a pedestrian bridge, pavilion, boat house, carillon, stone tables and fireplaces, and other structures designed to enhance recreational visits.

Waldron Store and Keeneborough Grange HallThe most intact historic store building in Brentwood, the Waldron Store and Keeneborough Grange Hall has served a variety of community functions from the time it was built in 1855. The second floor was home to the Grange beginning in 1892 and has been the site of suppers, theater performances, games and dances for that organization and for others in town, while the first floor — which has been a general store, post office and library — is now home to the Historical Society.

Calley Homestead/1820 HouseThe simple early Federal-style portion of the Calley Homestead/1820 House in Plymouth was built in 1800; its circa 1820s extension has more sophisticated Federal style details that developed later. One of several late eighteenth and early nineteenth century buildings that still exist on Highland Street in Plymouth, the property had a long succession of owners for its first century. In the early 1940s, it served the community as a boarding house and restaurant, then as an antique shop into the 1970s.

Webster Memorial LibraryOne of more than 100 new library buildings constructed in New Hampshire from 1890-1930, Wentworth’s Webster Memorial Library, built in 1916, is one of only five that is classified as Arts and Crafts style. Even more unusual, its concrete basement houses a gymnasium where basketball games were played as late as the early 1970s. Funds to build the library were donated by Wentworth natives George and Henry Webster to honor their parents, Edward Kendall Webster and Betsy Johnson Webster.

Anyone wishing to nominate a property to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places must research the history of the nominated property and document it on an individual inventory form from the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources. Having a property listed in the Register does not impose restrictions on property owners. For more information, visit nh.gov/nhdhr.