The house at 129 Dartmouth Terrace in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.
The house in 2016:
Albert Nason came to Springfield in the 1880s with his wife Annie and their children, Mabel and Albert, Jr. Born in Franklin, Massachusetts, Albert was a Civil War veteran, and here in Springfield he became the president of the Bay State Corset Company. At the time, corsets were a near-obligatory part of Victorian women’s fashion, and the prosperity of his business was reflected in his house, which was built in 1888 in the desirable, newly-developed McKnight neighborhood.
The 1900 census shows Albert, Annie, and Albert, Jr. still living here. That same year, their daughter Mabel and her husband George Nye moved into the neighboring house at 137 Dartmouth Terrace. Albert died in 1903, but his family continued living here for decades. By 1910, Annie was still here, along with Albert, Jr. and his newlywed wife, Florence. He died in 1928, but Annie lived into her 90s, having outlived her husband and all three of her children by the time she died in 1934.
Along with Annie, the 1930 census shows Florence here with her 19 year old daughter Anne. Within a few years, Anne would marry Chauncey C. Day, and the couple was living here when the first photo was taken. Their children became the fourth generation of the family to live in this house, which had been in the family for over 50 years. Since then, the house has remained well-preserved, with hardly any noticeable difference from the first photo. It is an excellent example of Queen Anne architecture, and it is part of the McKnight District on the National Register of Historic Places.