1930s Archives - Page 71 of 84

Eastern States Coliseum, West Springfield, Mass

January 2, 2017 by Derek Strahan

The interior of the Eastern States Coliseum during a cattle show in September, 1936. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Collection.

The Coliseum in 2016:

The Eastern States Exposition, better known as the Big E, began in 1916 as an agricultural fair for the six New England states. A century later, it is still held every September on the same site in West Springfield, and one of the centerpieces of the fair has been the Coliseum, seen here in these two photos. It opened in 1916 for the first exposition, and since then it has been used for a variety of events.

The first photo was taken during a cattle judging event at the 1936 exposition, and was photographed by Carl Mydans. He would go on to become a prominent photographer during World War II, and even spent two years as a prisoner of war to the Japanese. In 1936, though, he was working for the Farm Security Administration, traveling around the country and documenting rural life during the Great Depression, and his work can be seen on the Library of Congress website.

Aside from agricultural-related events at the Big E, the Coliseum has also been used as a sports venue, especially hockey. Starting in 1926, it was home to the Springfield Indians, a minor league professional hockey team. A few years after the first photo was taken, the team was purchased by Eddie Shore. A retired Bruins player who was later elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, Shore played here for three seasons and owned the team for nearly 40 years. In 1972, Shore and the Indians moved across the river to the newly-built Springfield Civic Center, and four years later he sold the team.

The Coliseum was last used for professional hockey a few years later, when the major league New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association briefly used it while their permanent home, the Hartford Civic Center, was nearing completion. After this, it continued to be used for high school hockey games until 1991, when the ice plant was dismantled.

Today, although hockey games are no longer played here, the Coliseum remains in use during the Big E as well as other times throughout the year. With a seating capacity of 5,900, it is still one of the largest arenas in Western Massachusetts, and as the two photos show, the interior has been well-preserved over the years. The windows along the exterior walls have since been covered, but overall the Coliseum is an excellent surviving example of an early 20th century indoor arena.

Rose Cottage, Springfield, Mass (2)

October 31, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Another view of the Rose Cottage, this time taken at its new location on Mulberry Street, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2016:

This house, once known as Rose Cottage, is the same as the one in the previous post, but in a different location. As mentioned in the other post, it was originally built in 1824 on Chestnut Street as the home of Elisha and Eunice Edwards. After Eunice’s death in 1875, Edwards Street was developed through the property, but the house was preserved. It was moved to 57 Mulberry Street, and her daughter, Charlotte Edwards Warner, lived here until her death in 1916.

Warner was an author who wrote A Chronicle of Ancient Chestnut Street, a short book that gives historical accounts of the old houses on Chestnut Street, including Rose Cottage. She also wrote a poem, “The Old House,” which was published in 1907 in The Poets and Poetry of Springfield in Massachusetts. Although the house is not specifically identified, it seems unmistakable that Warner was referring to the home where she and her nine siblings were born and raised:

“The Old House”

Still the sun shines
Shines luminously bright
On the white wall.
Deserted is the home:
Strangers will hither come,
Still will the sun give light
Alike to all.

Many thoughts rise
As my memory glides
Over the past;
Bringing the dead to life,
Now freed from mortal strife;
Passed o’er the surging tides
Peaceful at last.

Children I see,
Lovely they were to me
As the May morn;
But soon the angel Death
Received their parting breath;
They to Eternity
Onward were borne

Matron and maid
Passed through the valley’s shade
In the deep sea:
Strong was the maiden’s heart
Loving the better part;
In God her hope was staid
So trustingly.

Still the sun shines
Through the wide open blinds
On the white wall:
No shadow passes near,
No friendly voice I hear,
No one the beggar finds
Answers his call.

On each fair morn
I raise my eyes to see
The vision bright
And, as the glad sunshine
Enters this heart of mine,
Spirits there seem to me
Bathed in its light.

By the time the first photo was taken, the house was no longer in the Edwards family. However, just as the home had likely inspired Warner’s poem, Mulberry Street also found itself memorialized in literature. In 1937, a year or two before the first photo was taken, Springfield native Theodor Geisel published his first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, written under his pen name of Dr. Seuss.

Today, the old Rose Cottage home is still standing on Mulberry Street. With simple Greek Revival architecture, it is very different from the more elaborate homes on the street, which date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its significance, though, seems to have gone mostly unnoticed. Aside from a single article in the Springfield Republican a century ago, I have found little about this house. Having been built in 1824, it is among the oldest buildings in the downtown area, and it is the last of the original Chestnut Street homes still standing in the city, yet information about the house is fairly scarce. However, its exterior nonetheless remains well preserved. Aside from the loss of the porch, very little has changed from the 1930s view, and as the photo in the previous post shows, it looks essentially the same as it did when it stood on Chestnut Street.

Levi B. Taylor House, Springfield, Mass

February 24, 2017October 22, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The house at the southeast corner of Chestnut and Mattoon Streets in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The scene in 2016:

In the mid-1800s, this section of Chestnut Street was owned by artist Chester Harding, who had a spacious lot and a large home that was set back from the street. After his death in 1866, though, it was sold to William Mattoon, who subdivided the property and built Mattoon Street through it. Over the next two decades, the street was developed with brick Victorian townhouses on either side, most of which are still standing today as one of the city’s great architectural treasures.

Here at the corner of Chestnut and Mattoon, the house in the first photo was built around the mid-1870s, during the same time that Mattoon Street was being developed. Although it faced Chestnut Street, it matched the adjoining townhouses around the corner with its Second Empire-style architecture.

One of its early residents was Levi B. Taylor, who was living here by 1882 and remained here for the rest of his life. A native of Granby, Massachusetts, Taylor was an inventor and salesman, and for many years he worked as a traveling salesman for the American Knife & Shear Company. He died in 1897 at the age of 58 while in Peoria, Illinois, and the house went through several other owners over the next few decades.

By the time the first photo was taken, Chestnut Street had undergone some dramatic changes. The predominantly residential street had become far more commercial, and most of the 19th century mansions were gone by the 1930s. This house was still standing, although at this point it had been altered to include a storefront, which housed the Bay Path Spa. It was named for Bay Path Institute, which was at the time located directly across Chestnut Street from here, and the store catered to its students until the school moved to its current location in Longmeadow in 1945. The old house was demolished at some point afterward, and in 1959 the current liquor store was built on the site.

Harris Block, Springfield, Mass

October 21, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Harris Block, at 454-472 Bridge Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The building in 2016:

As mentioned in previous posts, Chestnut Street transitioned from a residential to commercial neighborhood in the early 1920s. The home of Daniel Harris once stood just to the right of here, but in 1923 it was dismantled and moved to Westerly, Rhode Island. His name lived on, though, with the Harris Block. This two-story commercial building was built in 1925 at the corner of Chestnut and Bridge Streets, and formed part of the northern side of the newly-developed Apremont Triangle.

When Bridge Street was extended east of Chestnut Street in the early 1920s, it crossed Daniel Harris’s old lot and connected with Pearl Street. This formed a roughly isosceles triangle between the three streets, with a small park in the center that was named in honor of the 104th Infantry, a Springfield-based unit that fought at Apremont during World War I.

Three of the buildings fronting the triangle, including the Harris Block, were designed by architect Samuel M. Green. All three had similar designs, and were two stories tall, with large storefront space on the first floor. This made them ideal for car dealerships, and the Apremont Triangle soon became the center of the city’s automobile industry. Here in the Harris Block, the corner storefront was originally a Rolls-Royce showroom, and their Springfield branch offices were also located in the building.

By the time the first photo was taken, Rolls-Royce was no longer in the building, and the corner storefront was instead a pharmacy. Over the years, car dealerships have moved to more spacious lots outside of downtown, but all of the early 20th century buildings at the Apremont Triangle are still standing, including the Harris Block. Because of this, all of these buildings were added to the Apremont Triangle Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

Willys-Overland Block, Springfield, Mass

October 19, 2016October 19, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Willys-Overland Block at the corner of Chestnut and Winter Streets in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The building in 2016:

As mentioned in the previous post, Chestnut Street was once home to some of Springfield’s wealthiest residents. However, by the early 1900s the city’s commercial center was growing east from Main Street, and this area around the corners of Chestnut, Bridge, and Pearl Streets became the center of the city’s automotive business. Springfield played a pioneering role in early automobile manufacturing, starting with Charles and Frank Duryea. In the 1890s, they developed the country’s first gasoline-powered car here in Springfield, just a few blocks away on Taylor Street. In the years that followed, other automobile companies came to the city, drawn by its manufacturing tradition and large pool of skilled workers.

In the first few decades of the 20th century, Springfield was home to many car manufacturers. The Knox Automobile Company was headquartered in the city, and other companies had branches, including Rolls-Royce and Willys-Overland. Unlike Rolls-Royce, the Toledo-based Willys-Overland no longer exists, but its legacy in Springfield lives on in this building, which they built in 1916. The first floor housed their showroom, and the rest of the building had a service station along with a thousand-car garage.

The company remained here for just five years, but the building continued to be used for automotive-related purposes. In the first photo, the upper floors were the Kimball Garage, serving the Hotel Kimball, which is located diagonally across Chestnut Street from here. However, it has since been neglected for many years. It was damaged in a November 2012 natural gas explosion that leveled an adjacent building and shattered most of the windows in the Willys-Overland Block. Although listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building’s future is uncertain, and in 2015 the City Council established it as a one-building historic district, in an effort to protect it from possible demolition.

Union House, Springfield, Mass

July 22, 2023July 18, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The former Union House/Chandler Hotel building on the right side of the photo, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The scene in 2016:

The scene in 2023:

The building on the right side of this scene is one of the oldest existing commercial blocks in downtown Springfield, although much of it will soon be demolished as part of the MGM Springfield casino project. When it opened as the Union House in 1846 it was one of the finest hotels in the city, and it was built for Jeremy Warriner, who had previously operated a tavern a block away at the corner of Main and State Streets. His old tavern had been popular in the stagecoach days, but with the opening of the railroad a half mile away, his inconventiently located, colonial-era building faced stiff competition from modern hotels like the Massasoit House.

Here at the corner of Main and Bliss Streets, his new hotel was actually slightly further from the railroad, but it was at least in a modern building. Within a few years, the hotel had attracted some prominent guests, including President James K. Polk, who stayed overnight here in 1847, accompanied by future president James Buchanan, who was Secretary of State at the time. In 1849, author Sara Jane Lippincott, who wrote under the pen name of Grace Greenwood, visited the hotel and later raved about the quality of the meals here, explaining “I am not about to attempt a description of Warriner’s dinner, with their endless succession of delicious dishes, their inimitable sauces, and exquisite puddings and pastry. For this I have neither time nor talent sufficient.”

However, the Massasoit House continued to draw guests with its convenient location next to the railroad station, and “Uncle Jerry” and “Aunt Phoebe” Warriner retired from the hotel business a few years later. The building continued to be used as a hotel through several changes in ownership, and by the 1880s it had become Chandler Hotel, a name that would remain until it closed in 1933. During this time, the building was extensively renovated, to the point where very little is left from the original 1846 structure.

The first photo was taken soon after the hotel closed, and at the time the first floor was being used as a drugstore. Most recently, it was the home of Glory Shoes, but the upper floors have been vacant for years and are in poor condition. Most of the building will soon be demolished except for the Main and Bliss Street facades, which will be incorporated into the casino design. As for the other buildings in the first photo, the Metropolitan Furniture Company was one of several furniture companies that were once located in the South End. This building was either demolished or trimmed down to one floor at some point, because there was a one-story commercial building here that was demolished as part of the casino project, along with the one on the far left side of the first photo.

2023 update: As planned, the building was demolished except for the Main Street façade and a small portion of the Bliss Street façade around the corner.