508, 510-512, 514-516, 518-520, 522-524 Merrimac Street
MACRIS NWB.BD · area form, 1980
This record covers a cluster of houses at 508 to 524 Merrimac Street, on the Merrimack River side, dated about 1898 from assessor's records. Willard Hatch acquired the land and combined it into one large lot between 1897 and 1899, and the form concludes that he then built the houses as a speculation. At the time, the Newburyport and Amesbury Horse Railroad Company, later the Northeast Street Railway Company, occupied the neighboring lot at 506 Merrimac Street, and the form suggests the houses may have been meant for its workers. Hatch kept the buildings until the late 1920s, then began selling them to individual buyers.
The houses are one or two stories with pitched roofs and share plain vernacular Victorian detail. 508 is the only single-family house, trimmed with turned brackets at the door and a simple cornice. The next two are two-family houses with plain Victorian doorways, and the last two are similar but set gable end to the street, with one story under the roof.
Summarized from the Massachusetts Historical Commission's area form. See the MACRIS record ↗
