The Morristown Historic District is a nationally recognized

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

embracing much of the village of Morristown,

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Founded along the

National Road The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road) was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was a main tran ...

, Morristown prospered as long as the road was heavily travelled, but it stagnated after railroads became prominent. Because the community neither died nor prospered, it has retained its mid-nineteenth-century architecture into the present, making it one of the National Road's least-changed settlements. Settled in the early nineteenth century, Morristown prospered after the National Road became its main street in 1826. In its first decades, the village was heavily dependent on the road; during the 1850s, more than forty National Road-related businesses lined its streets. However, prosperity departed soon afterward: railroads were built through eastern Ohio in the 1850s, supplanting the National Road as the major mode of transportation, and because no railroad served Morristown, it lost most of its commerce. Buildings continued to be erected into the 1870s, but comparatively little construction occurred in later decades. Nevertheless, the village remained, and benign neglect contributed to Morristown's preservation: no other National Road community in eastern Ohio has experienced so few changes since the road's heyday. Part of its significance derives from construction methods. Most buildings are

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

structures built of brick in

Flemish bond Flemish bond is a pattern of brickwork that is a common feature in Georgian architecture. The pattern features bricks laid lengthwise (''stretchers'') alternating with bricks laid with their shorter ends exposed (''headers'') within the same cou ...

, setting Morristown apart from surrounding communities, which possess few historic brick buildings.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 1. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 63. In early 1980, the Morristown Historic District was declared, with boundaries encompassing ; seventy of the district's eighty-six buildings were rated as

contributing properties In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distr ...

, as was the village cemetery. Limited destruction and limited new construction has left Morristown with nearly all of its mid-19th century

built environment The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human ac ...

, enabling the district to qualify for the Register both because of its place in area history and because of its historic architecture.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Belmont County, Ohio National Road 1980 establishments in Ohio Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio