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WS Fenn 1040" OW MpOW NA 1024WIS <br /> United States Department of the Interior <br /> National Park Service <br /> National Register of Historic Places <br /> Continuation Sheet <br /> Section number 7 Page 2 <br /> commercial, residential, and socio-institutional divisions of the two <br /> communities. Above Central City, Nevadaville (or Nevada City) is reached by <br /> Nevada Street up the narrow Nevada Gulch Valley. While mining activity <br /> expanded around Central City and Nevadaville, Black Hawk emerged as the <br /> processing and transportation center of the district. Thus the communities <br /> were economically as well as socially interdependent. The 20 remaining <br /> buildings at Nevadaville give but a glimpse of the historic town. However, <br /> taken together, the three towns still physically illustrate the social and <br /> economic interrelationship between the three principal settlements of the <br /> Gregory mining district. At the peak of mining activity, they formed "an <br /> almost continuous line of buildings, mines, and cabins crowded together and <br /> forming an irregular, linear community."' <br /> Major town building in Black Hawk and Central City was simultaneous, in the <br /> same configuration, with streets following the topography of the gulches <br /> that cut into the steep mountainous terrain, rather than the traditional <br /> grid pattern followed by other new towns built on flatter terrain. Streets <br /> run, as they did historically, on either side of the creek banks and <br /> precipitously along the hillsides above. Lawrence, Eureka, Gregory, Spring, <br /> Nevada, and Main Streets follow the creek at the bottom of steep Gregory <br /> Gulch, which branches into Eureka and Nevada Gulches. Streets laid out <br /> parallel to these followed the contours of the surrounding hillsides. <br /> Access to them is by steep cross streets and alleyways with wooden stairs. <br /> By the mid 1860s, Lawrence Street on either side of its intersection with <br /> Main Street was solidly built up as the main commercial thoroughfare in <br /> Central City, as was Gregory Street from its intersection with Main Street <br /> in Black Hawk. Most town lots were platted approximately 25 feet wide and <br /> 75 feet deep, though with the irregularity of the topography, dimensions <br /> varied considerably. A highly distinctive feature of both Black Hawk and <br /> Central City is the patchwork of mortarless stone retaining walls that wind <br /> throughout the residential areas. The walls are considered an illustration <br /> of the stone masonry skills of the Cornish miners. The rugged topography <br /> necessitated this stone wall terracing to enable building construction in <br /> the crowded and compact spaces of the gulches and on the hillsides. <br /> With rare exceptions, the majority of buildings listed as contributing to <br /> the NHL district are vernacular rather than high style designs, reflecting <br /> local taste, custom, and available materials. The commercial districts of <br /> Black Hawk and Central City are built as tightly-packed, contiguous <br /> buildings, many sharing common walls. The stylistic influence most <br /> prevalent in the commercial and public architecture of the district is <br /> Italianate, with some Romanesque Revival and Gothic Revival influence as <br />