In the 1600s, the land that is now Nonantum belonged to the Park family, who also owned a large area of Newtonville. More English settlers began to arrive in the 1700s, and by the early 1800s, Watertown Street, Crafts Street, and California Street were lined with small farms. The area was known as North Village for most of its history, and later as Silver Lake, after a large pond located between Nevada and Adams Street. 

In 1778, David Bemis established a paper mill on the Charles River at Bridge Street.  Other industry soon followed. For the next 150 years, the village prospered as a center for the production of cotton, woolens, and rope. New brick factories were erected on the shores of Silver Lake at Nevada Street. Eventually the Nonantum Worsted Company, which took over much of the area between Bridge Street and Chapel Street in the 1880s, gave its name to the village. 

In response to the need for mill workers, inexpensive housing was built, and waves of new immigrants—Irish, French Canadian, Italian, and Jewish—settled in the village. Construction boomed between 1860 and 1910, as houses, churches, and businesses crowded into Nonantum.

Most of Nonantum’s factories closed in the early 1900s, and Silver Lake was lost to landfill and development, but Nonantum remains Newton’s most densely populated village. A strong Italian-American community still thrives in “the Lake.”