Rockland Almshouse
Rockland, Massachusetts, listed on the NRHP in Massachusetts

The Rockland Almshouse is a historic almshouse at 198 Spring Street in Rockland, Massachusetts. The large 2+1⁄2-story L-shaped building was built in 1876, and served as a communal poor house until 1979. It is a rare well-preserved example of a 19th-century almshouse. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It is currently used as an educational facility.
Description and history
The almshouse is located south of Rockland's village center, on the east side of Spring Street, a major north–south artery in the southern part of the town. The main building is an L-shaped 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, with a gabled roof, clapboard siding, and foundation of brick and rubblestone. The east–west portion of the L has a single-story hip-roof porch extending on its southern façade, with original turned posts and balustrade. This façade is five bays wide, with the main entrance at the center bay. The west-facing gable end is three bays wide, with two sash windows in the gable, three windows on the first level, and two windows flanking a modern emergency exit on the second.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7355430. Authority coordinates are 42.114, -70.912. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1979 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rockland Almshouse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.