Wellesley Hills Square

Wellesley Hills Square, a commercial center for one of the major villages of Wellesley, marks the intersection of key east–west transportation routes—Washington Street, the Worcester to Boston Turnpike (Route 9), and the Boston and Worcester Railroad. The square was the site of the Eden Park Hotel from 1808 to 1908, when the town demolished the hotel and created a triangular park on its site. Just west of the square, the Wellesley Hills Unitarian Society erected their first church (309 Washington Street), a picturesque boulder Gothic Revival design with high slate roof and multistaged belfry by Rotch and Tilden in 1887–1888 (with a new gable-roofed stone sanctuary addition by Harry Gulesian in 1960). Diagonally across from the church stands the brick and terra-cotta first high school (324 Washington Street, NR), a project of Hartwell and Richardson built in 1894. In 1928, Benjamin Proctor Jr., a Wellesley architect, designed the Sprague Memorial Tower, a fieldstone tower with frame belfry to mark Wellesley Hills Square at Eden Park. North of the square across Route 9, the town has erected a new fire station, a red brick, stone- and aluminum-trimmed structure with four engine bays beneath a broad segmental arch, a horizontal window band at the top of the main building, and left corner tower, to the award-winning designs of Schwartz/Silver in 1995. East of Route 9 lies the Wellesley Hills Branch Public Library (1928, Hampton Shirer, 210 Washington Street), constructed in a style and materials compatible with the Sprague Memorial Tower of the same year. Across the street, the Wellesley Hills Congregational Society had erected a fieldstone Perpendicular Gothic church (1901–1902, George Newton). On either side of the church are early houses moved to this area. The 1824 Dadmun-McNamara House (229 Washington Street) was moved here from 871 Washington in 1975, when it was presented to the Wellesley Historical Society as a headquarters. To the east stands the Stone-Fuller House (c. 1848, moved here in 1911, 189 Washington), a handsome Italianate cottage that was once the residence of an owner of the Elm Park Hotel.