Stoddard Center today is an architectural time capsule. Each surviving original structure is integral to the history of the village. Few of the buildings are individually significant in an architectural or historical sense, but each is essential to the overall story of Stoddard history. Each structure adds to the whole picture illustrating the town’s cultural, commercial, governmental, religious, and social history. The loss of any one of these structures would damage the historical character and integrity of the village.
Stoddard Center village moved, like so many of its counterparts across New Hampshire, for a second and final time in the 1830s. The village was slowly relocated from a nearby hill above the Congregational Church to the west to a more commercially desirable location near new and busier highways. The first home in the new village location was built in 1831. Almost two dozen additional homes, businesses and institutional buildings were constructed there over the next 1½ decades and a new town hall was built in 1868. Sixteen of those buildings survive today and very few additional structures have been built since the 1860s.
Two properties in the Town Center, the Stoddard Town Hall and the Nathan Gould House next door to the Town Hall, are listed on the New Hampshire Register of Historic Places. This is a great honor for the Town of Stoddard, as only the most suitable properties in New Hampshire are placed on this Register.
To see a copy of an original map of the Stoddard Town Center from 1892 with information on the owners of buildings,
Click on this Link.
Click on the links below for further information and photos of some of these buildings:
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Stoddard Town Hall, 1867-68
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Nathan Gould House, 1833
James D. Cutter Farm, c.1840
Stoddard Congregational Church, 1836
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Loomis-Hadley House, c.1834 |
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Historical Society Building
Nathan Morse House, 1843
The White House, c.1824-1831
The Old Parsonage, 1843
The Messenger House, c1830-40
Houses to the East of the Town Hall, across Kings Highway:
Knight-Davis House, 1835 |
Rutherford Place, c.1844
Joel Whittemore Place, 1832
Though not part of Stoddard Center, further east on Route 123N is an early house of note:
Parker-Holmes Place, 1800
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