Welcome to Dedham

Dedham is a town in Norfolk County just southwest of Boston, where it borders the city's West Roxbury and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Incorporated in 1636 and the county seat since 1793, it pairs a historic village center around Dedham Square and the Norfolk County Court House with residential neighborhoods along the Charles River and Mother Brook.

About Dedham

English settlers from Roxbury and Watertown arrived in 1635, and the town was incorporated the following year. The settlers asked to call it Contentment, but the General Court named it after Dedham in Essex, England, the birthplace of some of its first inhabitants. In 1639 the town dug Mother Brook to link the Charles and Neponset rivers, a channel the town describes as the oldest man-made canal in North America. Its water power later drove the mills of East Dedham.

When Dedham became the seat of Norfolk County, the granite Greek Revival court house on High Street, completed in 1827, anchored a growing civic and commercial center. The court house is remembered as the site of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Today the Dedham Village Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, takes in much of the old center, and the town's master plan describes six neighborhoods: Dedham Village and Dedham Square, East Dedham, Greenlodge, Sprague and Manor, Oakdale, Riverdale, and West Dedham. Dedham also borders Needham across the Charles River, along with Westwood and Canton.

Getting Around

Commuter rail trains on the Franklin/Foxboro Line stop at Endicott and Dedham Corporate Center stations on the way to South Station, with stops in nearby Hyde Park on other lines. Route 128 and Interstate 95 pass through town, the Providence Highway (Route 1) is the main commercial corridor, and High Street and Washington Street meet at Dedham Square.

Dedham Real Estate

Most homes in Dedham are single-family houses, with two-family houses, condominiums, and apartment buildings adding variety. The oldest housing is near the village center, where Georgian houses face Dedham Common and Federal-style houses line High Street and Court Street, and East Dedham keeps houses built for its 19th-century mill village. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Colonial Revival and stucco Craftsman houses went up west of the center and on the highlands above the Charles, while Oakdale, Ashcroft, and East Dedham filled in with Tudor, Dutch Colonial, and Colonial Revival single-family homes, two-family houses, and bungalows. Dedham has three local historic districts, two of them inside the National Register district.

Living in Dedham

History is part of everyday life here. The Fairbanks House on Eastern Avenue, built around 1637, is considered the oldest surviving timber-frame house in North America and is open seasonally as a museum. The Dedham Museum and Archive on High Street, founded in 1859 as the Dedham Historical Society, keeps the town's records and collections. The Endicott Estate, a Colonial Revival mansion built in 1904 on East Street and now owned by the town, hosts events on more than 18 acres of lawns.

For open space, Wilson Mountain Reservation is a 207-acre state park with wooded trails up to the highest point in town, and the Charles River and Mother Brook wind through the neighborhoods to the north and east. Dedham Square offers local shops, restaurants, and civic buildings, and larger retail centers, including Legacy Place, line the Providence Highway.

To see homes for sale in Dedham, browse the listings below or contact Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Warren Residential.