Houses

Solomon F. Cushman, Jr. House, Monson, Mass

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The home of Solomon F. Cushman, Jr., on Main Street in Monson, probably around 1900-1920. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

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The site of the house in 2015:

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This Greek Revival style house was once the home of Solomon Cushman, Jr., the son of one of Monson’s prominent industrial leaders of the 19th century. His father, Solomon Cushman, Sr., was born in 1826 in Monson, Maine, a small town in central Maine.  After working in farms and lumberyards near his hometown, he became a store clerk, and later moved to Palmer, and then to Monson, Massachusetts, where he became a bookkeeper for the Monson Woolen Manufacturing Company, a textile company with a factory on present-day Cushman Street.

Cushman eventually became the owner of the company, and renamed it S. F. Cushman & Sons in 1877.  The Cushmans grew the company, purchasing a branch factory in 1883 at the corner of Maple and Elm Streets, and rebuilding the main factory on Cushman Street after a fire in 1886.  Solomon, Jr. was born in 1861, and he graduated from Monson Academy in 1880 and from MIT in 1882.  He also attended the Lowell School of Design, and later returned to Monson, where he was put in charge of the branch mill.  When the elder Cushman died in 1900, his five sons took over the company, but they soon began selling it.  The branch mill was sold in 1901, and the main factory operated under the Cushman name until 1912, when it was sold to a hat company.  The building has since been abandoned for many years, but it is still standing on Cushman Street over 125 years after the Cushmans opened it.

The house in the first photo was purchased by Solomon, Jr. sometime between about 1884 and 1894, but the house was much older than that.  Architecturally, it is very similar to the nearby Joel Norcross House, which was built in 1830 and is still standing today.  This house was probably built around the same time, and according to the 1857 county atlas, it was owned by Horatio Lyon, one of the owners of the Monson Woolen Manufacturing Company who first employed Cushman, Sr.  It was later the home of yet another factory owner, Cyrus W. Holmes, who lived here until his much more elegant Holmbrook mansion was completed just up the hill from here around 1870.

Several of the Cushman brothers lived nearby, including the oldest sibling, Edward, whose house on Main Street is now the Monson Senior Center.  I don’t know how long Solomon, Jr. lived here in this house, but he died in 1932 at the age of 70, and the house was subsequently demolished in 1957.  Today, the former Cushman property is a shopping plaza with the Adams supermarket, a Rite Aid drugstore, and several smaller businesses.

Holmbrook, Monson, Mass

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The Holmbrook mansion on Main Street in Monson, probably around 1900-1920. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

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The house in 2015:

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The restored house in 2018:

This beautiful Second Empire style mansion was built around 1870 for local factory owner Cyrus W. Holmes.  He named it Holmbrook, and he lived here until his death in 1891 at the age of 89.  Curiously, his son died only six days later, and the house eventually came into the ownership of Adelaide Wingate, who donated the house to Monson Academy in 1947 to use as a dormitory.  The school built tennis courts and a ski slope in the backyard, but in 1971 Monson Academy merged with Wilbraham Academy and moved to their Wilbraham campus.

The house was damaged by the June 1, 2011 tornado, which destroyed two former Monson Academy buildings across the street from here.  When the second photo was taken, the house was still undergoing repairs more than four years later.  A 1988 Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System report described it as “undoubtedly Monson’s best example of the Second Empire style,” and even after the tornado it still retains much of its original Victorian detail, and it will hopefully soon be fully restored.

2018 update: The exterior of the house has since been restored, and I have added an updated photo to reflect these changes.

Ely Road, Monson, Mass

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Looking up the hill on Ely Road toward the Keep Homestead, sometime around 1900-1920. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

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Ely Road in 2015:

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Ely Road is named for Alfred Ely, who lived on the street and served for 60 years as the pastor of the First Church of Monson.  The church is located at the bottom of Ely Road about a quarter mile from here, and from 1809 until 1843 Ely lived at the house at the top of the hill.  The house was built around 1800, and in 1854 it was purchased by Marcus Colton, who conveyed it to his nephew Edward Keep two years later.  From then it would remain in the Keep family for the next 132 years, until the death of Edward Keep’s granddaughter, Myra Keep Lovell Moulton, in 1988.

Upon her death, Myra willed the house to the town, to be used as the Keep Homestead Museum.  The house is hidden from view by the trees in the 2015 photo, but it is still there, and it is open to the public once a month from April to December.  Its collections include Myra’s extensive button collection, along with other antique furnishings, documents, and other items relating to the history of Monson.

Senior Center, Monson, Mass

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The Edward Cushman House on Main Street in Monson, which later became the Monson Senior Center, probably around 1916-1920. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

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The building in 2015:

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The present-day Monson Senior Center was built around 1850, and it is one of the many historic Greek Revival homes along this section of Main Street.  It was originally a private residence, with maps in 1857 and 1870 showing it belonging to a Mrs. L. Keep and a Mrs. Flynt, respectively.  Later in the 1800s, it was owned by Edward Cushman, the son of local industrialist Solomon F. Cushman, who owned a woolen mill on Cushman Street.  Edward and his brothers took over control of the company when their father died in 1900, and they ran it together until 1912, when they sold it to a local hat manufacturer, the Heimann and Lichten Company.

Edward Cushman died in 1915, and as part of his will the house became Monson Home for the Aged, a boarding house for elderly residents in town.  According to the house’s listing on the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System, the house was enlarged and the tower was added during this conversion in 1916; if accurate, it helps provide the earliest possible date for the first photo.

The building was a boarding house until 1975, and since then it has been used as the Monson Senior Center.  It was damaged in the June 1, 2011 tornado that passed directly over it, but today it is in excellent condition and it is still serving the elderly residents of the town, a century after Edward Cushman’s death.  Incidentally, his father’s factory on Cushman Street is also still standing, although it is in poor condition and has been abandoned for many years.

Nora’s Variety Store, Springfield, Mass

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A mixed-use commercial and residential building on Boston Road in Springfield’s Pine Point neighborhood, on October 12, 1938. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

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The building in 2015:

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This building is probably best known as the longtime home of Nora’s Variety Store, but on a more personal note it is also where my grandmother was born. It was built sometime between 1899 and 1910, when the Pine Point neighborhood was first being developed, and it was apparently a two-family home. My great grandparents, Frank and Julia Lyman, moved here around 1915, and they lived here for about two years.

Frank was originally from Wilbraham, and he attended Wesleyan Academy before becoming a machinist. He worked for Pratt and Whitney in Hartford, and later for the Otis Elevator Company in Springfield, and he also spent some time in New York City, where he met his wife Julia Brown. She was the daughter of Irish immigrants, and prior to her marriage she worked in the biographical department for the New York World newspaper. By the time they moved to Springfield they had two young children, Elizabeth and Edith, and their third child, my grandmother Evelyn, was born here in 1917. Soon after, the family moved nearby to a house at 37 Coleman Street, where they lived for many years.

During the 1920s the house had a number of different tenants, who rarely seem to have lived here for longer than a year or two. Then, as this section of Boston Road became increasingly commercial, the house was altered with the addition of two storefronts, as shown in the first photo (an earlier photo on a different blog post, taken from a different angle, shows a the front of the house prior to this addition). This photo was taken in 1938, and by this point the storefronts were occupied by the Boston Road Variety Store—which later became Nora’s Variety Store—on the left, and a shoe store on the right.

Today, nearly 80 years after the first photo was taken, much has changed on Boston Road. Many of the late 19th and early 20th century homes have been demolished over the years, including the one on the far right side of this scene, where a car dealership is now located. Nora’s Variety Store was located here in this building for many years, but it ultimately closed in the early 2000s, and the storefront is now vacant. The building itself has also changed, including the addition of artificial siding, which probably occurred sometime during the mid-20th century. However, the building is still easily recognizable from the first photo, and it stands as a reminder of the days when Boston Road was still predominantly a residential street.

Collins House and Livery Stable, Wilbraham, Mass

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The Warren Collins home and livery stables, on Boston Road in North Wilbraham, possibly around 1872. Image courtesy of the Wilbraham Public Library.

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The scene in 2015:

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These buildings can be seen in the distance of the c.1900 photo in the previous post, which explains the history of the Collins Inn that once stood nearby.  This location was directly across the street from Wilbraham’s only railroad station, and it was from here that Warren L. Collins operated a stagecoach line to the center of town, two miles away.  The livery stables in the background were probably used to house the horses for this line.  Given the nature of livery stables, it probably would have also been used to care for the horses of the inn’s guests.

The one thing that is in question about this photo is the date. A copy of this image can be found online here, which is where the 1872 date comes from.  However, that date might be a little too early; the 1873 atlas of Hampden County includes an inset map of North Wilbraham, which was labeled as Collins Depot.  Neither of these buildings appear on the map, and a different building on the other side of the street is labeled as the livery stables.  Additionally, the Collins Inn was not built until 1874, and the 1964 History of Wilbraham book suggests that Collins built this livery stable at some point after opening the inn.  So, it seems more likely that the photo was taken either a little later in the decade or maybe in the 1880s.

Either way, there is not much left from the old photo.  Both the stables and the small house in the foreground are gone, but the basic business model is still going on here today.  Instead of feeding and caring for horses, the present-day business performs a very similar function, providing fuel and repairs for cars.  There also appears to be at least one surviving element from the original photo; the building on the far left looks like it is the same one that was standing there.