Italianate

Park Street School, Holyoke, Mass

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The Park Street School at the corner of Park and Hamilton Streets in Holyoke, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2017:

The caption in Picturesque Hampden identifies this as the Hamilton Street School, but it is actually the Park Street School, which is located just across the street from where the Hamilton Street School once stood. It is perhaps the oldest surviving school building in the city, and dates back to 1868 when it opened as a public school. Like many other buildings of this period, it had Italianate architecture, and it featured a symmetrical front facade with a tower in the center. Just beyond the school, on the left side of the first photo, was the Precious Blood Church, a High Victorian Gothic-style French Catholic church that was completed in 1878.

In 1875, the Park Street School played a grisly role in one of the deadliest, yet also one of the least-known disasters in Massachusetts history. At the time, the Precious Blood Church was under construction, and the parishioners, largely French-Canadian immigrants, worshiped in a temporary wooden church, located behind the right side of the school at the corner of Cabot and South East Streets. The wooden church, built in just a month in December 1869, had a capacity of about 800, and included a large balcony that could seat about 400. On May 27, 1875, the church was filled with some 600 to 700 worshipers for an evening Corpus Christi mass, but toward the end of the service a lace curtain, blown by a stiff breeze through the open windows, touched a lighted candle and caught fire.

The fire on the curtain quickly spread to the wall, and within minutes the building was engulfed in flames. Those on the ground floor of the sanctuary had a fairly easy escape route, through any of the three front doors of the church. However, those in the balcony had only a narrow stairway that led down to the front entrances, where the crowds from the ground floor were also trying to escape. One of the doors eventually became blocked by people who had tripped over each other, and firemen worked desperately to free people from this pile in what little time they had. In particular, future fire chief John J. Lynch – namesake of the former John J. Lynch Middle School – was noted for his bravery in rescuing survivors, and thanks to the efforts of Lynch and other firemen, the death toll was not as high as it otherwise may have been.

Within just 20 minutes of the curtain brushing against the candle, both the church and the adjacent rectory were completely destroyed. The next step was to recover and identify the bodies of the victims, and the Park Street School was converted into a morgue. The bodies were laid out here in the basement by the following morning, and friends and family members of the victims arrived to identify their loved ones. Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and were only able to be identified by clothing, shoes, jewelry, and other personal effects.

The total number of deaths in the fire has been variously listed as low as 74 and as high as 97, although the lower figure is probably closer to the true count. The language barrier likely contributed to some of the discrepancies, and in some cases spelling variations of the same name were apparently recorded as two different people. Either way, though, it ranks among the deadliest fires in the history of the state. By way of comparison, the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which occurred less than three years earlier, destroyed 776 buildings in densely-populated Boston, yet had a death toll of about 20 to 30, only about a third of that of the Precious Blood Church.

At the time of the fire, the new Precious Blood Church was already under construction, but work had not progressed much further than the basement. Nonetheless, two days after the fire a funeral mass was held for the victims, and about 2,500 people crowded into the still-unfinished basement, which had been hastily roofed with boards for the occasion. So many people in such a confined, makeshift space could have posed an even greater danger in the event of a fire, but the funeral passed without incident, and most of the bodies were subsequently interred in a mass grave in the Precious Blood Cemetery, located across the river in South Hadley.

Today, despite such a substantial loss of life, the Precious Blood Church fire has been largely forgotten, and here in the South Holyoke neighborhood there are few reminders of the tragedy. The new Precious Blood Church, which was completed in 1878 and is seen on the left side of the first photo, closed in 1989, and was demolished soon after. Probably the only surviving building with a connection to the fire is the Park Street School, which still stands here in a somewhat altered state. It continued to be used as a school for many years after its use as a makeshift morgue, but around 1930 it was sold to the church, becoming a convent and chapel. At some point, the tower was removed, and the building saw other alterations such as additional windows on the second floor, but overall it is still recognizable from its original appearance, and stands as a good example of mid-19th century school architecture.

High Street from Lyman Street, Holyoke, Mass

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Looking south on High Street from Lyman Street in Holyoke, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2017:

This scene shows the same block of High Street as this previous post, just from the opposite direction. As mentioned in that post, these buildings were mostly built around the 1860s and 1870s, with the oldest probably being the Fuller Block in the center of the photo, which dates back to around the 1850s. Closer in the foreground, there are seven very similar Italianate-style brick commercial blocks. The six closest to the camera were all built around the same time, probably about 1870, and the one near the center of the photo was built a little later, around 1878. Holyoke’s Gothic-style city hall also dates back to around this time, having been completed in 1876, and its tower rises in the distance of both photos.

Today, this scene has not significantly changed in the past 125 years. Everything on High Street to the north of Lyman Street was demolished in the 1970s as part of an urban renewal project, but most of the historic High Street buildings are still standing to the south of Lyman Street. The Fuller Block is still here, as are most of the other buildings beyond it, and five of the seven buildings in the foreground are also still standing. The building on the far left, at the corner of Lyman Street, is gone, as is the one at the corner of Oliver Street, but otherwise this scene retains much of its late 19th century appearance. Because of this, the buildings along this section of High Street are now part of the North High Street Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Mills-Stebbins Villa, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 3 Crescent Hill in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This Italian villa-style house was completed in 1851 on Crescent Hill, atop a ridge near the corner of Maple and Pine Streets. It was the work of Henry A. Sykes, a notable local architect from Suffield, Connecticut. His career was cut short when he died in 1860 at the age of 50, but he was responsible for architecturally-significant houses, churches, and other buildings throughout the Connecticut River Valley. However, this house was perhaps his magnum opus. It reflected the Italian villa style that was just starting to become popular for upscale American homes, and it was later praised by architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock as “one of the finest nineteenth century houses in America.”

The original owner of this house was John Mills, a lawyer and politician who was born in 1787 in Sandisfield, Massachusetts. He never attended college, but he studied law in Granville under future county sheriff John Phelps, and was admitted to the bar in 1812. He subsequently lived in Southwick, and in addition to his law practice he also served in the state senate from 1823 to 1827, including as the senate president from 1826 to 1827. In 1826, he was also part of a six-man commission that established the current Massachusetts-Connecticut border, finally resolving a long-standing dispute that dated back to the 1640s.

One incident during Mills’s time in the state senate, which may be apocryphal, came in 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette visited the Massachusetts State House. Lafayette shook hands with each member of the state legislature and, upon reaching Mills, supposedly clasped his hands and declared, “My dear friend, I recollect you in the Revolution.” Mills, of course, was born five years after the war ended, and was the youngest of the state senators. However, he was also prematurely bald, which evidently made him look much older than he really was.

In 1835, Mills was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, a position he held until 1841. During this time, in 1836, he moved to Springfield, where he lived in a house on Howard Street. He returned to the state senate in 1842, and then from 1843 to 1844 served as the state treasurer and receiver-general. In 1848, he was nominated for lieutenant governor by the newly-established and Free Soil Party, a third party that was mainly focused on preventing the spread of slavery. He and his running mate, Salem mayor Stephen C. Phillips, were roundly defeated in the general election by incumbent Whig governor George N. Briggs and lieutenant governor John Reed, Jr., but they managed to finish second in the three-way race, ahead of the pro-slavery Democratic candidate.

Around 1849, Mills commissioned Sykes to design this house, which was completed two years later. At the time, Crescent Hill and the neighboring Ames Hill were just starting to be developed, but by the end of the 19th century this area would become the city’s most prestigious neighborhood, with its proximity to downtown and its sweeping views of the river valley. John Mills was in his early 60s at the time, and was largely retired from public life by then. However, he did serve a single term in the state house of representatives in 1851, and in 1855 he became president of the Hampden Mutual Fire Insurance Company.

During the 1855 state census, Mills was living here in this house with his wife Emily and three of their children: John, Sarah, and Isaac. Isaac’s wife Ann and their daughter also lived here, and the family employed three Irish-born servants who lived here. However, John sold this house two years later, and he and Emily moved to Byers Street, where they lived with their daughter Sarah and her newlywed husband, Roswell G. Shurtleff. The Mills family did not entirely leave Crescent Hill, though, because in 1859 Isaac and Ann moved into a new house across the street from here, at the corner of Crescent Hill and Pine Street.

John Mills died in 1862 at the age of 74, by which point this house on Crescent Hill was owned by John B. Stebbins, a wealthy merchant who was a business partner of hardware store owner Homer Foot. Stebbins was a native of Springfield, and was among the original students at Springfield High School when it opened in 1828, but after leaving school he moved to Hartford, where he worked as a clerk in a grocery store. However, he soon returned to Springfield, and found work as a clerk in Homer Foot’s hardware store. After a few years here he moved again, this time to New York City, and worked as a clerk in another hardware store, but in 1839 he returned to Springfield for good, returning to his position with Foot, with the promise that he would be given an interest in the firm.

Homer Foot kept his promise, and in 1842 Stebbins became a partner in the company. A year later he married his wife Maria, and the couple first lived on Elm Street, and then at the corner of Main and Emery Streets, and finally on Byers Street before purchasing this house from John Mills in 1857. They had a total of seven children: John, Mary, Elizabeth, Annie, Fannie, Maria, and an unnamed child who died shortly after birth. Mary also died in infancy, but the five surviving children all lived here in this house with their parents.

Aside from Foot’s store, Stebbins was also involved in a number of other companies, serving as a director and, at various times, as president of the Springfield Institution for Savings, the Holyoke Water Power Company, the Ludlow Manufacturing Company, and the Hampshire Paper Company. In the process he became a wealthy man, with the 1870 census listing his real estate as being worth $73,000, plus a personal estate worth $30,000, for a total net worth of more than $2 million in today’s dollars. He was also involved in politics, serving as a city alderman in 1853, a member of the school committee from 1865 to 1869 and in 1873, and as a state legislator in 1883.

His wife Maria died in 1891, and John died in 1899, but this house remained in the Stebbins family for many years. Of the five children who survived to adulthood, neither Annie nor Maria ever married, and they lived here for the rest of their lives. The 1920 census shows them living here with their nephew, 48-year-old John, who was the son of their brother John. Maria died in 1928, and by 1930 Annie was living here alone, aside from two servants. She would remain here until her death in 1939, around the same time that the first photo was taken.

After Annie’s death, the house was inherited by her nephew Carl Stebbins, the oldest son of her brother John. He had grown up in this house with his parents and grandparents, but he later moved to Tacoma, Washington, before eventually returning to Springfield. By the 1940 census he was 70 years old, and was living here with his wife Grace, their daughter Grace, and his wife’s sister, Rebecca Birnie. He lived here until his death a decade later, and his wife remained here until her death in 1961, more than a century after the Stebbins family first moved into this house.

Their daughter Grace sold the property in 1962, and the house remained vacant for a number of years. During this time the interior was vandalized, but by the early 1970s it had new owners and was carefully restored. The house was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and the following year it became part of the Ames Hill/Crescent Hill Historic District, which encompasses the many historic 19th and early 20th century homes in the neighborhood. Today, the house shows some changes from its 1930s appearance, including different first-floor windows on the left side, but overall it still stands as one of the grandest and most architecturally-significant houses in the city.

Round Hill Road from Elm Street, Northampton, Mass

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Looking up Round Hill Road from Elm Street in Northampton, around 1894. Image from Northampton: The Meadow City (1894).

The scene in 2017:

By the mid 19th century, this area around Round Hill had become home to some of Northampton’s leading residents, including attorney Charles P. Huntington, who built the house on the left side of the photo in 1841. Born in 1802 in Middletown, Connecticut, Huntington later moved with his family to Hadley, where he attended Hopkins Academy before entering Harvard, where he graduated in 1822. He later attended the short-lived Northampton Law School, and while in Northampton he married his wife Helen Mills in 1827. He practiced law in North Adams for some time, but later returned to Northampton. From 1842 to 1850, he also served as the first president of the Northampton Institution for Savings, and in 1855 he became the namesake of the town of Huntington, Massachusetts. Formerly named Norwich, the town was renamed in his honor after he helped to resolve a boundary issue with surrounding towns.

Charles and Helen had seven children together before her death in 1844 at the age of 37. The oldest of their children, Helen Frances “Fanny” Huntington, later married Josiah Philips Quincy of Boston. Both his father and his grandfather had been mayors of Boston, and Josiah and Helen’s oldest son, Josiah Quincy VI, would also become mayor of Boston, serving from 1896 to 1900. In the meantime, Charles Huntington remarried in 1847 to Ellen Greenough, the younger sister of noted sculptor Horatio Greenough. Together, Charles and Ellen had two more children, who grew up here in this house. In 1855, Charles was appointed as a judge to the Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston, and soon after the family left Northampton and moved to Boston, where he lived until his death in 1868.

This house was then sold to William Silsbee, the pastor of the Unitarian Church. He lived here for several years, but in 1864 he sold it to Merritt Clark, a tailor who owned a shop on Main Street for many years. Originally from Milford, Connecticut, he came to Northampton as a teenager in 1846 and apprenticed in the tailor shop of Charles Smith & Co. He later purchased the business, and by the 1870 census he had become a wealthy man, with a listed net worth of $50,000, or nearly $1 million today. He and his wife Sarah never had any children, but his nephew Orman Clark was his business partner for many years, followed by Orman’s son Howard after Orman’s death in 1891. Merritt remained a part of the company for the rest of his life, and he continued to live here in this house until his death in 1919, when he was about 90 years old.

The house remained in the family for several more decades, with Merritt’s niece Mary Clark living here until her death in 1939. It was later acquired by the Mary A. Burnham School in 1965, but three years later the school merged with the Stoneleigh-Prospect Hill School in Greenfield. The house has since reverted to private ownership, and it is still standing today, although it is completely hidden from view by the trees in the 2017 scene. Overall, besides the trees, very little has changed with this view in the 125 years since the first photo was taken. Many of the historic 19th century homes around Round Hill are still standing today, although the Luther Bodman House – just out of view on the right side of the first photo – has since been demolished and replaced with Smith College’s Helen Hills Hills Chapel.

Luther Bodman House, Northampton, Mass

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The Luther Bodman House, at the corner of Elm Street and Round Hill Road in Northampton, around 1894. Image from Northampton: The Meadow City (1894).

The scene in 2017:

This elegant Italianate-style mansion was built around the 1860s, and was designed by prolific Northampton architect William Fenno Pratt. It was the home of Luther Bodman, a banker who served as president of the Hampshire County National Bank and the Hampshire County Savings Bank, and during the 1870 census he was living here with his wife Philena and two of their children, Ellen and Clara. At the time, his real estate was valued at $15,000, plus a personal estate of $100,000, giving him a total net worth equivalent to over $2.2 million today.

Luther Bodman lived here until his death in 1887, and Philena died in 1894, around the same time that the first photo was taken. However, their daughter Clara remained here until around 1949, shortly before her death in 1951 at the age of 92. The property was subsequently acquired by Smith College, and in 1954 the house was demolished in order to make way for a new college chapel. The Colonial Revival-style building was completed the following year, and was a gift of Helen Hills Hills, a 1908 Smith graduate. Named the Helen Hills Hills Chapel in her honor, it remains here today, and continues to be used by Smith College as a chapel.

First Church Parsonage, Northampton, Mass

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The First Church parsonage, at 74 Bridge Street in Northampton, around 1894. Image from Northampton: The Meadow City (1894).

The house in 2017:

This house was built in 1866, and was the work of William Fenno Pratt, a local architect who designed a number of buildings in Northampton during this era. Upon completion, the house served as the parsonage for the First Church, which was located about a third of a mile west of here in the center of Northampton. Zachary Eddy was the pastor of the church at the time, but the following year he was succeeded by William S. Leavitt, who served from 1867 to 1881. It was during his pastorate, in 1876, that the old church burned down, and was replaced a year later by the present church building.

Herbert W. Lathe lived here during his pastorate from 1882 to 1891, followed by Henry T. Rose, who was the pastor of the church around the time that the first photo was taken. He lived here with his wife Grace and their daughter Helen until his retirement in 1911, and the house continued to be used as the parsonage for several more pastors. Based on listings in the city directory, it appears that John W. Darr was the last one to reside in the house, until he moved to California in the late 1920s.

Around 1930 the house was sold to Frank W. Tomaszewski, a Polish immigrant who owned a garage on Masonic Street. He lived here for the rest of his life, until his death in 1975, and the house remained in his family for many years. At some point it became the Historic College Inn, and in the early 2000s a garage in the back of the property was demolished and replaced with a modern carriage house-style building, seen in the back left of the present-day photo. The only other significant change to this scene was the addition of solar panels to the roof of the house, but otherwise it remains well-preserved in its original 19th century appearance.