Nashua Signs — page 2
9 November 2021
Project Understanding
Nashua Millyard
Plan showing proposed locations of signs, one adjacent to the Nashua Canal (“Waste House
sign location”) and the other in a city park within the French Village district
French Village sign: Rather than focus specifically on the Charles Gordon house at 40 Pine Street,
removed for the Parkway project, the sign will interpret French Village as a whole. The sign will
be located in the public park located on the site of the Labine Building that burned in February
2010. It was a Romanesque Revival style flatiron type commercial block with a store on the first
floor and a French-Canadian social hall upstairs. The Gordon House was a mixed commercial and
residential building with a first-floor storefront. Both buildings were contributors to the National
Register eligibility of the French Village Historic District.
French Village Historic District was documented on a NHDHR Area Form by VHB and
determined eligible for the National Register in 2008. It is a mill-related working-class
neighborhood associated with French Canadians and other ethnic groups over time. The form was
a combination project/district area form that defined the boundaries of a district but focused on the
project area on Pine and Palm streets. It contains historical information and description of
individual properties but little overall summary of the historic significance of the area and little
text that could be directly excerpted for use in a sign. The form includes copies of reconnaissance-
level inventory forms completed in 1988 by Boston Affiliates. There are no historic photographs.
Historic maps are included but not of high enough quality to be extracted for use. The current
photographs in the form are black and white. Individual inventory forms were also completed in
2008-09 for buildings including the Labine Block.
Mill yard and canal sign: The interpretive sign is mitigation for demolition of a mill yard waste
house, a contributing building in the National Register listed Nashua Manufacturing Company
Historic District. The sign will be located off Pine Street at Storehouse Number 2 near the former
waste house site, adjacent to the Nashua canal and the railroad. The sign is expected to include
