Buildings

Smith Platt House, Springfield, Mass

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The Smith Platt House on Sumner Avenue in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

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The house in 2016:

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Located next to the Lathrop House at the corner of Sumner Avenue and Washington Road, this house was built in 1893 for Smith H. Platt, a Methodist preacher, physician, and author. He was born in Connecticut and spent much of his life in New York City, but by the 1890s he was living here in Springfield and practicing medicine in an office in the house. He wrote several books, including an anti-slavery novel in 1859 entitled The Martyrs, and the Fugitive; or a Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Death of an African Family, and the Slavery and Escape of Their Son. Much later in life, in 1895, he published The Secrets of Health; or How Not to Be Sick and How to Get Well From Sickness, which provides somewhat dubious remedies for nearly every condition, including taking a teaspoon of turpentine before meals to treat cancer, drinking hydrogen peroxide to treat gangrene, and taking warm baths to treat insanity.

By the 1910 census, Platt was 81 years old and he was living here with his daughter Belle, her husband Leander W. White, and their two sons, Harrison and Gardner. He died two years later, and the White family remained here for many years. Leander was a banker, who by the 1920s was serving as vice president of Chicopee National Bank. Belle, like her father, was a physician, but she died relatively young in the 1920s. Leander and his two sons were still living in this house when the first photo was taken, and he died about 10 years later in 1949. Today, the house is still standing, and along with the surrounding houses it is virtually unchanged from the first photo. Like the rest of the neighborhood, it is part of the Forest Park Heights Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

William May House, Springfield, Mass

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The William May House on Sumner Avenue in Springfield, on April 8, 1911. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Emerson Collection.

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The house in 2016:

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This house on Sumner Avenue in Springfield’s Forest Park neighborhood was built in 1911, around the time that the first photo was taken. It was built as a two-family home, with Springfield Public Market executives William May and Herman Isenberg each owning half of it. May was the president of the grocery store, and in 1920 he was living here with his wife Helen, their daughter Hilda, and an Irish servant named Catherine O’Connor. Isenberg was the treasurer of the company, and he was a German immigrant who lived here with his wife Ida, their children Alice and Joel, and a cousin.

By the 1940 census, both families were still living here, but William and Ida both died sometime between 1930 and 1940. Herman, 64 ears old at this point, was listed as the company president, and his 29 year old son Joel was still living here and working as a manager in the store. The two men were each listed as earning over $5,000 per year, which was the highest income category on the census, equivalent to over $85,000 today. They also employed three servants who earned between $350 and $780 per year, or about $6,000 to $13,000 today.

Today, the historic house is still a two-family building, and very little has changed on the exterior. Like the nearby Lathrop House, it is an excellent example of classical revival architecture from the turn of the last century, and it is part of the Forest Park Heights Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

F.W. Lathrop House, Springfield, Mass

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The F.W. Lathrop House on Sumner Avenue in the Forest Park neighborhood of Springfield, on April 8, 1911. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Emerson Collection.

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The house in 2016:

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This mansion at 188 Sumner Avenue was built in 1899 for real estate dealer Frederick W. Lathrop and his wife Flora. At the time, Forest Park was becoming a fashionable neighborhood, and many large, elegant homes were built along Sumner Avenue and other streets in the area. The photo in this earlier post shows the house on the left side of the tree-lined street in around the same time period. Lathrop died in 1917 and Flora in 1933, and since then the home has gone through a variety of uses, including as a Jewish temple, a Jewish school, an art school, and a bed and breakfast. Today, the house is a well-preserved example of Springfield’s historic mansions, and it is part of the Forest Park Heights Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

Corner of Belmont and Sumner Avenues, Springfield, Mass

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A commercial building on Belmont Avenue, just north of Sumner Avenue at the “X” in Springfield’s Forest Park neighborhood, photographed on April 8, 1911. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Emerson Collection.

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The view in 2016:

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When the first photo was taken, this section of the Forest Park neighborhood was still in the process of being developed, and the “X”, the six-way intersection of Sumner Avenue, Belmont Avenue, and Dickinson Street, would soon become its focal point. Completed in 1908, this building was among the first commercial buildings in the area, and it was in an ideal location on the north side of Sumner Avenue, wedged between Belmont Avenue and Dickinson Street. In 1911 its tenants included, from left to right, Drown’s Bakery, Chin Sam Laundry, Joseph Novrack First Class Shoe Repairing, and Joseph E. Hartt Meat Market. Over the years, other similar buildings were added around it, and the original facade has been altered, but it is still standing today.

Hotel New Netherland, New York City

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The Hotel New Netherland at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street in New York, across the street from the southeast corner of Central Park, as seen around 1905. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company.

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The view in 2016:

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The tall building in the center of the first photo is the Hotel New Netherland. This luxurious hotel was built in 1893 for William Waldorf Astor, who, the same year, also built the Waldorf Hotel further south on Fifth Avenue. The Hotel New Netherland was one of the first steel-framed skyscrapers in the city, but while its structure was innovative, its Romanesque architecture soon fell out of fashion. It was open for just 23 years before its demolition in 1926, and it was replaced by the 38-story Sherry-Netherland Hotel, which stands on the site today.

The other buildings to the left and right of the hotel are also gone, and today the only building remaining from the first photo is on the far left, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 60th Street. It was built in 1894 for the Metropolitan Club, which was a private social club founded by J.P. Morgan a few years earlier. Its early members included many other prominent New Yorkers, and today it remains an active club in the same building. The only other feature left from the first photo is the golden equestrian statue of General William T. Sherman, which was designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and installed here in Grand Army Plaza in 1903.

Plaza Hotel, New York City (2)

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Another view of the Plaza Hotel and Grand Army Plaza, taken from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, around 1907-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The hotel in 2016:

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This view of the Plaza Hotel shows the building from the Fifth Avenue side, a block away from where the photos in the previous post were taken. As mentioned in that post, the hotel was built in 1907, on the site of an earlier, much smaller Plaza Hotel. It was built right next to Grand Army Plaza, which is seen in the foreground, and also next to the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, whose wrought-iron fence and gates are visible on the far left.

At first glance, the hotel appears to look the same in both photos, but the left side of the building is actually significantly longer. This was the result of a 300-room expansion along West 58th Street in 1920, which replaced many of the earlier low-rise buildings that appear in the first photo. A few years later, in 1926, the nearby Vanderbilt House was demolished, and today the Plaza Hotel is the only surviving building from the first photo. Aside from the addition, the hotel retains its original exterior appearance, and today it is one of two New York City hotels, along with the Waldorf-Astoria, to be listed as a National Historic Landmark.