It was developed in the 1830s and 1840s as an area where mid-level employees of Chicopee's mills and factories lived, between the simpler tenements and boarding houses of the lower classes, and the elite mansions of the proprietors and top-level managers.

Most of the building stock in the district was built between 1846 and 1870, and were single family brick or wood-frame Greek Revival houses.

The Common, whose original purpose was to provide shared pasturage for area residents, was by the end of this period converted to a park.

From the 1870s to the 1890s the housing stock was predominantly multi-family in scale, and exhibited the architectural fashions of the time: Italianate, Second Empire, and Victorian.

Thereafter development was limited due to a lack of available land, and only a few brick apartment houses were built between 1890 and 1915.