Houses Archives - Page 104 of 129

Josiah Day House, West Springfield, Mass (2)

November 8, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Another photo of the Josiah Day House on Park Street in West Springfield, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The house in 2016:

As mentioned in the previous post, the Josiah Day House is the oldest building in West Springfield, dating back to 1754. This angle of the house shows the wooden 1810 addition, which was built for Aaron Day, Jr. and his wife Anne. Aaron was the grandson of the home’s original owner, and he and Anne raised their six children here in the first half of the 19th century.

The last of their children, Lydia, died in 1897. She was the last of four consecutive generations of Days to live in the house, and in 1902 the family put the property up for sale. It was purchased by the Ramapogue Historical Society, who preserved it as a museum. Today, the house is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is one of West Springfield’s historic treasures. For more details on the history of this house, see the previous post.

Josiah Day House, West Springfield, Mass (1)

November 6, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Josiah Day House on Park Street in West Springfield, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The house in 2016:

This house is the oldest existing building in West Springfield, and probably the oldest brick building in Hampden County. It was built by Josiah Day in 1754 as a rare example of a brick saltbox-style house, and is probably the oldest such house in the United States. The house actually predates West Springfield itself, which had been settled in 1660 as part of Springfield, but was not actually incorporated as a separate town until 1774. By this point, the village on the west side of the river, with its fertile soil for farming, had grown larger and more prosperous than Springfield itself, and for many years its residents had been calling for separation.

Josiah Day was one of the residents who had petitioned the colonial General Court of Massachusetts for separation from Springfield, but he never lived to see West Springfield become its own town. He died in 1770, and his son Aaron inherited the house. Aaron and his wife Eunice moved into the house after their marriage in 1775, just months before the start of the American Revolution.

Although far removed from any major battles, the Day house nonetheless saw several important events relating to the war. In January 1776, Henry Knox passed in front of the house along his journey from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. He and his men were hauling 60 tons of cannons to fortify Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston, and just two months later these guns forced the British to evacuate Boston. Two years later, the Day House saw the results of another American victory in the war. Following the British defeat at Saratoga, General Riedesel and his Hessian troops were captured and marched to Boston, and along the way they stopped and encamped here in West Springfield on October 30 and 31, 1777, on the common in front of the house.

The closest that the Day House came to witnessing direct military action came nearly a decade later, during Shays’ Rebellion. This uprising, which took place in western Massachusetts in 1786-1787, was the result of high taxes and foreclosures against farmers in the region, and during this time the rebels succeeded in closing courthouses to prevent foreclosure cases from coming to trial. Although Daniel Shays of Pelham was the primary leader of the uprising, Luke Day of West Springfield was also one of the leaders. Luke and Aaron Day were second cousins, and while planning for the assault on the Springfield Arsenal, the climactic event of the rebellion, Luke trained his soldiers on the common in front of the house. According to local tradition, he also used his cousin’s house as his headquarters while he planned the attack.

In the meantime, Aaron and Eunice Day continued living in this house for decades. In 1810, they expanded the house with a wooden addition in the back for their oldest son, Aaron, Jr., who had married Anne Ely that year. Eunice died in 1818 and Aaron, Sr. in 1827, and the house was passed down to the younger Aaron. He and Anne raised their six children here, and Lydia, their last surviving child, lived in the house until her death in 1897. A few years later, the house was sold by the Day family after four consecutive generations of ownership.

While so many other colonial buildings in the area were being demolished around the turn of the 20th century, the Day House was purchased by the Ramapogue Historical Society, around the same time that the first photo was taken. This early effort at historic preservation has been successful, and today the house is still owned by the society. It is open to the public as a museum, and the interior is furnished with antiques from the 18th and 19th centuries, many of which had once belonged to members of the Day family.

Frary House, Deerfield, Mass

November 5, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Frary House on Old Main Street in Deerfield, around 1900-1904. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2016:

The Old Deerfield Historic District is a National Historic Landmark, which is the highest level of recognition on the National Register of Historic Places. The well-preserved New England village features 53 historic buildings, with over 30 that date back to the American Revolution or earlier. Among these is the Frary House, seen here in these photographs.

When the first photo was taken, the house was believed to have been built in 1698 by Samson Frary, one of the original settlers of Deerfield. However, dendrochronology has since shown that it was built around 1758, although it is possible that portions of the house may date back to 1698. If so, it would make it one of possibly two houses that predate the 1704 Indian attack on the village. Either way, though, the house is unquestionably old, and historically significant.

The left side of the building is the oldest, and dates back to about 1758, when it was owned by Salah Barnard. He operated a tavern out of the house, and in 1775 Benedict Arnold stopped here on his way north to capture Fort Ticonderoga. The American Revolution had started just weeks earlier, and Deerfield had a large number of loyalist residents, yet Arnold managed to acquire provisions for his men here at the tavern while at the same time maintaining the secrecy of his mission.

The most significant change to the building came around 1795, when Barnard added a larger tavern to the right side of the building. Like many other New England taverns of the era, it not only provided food, drink, and lodging for visitors; it also served as the social center of the town, and would have been used as a meeting place for a variety of local events. Salah Barnard died the same year that the addition was completed, and his son Erastus inherited the building and operated the tavern for the next ten years, until he moved away from Deerfield.

The property was eventually purchased in 1890 by Charlotte Alice Baker, a descendant of Samson Frary, the building’s purported original owner. She hired the Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge to restore it to its original colonial appearance, and the work was complete by the time the first photo was taken. Today, the Frary House/Barnard Tavern is owned by Historic Deerfield, a museum that owns a number of historic properties in the village.

Along with the Frary House and Barnard Tavern, this scene shows one other historic home. Just to the right of the tavern is the Nims House, which predates the Frary House by over a decade The original house on this site was built around 1685 by Godfrey Nims, but was destroyed in the 1704 Indian raid. It was rebuilt in 1710, and portions of this house might still be standing, but most of the present-day home dates back to sometime between the 1720s and 1740s. It remained in the Nims family until the 1890s, and it is now owned by Deerfield Academy, who uses it for faculty housing.

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.

Rose Cottage, Springfield, Mass (1)

March 20, 2022October 26, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Rose Cottage, on Chestnut Street at the present-day corner of Edwards Street, sometime in the 1800s. Image from A Chronicle of Ancient Chestnut Street (1897).

The scene in 2016:

This house on Chestnut Street was built in 1824, at the time when the street was first being developed. Unlike some of its more elaborate neighbors, this house was a fairly simple, modest Greek Revival-style home. Its original owner was Elisha Edwards and his wife Eunice, who had been married in 1821 and moved in here three years later. They had a total of ten children before Elisha’s death in 1840, including Oliver Edwards, who was born here in 1835. He joined the Civil War as a lieutenant in 1861, but soon moved up the ranks, eventually commanding the 37th Massachusetts at the Battle of Gettysburg and later retiring as a brevet major general. One of Elisha and Eunice’s grandsons, Clarence R. Edwards, was also a prominent general, achieving fame in World War I.

Soon after Eunice’s death in 1875, the house became one of the first to disappear from Chestnut Street. Chester Harding’s nearby estate had been demolished a few years earlier to build Mattoon Street, and the Edwards house, which had been known as Rose Cottage for the many roses that grew up the side of the house, soon fell victim to progress. Edwards Street was laid out through the property, and the old house was directly in its path. Thankfully, though, it was not completely lost to history. Sometime before 1882, the house was moved about a half mile away to 57 Mulberry Street, where it still stands today.

In the meantime, the area that had once been the Edwards’ backyard is now part of the Quadrangle, which houses the city’s museums, including the Museum of Springfield History on the left. Only a handful of homes are still standing on Chestnut Street today, none of which date back to the 19th century. Several were built in the first decade of the 20th century, though, including the house at 73 Chestnut Street, on the right side of the 2016 photo. Built in 1901 as a private home, it is now used for professional offices.

Whistler House, Springfield, Mass

May 6, 2018October 24, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The former home of George Washington Whistler on Chestnut Street near the corner of Edwards Street, sometime in the 1800s. Image from A Chronicle of Ancient Chestnut Street (1897).

The scene in 2016:

Perhaps no house in Springfield has been home to as many historical figures as this one was, so it seems only appropriate that the Museum of Springfield History is now located on the site. The house was built in the 1820s by Simon Sanborn, who built a number of buildings in Springfield during the early 19th century, including the architecturally-similar Alexander House. When this spacious, 20-room house was completed, Chestnut Street was Springfield’s most prestigious residential street, and the home enjoyed unobstructed views of downtown and the Connecticut River in the distance.

Its original owner was James Sanford Dwight, a merchant and member of the prominent Dwight family who died while vacationing in Italy in 1831. Several years after his death, the house was briefly the home of Chester Harding, a notable portrait artist. He was born in Conway, Massachusetts, but he worked as an itinerant painter in the western states, living for a time in Pittsburgh, Kentucky, and St. Louis. After this, he spent time in England, then returned to the US, living in Boston for a few years. By the early 1830s, he was living in Springfield, first renting the Alexander House and then moving into this house. He only remained here for a short time, though, before building a new house just to the left of here, on the site of present-day Mattoon Street.

Despite Harding’s prominence, he would turn out to be only the second most famous artist to reside in the house in the first photo. After he moved out, it was the home of George Washington Whistler and his family from 1839 to 1842. Whistler had been hired as chief engineer for the Western Railroad, which was under construction from Worcester to the New York state line at the time. He achieved fame in his own right as a railroad builder, and left Springfield in 1842 when Czar Nicholas I of Russia hired him to build a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. However, his son James Abbott McNeill Whister, who was just eight when they moved from Springfield, would go on to become one of the most prominent American artists of the 19th century. Although he only spent three years here, it is interesting to consider what influence, if any, their next-door neighbor Chester Harding may have had on the young future artist.

After the Whistlers left, its next resident was Major James Ripley, the commandant of the Springfield Armory from 1842 to 1854. He was third consecutive nationally-prominent figure to live in the house, and earned recognition for his efforts to modernize the Armory. Under his leadership, many new buildings were constructed, including the distinctive Main Arsenal, as well as the nearby Commandant’s House. The latter was completed in 1846, at which point Ripley moved out of his house here on Chestnut Street. Although he left Springfield in 1854, his reforms came just in time. When the Civil War started less than a decade later, the Armory was in an ideal position to meet the wartime demands of the Union army.

The house was later owned by Ethan Chapin. He and his brother Marvin were the co-owners of the Massasoit House, the city’s premier hotel during the 19th century. After his death in 1889, his Chestnut Street home went through several other owners, including Dr. Frederick Sweet and his wife Adeline. However, by the turn of the century, its location was no longer as fashionable as it had been some 75 years earlier, and the house fell into disrepair. It was demolished in the mid-1920s, and although the historical significance of its former residents was recognized at the time, there does not seem to have been any call to preserve it at the time. The site was later redeveloped, though, and it is now the home of the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History, which is seen in the 2016 photo.