Landscapes

Mount Tom Railroad, Holyoke, Mass (3)

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The trolley Elizur Holyoke approaching the summit on the Mount Tom Railroad, around 1905-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

The first photo shows the trolley Elizur Holyoke, one of two that operated on the Mount Tom Railroad. Together with the Rowland Thomas, these two cars formed a funicular railway; they were connected by a cable that allowed the descending car to use its weight to help pull the other one up the mountain. This cable, which is seen in the foreground in the middle of the tracks in the first photo, was not powered by a motor at the summit, but instead each car had its own motors, which drew power from overhead wires by way of a trolley pole, as shown atop the Elizur Holyoke in the photo.

The Mount Tom Railroad opened in 1897, allowing visitors to reach the newly-constructed Summit House atop the 1,200-foot Mount Tom. It was just under a mile in length, and it rose 700 feet in elevation, with an average grade of 14 percent and a maximum of 21.5 percent. Most of the route was straight, with the exception of a curve near the summit, which is shown here in this scene. The cars typically ran once every half hour, although they could be operated more frequently depending on demand. Each car could seat 84 passengers, and over the course of an average season the railroad typically carried about 75,000 people to and from the summit.

Aside from the railroad itself, this scene also offers a view of the northernmost portion of the Mount Tom Range, along with part of the Holyoke Range. Appropriately enough, the first photo shows the Elizur Holyoke directly below Mount Holyoke. Both the mountain and the trolley share the same namesake, and the mountain also lent its name to the city of Holyoke, where Mount Tom is located. Further to the left of Mount Holyoke is Mount Nonotuck, which is visible near the upper left corner of the first photo.

When the railroad and Summit House here on Mount Tom opened in 1897, both of these mountains already had long-established hotels at their summits, with the Prospect House on Mount Holyoke and the Eyrie House on Mount Nonotuck. Unlike those businesses, though, the Summit House did not offer overnight accommodations, and instead catered entirely to day visitors. In any case, the aging Eyrie House was never a major competitor to the Summit House, and it ultimately burned in 1901. As for the Prospect House, its 20th century history would largely mirror that of the Summit House, and both ultimately closed in the late 1930s amid declining business during the Great Depression.

The Summit House was demolished around 1938, and the railroad tracks were removed around the same time. Then, in 1944 the property was sold to the radio station WHYN, which built towers and buildings at the summit and converted the railroad right-of-way into a paved access road. Overall, though, this scene has not changed much, aside from the loss of the railroad tracks. The slopes of Mount Tom still look much the same as they did when the first photo was taken, as do the mountains in the distance, although some are obscured by tree growth in the present-day photo. Even the Prospect House on Mount Holyoke is still standing, and it is barely visible as a tiny white speck just to the left of the summit in both photos. Now preserved as a museum, this historic building is one of the few surviving 19th century mountaintop resorts in the northeast, having long outlived its newer competitors on Mount Nonotuck and here on Mount Tom.

Mount Tom Railroad, Holyoke, Mass

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The trolley Rowland Thomas on the Mount Tom Railroad in Holyoke, around 1905-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

The early 20th century was the heyday of electric trolleys in the United States. In the years prior to widespread car ownership, most cities and even many small towns were served by networks of trolley lines that were generally run by private companies. In order to maximize profits, these companies often built picnic groves, amusement parks, and other recreational facilities along their lines. Known as trolley parks, these generated revenue not only through admission fees, but also through increased trolley ridership on otherwise-slow weekends.

Here in Holyoke, the Holyoke Street Railway Company opened Mountain Park in the 1890s. It began as a small park at the base of Mount Tom, but it soon added amenities such as a dance hall, a restaurant, a roller coaster, and a carousel. Most significantly, though, the company also built a summit house at the top of the 1,200-foot mountain, allowing visitors to enjoy the expansive views of the Connecticut River valley. Mountaintop resorts were popular in the northeast during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and there were already several in the vicinity of Mount Tom, including the Prospect House on Mount Holyoke and the Eyrie House on Mount Nonotuck. However, unlike those establishments, the Summit House here on Mount Tom was not a hotel. Instead, it catered to day visitors, with a restaurant, a stage, and an observatory equipped with telescopes.

To bring visitors to the Summit House, the company constructed the Mount Tom Railroad, a nearly mile-long funicular railway that rose 700 feet in elevation from Mountain Park to a station just below the summit. It had an average grade of 14 percent, with a maximum grade of 21.5 percent at its steepest section. The lower part of the route was straight, as shown here in this view looking down from the midpoint, although there was a gentle curve right before the summit station. Like most funiculars, it consisted of two cars that were connected by a cable. As one car descended, it pulled the other car up the mountain, allowing gravity to do most of the work. The cable itself was unpowered, but the cars each had their own electric motors powered by overhead wires, in order to compensate for weight differences and energy lost to friction.

The two cars were named the Rowland Thomas and Elizur Holyoke, in honor of the early colonists who became the namesakes of Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. Each car was 36 feet long, 9 feet wide, and could seat 84 passengers. They were connected to each other by a 5,050-foot-long, 1.25-inch steel cable, which passed over a large sheave at the summit. This sheave was mounted on an A-frame that was, in turn, bolted securely into the rock. In addition, the cars maintained constant telephone connection with each other, by way of telephone lines that ran alongside the tracks just above ground level, as shown in the lower left corner of the first photo. The cars connected to these by way of brush-like shoes that ran along the top of the wires as the car moved.

Because of the steep grade of the railroad, the cars’ braking ability was of critical importance, as an uncontrolled descent would likely have had deadly consequences. To prevent this, the cars had several independent braking systems. Each car was equipped with standard trolley brakes, but the cable itself was controlled by a centrifugal governor at the summit that automatically slowed the cable once it began moving faster than 1,400 feet per minute, or about 16 miles per hour. This second feature obviously only worked if the cable remained intact, but there was yet another braking system in the event of a catastrophic failure of the cable. As shown in the first photo, a third rail ran inside the tracks next to the cable. In an emergency, the motorman could activate a lever that would cause the car to clamp on to this rail. This could also be done automatically, by a governor that was set to engage the rail once the car exceeded 1,500 feet per minute, or 17 miles per hour.

In any funicular railway, one of the other challenges is determining how the two cars will pass each other. The simplest solution is to have two parallel tracks, with each car operating on its own track at all times. However, this requires a wider right-of-way, along with significantly more materials than a single-track railway. One alternative is a three-rail funicular, in which each car has its own outside rail and shares the middle one, diverging only at a short passing section. The other option is to have one track for both cars, with a turnout at the halfway point. This requires the least amount of land and materials, but it requires a complex track arrangement at the turnout to ensure each car takes the correct path and safely crosses over the cable.

Here on Mount Tom, the railroad engineers chose the third option, as shown in the first photo. The two cars met at a passing loop, which is visible in the lower center of the photo. At first glance it looks similar to a standard railroad switch, but the key difference is that it has no moving parts. Instead, the cars and tracks are designed so that each one can only take one path, which remains the same regardless of whether the car is heading up or down the mountain. As such, the Rowland Thomas always took the tracks on the north side (the left side when viewed from this direction), while the Elizur Holyoke always took the south side.

To achieve this, the two cars had different wheel arrangements. The wheels on one side of the car had a wider tread than on the other side, which caused them to be guided along deflector rails onto the correct track. For the Rowland Thomas, these wide-tread wheels were on the left side when it was headed uphill, and for the Elizur Holyoke they were on the right side. On the same side as these wheels, each car also had an extra set of wheels that were slightly raised above the others and hung out about 15 inches from the main wheels. Because the turnout required gaps in the main rail to allow the cable to pass through, there was a short section of rail next to these gaps. As the main wheels approached the gap, the auxiliary wheels would roll along this additional rail, preventing what would otherwise be a derailment.

Work on the railroad began in March 1897, and it was completed in time for the summer season, opening on May 25. It operated throughout the summer and into the fall foliage season, before closing for the winter at the end of October. Round trip fare was 25 cents, and included the trolley ride along with use of the Summit House. The trolleys were scheduled to run twice an hour, with extra trips as needed. However, by September this schedule was insufficient to keep up with demand, as indicated by a Springfield Republican article that criticized the railroad for dangerously overcrowded trolleys.

During the early years of the railroad, perhaps its most distinguished passenger was President William McKinley, who visited Mount Tom along with his wife Ida on June 19, 1899. A number of onlookers gathered at the lower station to catch a glimpse of the president, who sat in the front seat of the Elizur Holyoke trolley for the ride up the mountain. At the summit, he and Ida were likewise greeted by a large crowd, and they spent about an hour there, where they ate a light lunch at Summit House before heading back down the mountain.

As it turned out, the McKinleys would be the first of at least two presidential couples who would travel up the Mount Tom Railroad. About five years later, a young Calvin Coolidge and Grace Goodhue visited the mountain on a date. At the time, Calvin was a lawyer in Northampton and Grace was a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf. While at the Summit House, he purchased a souvenir plaque of the mountain, which became the first gift he ever gave her. They subsequently married in 1905, and he went on to become governor, vice president, and then ultimately president in 1923.

In the meantime, the original Summit House only lasted for a few years before being destroyed by a fire in 1900. Its replacement opened the following year, but this too would eventually burn, in 1929. By contrast, the Mount Tom Railroad itself appears to have avoided any major incidents throughout its history. However, there were occasional breakdowns that forced passengers to walk down the mountain, and in at least one instance causing a number of people to spend the night in makeshift accommodations at the Summit House.

On July 24, 1928, at around 9:15pm, the Rowland Thomas had to stop about 150 feet from the upper station because of a broken journal on one of its axles. This likewise caused the Elizur Holyoke to stop the same distance from the lower station. The passengers on the Elizur Holyoke were able to easily return to the station, but about 50 people were  stranded at the summit. Many chose to walk down the mountain in the dark, guided by railroad employees with lanterns, but 22 remained at the Summit House overnight. Some stayed up all night, playing bridge and dancing, and most descended the mountain after sunrise, although four guests stayed at the summit until railroad service was restored later in the day. A similar incident occurred less than a month later, when a spread rail stopped the trolleys at about 9:00pm. This time, 35 people walked down in the dark, but it does not appear that anyone spent the night at the summit.

After the 1929 fire at the Summit House, the railroad quickly constructed a temporary replacement at the summit. It had intended to then build a more permanent structure, but by the early 1930s the mountain faced declining numbers of visitors. Part of this was because of the Great Depression, which began just months after the fire here. Another factor was increased car ownership among the middle class, which meant that recreational activities were no longer limited to places that people could access by trolley.

At the base of the mountain, Mountain Park would remain a popular amusement park for decades, but both the Mount Tom Railroad and the Summit House closed in the late 1930s. The temporary Summit House was dismantled for scrap metal in 1938, and around the same time the railroad tracks were taken up and removed. The rails and other metal components were presumably reused or scrapped, but the wooden ties were discarded in piles alongside the right-of-way. More than 80 years later, many of these ties are still in remarkably good condition, and a few are visible in the lower right corner of the second photo.

The railroad ultimately sold the summit area and the right-of-way to the WHYN radio station, which constructed radio towers and transmitter buildings on the site of the old Summit House. The old railroad grade was paved over, and it became an access road for the radio station. As a result, the present-day scene looks very different from the first photo, although there are still a few remnants of the old railroad, including the ties, some discarded spikes, and metal support braces for the old utility poles that once supported the electrified trolley wire.

Eyrie House, Holyoke, Mass

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The Eyrie House on the summit of Mount Nonotuck in Northampton (now Holyoke), around the 1890s. Image from author’s collection.

The scene in 2021:

During the mid-19th century, mountaintop hotels became popular destinations here in the northeast. Prior to this time, Americans generally viewed mountains unfavorably, as they were poor for farming, they formed barriers to transportation, and their slopes often sheltered wild animals. Few colonial-era settlers had any interest in climbing simply for the sake of it, but this started to change in the 19th century, with writers and artists who increasingly portrayed the mountains as places of natural beauty, in contrast to the rapidly-growing industrial cities of the northeast.

This influx of visitors to the mountains led to the construction of many mountaintop buildings and hotels in the northeast. The first of these was built just a few miles from here in 1821, at the summit of Mount Holyoke. This building was little more than a refreshment stand, but it was eventually rebuilt in 1851 as a true hotel, named the Prospect House. It was subsequently expanded several times, and it still stands atop Mount Holyoke today as a rare survivor among the 19th century mountain houses in the region.

In the meantime, the Prospect House faced competition in 1861 with the opening of the Eyrie House on Mount Nonotuck, which is shown here in the first photo. Like Mount Holyoke, Mount Nonotuck is a part of the Metacomet Ridge, a nearly unbroken line of traprock mountains that extends from Long Island Sound to the Massachusetts-Vermont border. The highest peaks on the ridge are located in the Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke Ranges of Massachusetts, which are separated from each other by the Connecticut River. The river flows through a narrow gap between Mount Holyoke to the east and Mount Nonotuck to the west, providing dramatic views of the river and the surrounding valley from the summits of both peaks. The view from Mount Holyoke was immortalized by Thomas Cole’s famous 1836 painting The Oxbow, but Mount Nonotuck also offered a similar view from the opposite direction.

Mount Nonotuck is located at the northern end of the Mount Tom Range, where it rises about 820 feet above sea level and nearly 700 feet above the river valley. It does not appear to have had a formal name until 1858, when Edward Hitchcock named it after the old Native American name for what is now Northampton. Hitchcock was a prominent geologist and former president of Amherst College, and he was responsible for naming many local hills and mountains, including several on the Metacomet Ridge. He tended to prefer Native American names, and in some cases replaced inelegant English names, such as Hilliard’s Knob, which became Mount Norwottuck after the Native American name for Hadley.

The “christening,” as newspapers described it, of Mount Nonotuck occurred on June 17, 1858, with a ceremony here at the summit. It was attended by Edward Hitchcock, who by this point had retired as president of Amherst College, and by his successor, William A. Stearns. About 500 other people gathered here, including dignitaries such as Lieutenant Governor Eliphalet Trask, Congressman Calvin C. Chaffee, and a number of local clergymen. Supposedly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had also been invited, with the promise of naming the mountain “Hiawatha” in his honor, but he evidently declined, so the mountain became Nonotuck, which according to contemporary newspapers meant “mountain of the blest.” The formal honors of baptizing the mountain with the new name fell to Hitchcock, who scattered fragments of 12 stones that had been gathered from around the world, including specimens from the Alps, China, and Africa.

One newspaper account, published in the Massachusetts Spy, described how “[f]air women and brave men, toiled patiently up the steep ascent in a broiling sun, to enjoy the promised intellectual treat, breathe the pure mountain air, and drink in the extensive view.” Some of this is certainly embellished, as Mount Nonotuck is not exactly a difficult climb, yet it speaks to the motivations that drew mid-century New Englanders to the mountains. Similar articles appeared in newspapers throughout New England, and even in places as far away as Alexandria, Virginia.

It was perhaps as a result of the attention given to the newly-named mountain that, less than three years later, two local businessmen leased the summit area and built a small hotel in an effort to compete with the more established Prospect House across the river. The two partners, William Street and Hiram Farnum, sought advice from Edward Hitchcock on an appropriate name for their hotel, and he offered several suggestions. They ultimately chose Eyrie House, which according to Hitchcock’s memoirs was based on a line from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which reads “the eagle and the stork on cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build.”

The building, which would later be expanded several times, was originally small and roughly square in its dimensions, with two stories topped by an observatory on the roof. This original portion of the hotel is visible in the distant center of the first photo, showing the cupola still atop it. Upon completion, the building featured five guest rooms, but in its early years it seems to have focused primarily on attracting day visitors. Unlike those who came here three years earlier and “toiled patiently up the steep ascent,” visitors to the Eyrie House could choose between riding up the carriage road, or taking the mile-long footpath directly from the railroad station to the summit.

The hotel was formally opened on July 4, 1861. Appropriately enough, Edward Hitchcock was one of the speakers at the dedication. The previous day, the Springfield Republican ran an advertisement for the festivities, which included the following description:

A good TELESCOPE has been purchased for the use of visitors of the house, and arrangements are making for suitable amusements.

A good Band will be in attendance through the day.

All Refreshments desired can be had at the house or on the grounds. . . .

Excursion tickets will be sold from Northampton, Holyoke, and all the stations on the railroad, to the mountain, and as no pains will be spared to make the occasion one of interest, it is hoped the public will avail themselves on this opportunity to spend a pleasant day in listening to patriotic speeches and enjoying the beautiful mountain scenery.

Admission to the Grounds on the 4th, free; to the House, 15 cents; children 10 cents.

After opening day, Street and Farnum raised the admission to 25 cents for adults and 12.5 cents for children, which was identical to the rates at the Prospect House. However, unlike across the river, where only paying customers could access the grounds, the Eyrie House grounds remained open free of charge, and guests only had to pay admission if they wanted to enter the building. The Eyrie House also offered special discounted rates for schools and other groups, and an 1861 advertisement assured readers that parties “would be furnished anything desired at reasonable terms.”

The Eyrie House was open daily, except for Sundays, throughout July 1871. However, in early August the two owners dissolved their partnership. The hotel and grounds were closed for several weeks, but William Street ultimately acquired Farnum’s interest in the business, and he reopened the hotel by the end of the month. He was only in his early 20s at the time, but he ran the Eyrie House for the next 40 years. During this time, he developed a reputation as both a successful hotelier and also an eccentric recluse. A lifelong bachelor, Street lived here on the mountaintop, where he was known for, among other things, collecting rattlesnakes with his bare hands and keeping them in a den for curious visitors to see. Over the years he studied other native wildlife, and gathered specimens, both living and stuffed, for his collection here.

Eccentricities aside, Street developed Mount Nonotuck into a popular destination. The Eyrie House never achieved the same level of success as its more established competitor on Mount Holyoke, but the hotel prospered throughout the 1870s and 1880s. He expanded the building in 1870, increasing its capacity with five more guest rooms, and in 1875 he purchased the property from his landlord. He subsequently built several more additions, eventually increasing the hotel to a total of 30 guest rooms. He also built long promenades extending to the north and south of the building, along with a smaller promenade at the front of the building facing west. Here at the summit, the grounds also featured a pavilion, stables, a croquet court, a picnic grove, and a swing.

By the 1880s, the Eyrie House offered orchestral concerts every day during the summer months, with the exception of Sundays. In 1880, admission still cost 25 cents, with another 25 cents for those who wanted a ride to the summit. Overnight lodging was $8 per week in August and $7 in September, or $1.75 per day. Meals were 50 cents each, and the hotel’s restaurant offered a wide range of food each day. For example, an August 1880 advertisement in the Springfield Republican listed the following menu for Fridays:

SOUP.—Beef.
FISH.—Baked Blue Fish, Cream Sauce.
ROAST.—Spring Chickens, Ribs of Beef.
COLD.—Corned Beef, Tongue, Ham.
VEGETABLES.—Sweet Potatoes, Mashed Potatoes, Beets, Onions, Corn.
RELISHES.—Pepper Sauce, Pickles, Mustard, Halford Sauce, Tomato Catsup.
PASTRY.—Mince Pie, Lemon Pie, Apple Pie, Cocoanut Pie.
DESSERT.—Peaches, Apples, Watermelons, Confectionery, Raisins Vanilla Ice-Cream, Tea, Coffee.

The first photo shows the building sometime around the late 1890s. It was taken from the south promenade, facing north towards the hotel. The original 1861 portion is visible in the distant center, with two women standing atop the observatory. Closer to the foreground on the right side is one of the newer wings of the hotel, and on the left side is the small front promenade. Beyond it is a glimpse of the view to the north, showing a portion of the river valley and the hills further in the distance.

Although this photo shows guests here enjoying the scenery, it also reveals the poor condition of the hotel and grounds. This is particularly evident here in the foreground, where many of the boards on the promenade appear to be in poor condition and portions of the fence are leaning inward or outward. Faced with declining visitors and an aging building, William Street embarked on extensive building project in 1893. His goal was to build a new stone hotel, which would be located immediately below the summit to the northwest of the existing building. Rather than taking a carriage road or footpath to the summit, guests would be able to ride to the top on an incline railway that would bring them directly into the ground floor of the new hotel.

Street worked on these projects in the mid-1890s, but he ultimately had to halt them because of financial troubles, perhaps as a result the economic recession caused by the Panic of 1893. Only a portion of the railroad grade had been completed by this point, and the stonework for the new building had not progressed beyond the ground floor. In the meantime, the old Eyrie House remained open, but it faced further competition in 1897 with the completion of the Summit House on Mount Tom, located about three miles to the south of here. Although not a hotel, this large building featured a restaurant, a stage, and an observatory. It was a much more substantial building than the deteriorating Eyrie House, and visitors could reach it by way of a mile-long trolley line that connected the summit to the Mountain Park amusement park at the base of the mountain.

As it turned out, the original Summit House would last just three years on Mount Tom, before being destroyed by a fire on October 8, 1900. It is impossible to say whether the loss of this building would have led to any substantial increase in business for William Street in the following year, but the Eyrie House ended up meeting the same fate just six months later.

Two of William Street’s horses had died at the summit during the winter of 1901, and it was impossible to bury them in the frozen, rocky ground here. He ultimately waited until the spring, and then decided to dispose of the remains by cremation. To that effect, he built a pyre about 50 feet from the barn and cremated the horses on the afternoon of April 13, 1901. At some point in the evening he left the fire unattended and went back to the hotel, about 200 feet from the barn. However, around 8:00pm he looked out the window and noticed that the barn was on fire. Making matters worse, the wind had shifted in the meantime, and was now blowing the flames in the direction of the hotel.

Street was alone on the mountain at the time. The first people to arrive here to help were Richard Underwood and his son William, who lived at the base of the mountain. They reached the summit around 8:45, but by this point one of the promenades was ablaze, and the flames had reached part of the hotel. However, their firefighting efforts had little effect, although they did manage to rescue a few items from inside the hotel, including the telescope. About an hour after the Underwoods arrived, a group of five men climbed up here, including an Easthampton firefighter. A few others later showed up, but there was little that they could do, and the Eyrie House was completely destroyed by 11:00pm.

William Street burned his hand while trying to fight the flames, but this was likely the least of his concerns in the aftermath of the fire. It was a significant financial loss, as he had only insured the Eyrie House for $2,000 of its estimated $10,000 value. In addition, the emotional toll was likely even worse for Street, who lost the place that had been his home and business for the past 40 years. Reporting several days after the fire, the Springfield Republican observed that he “appeared completely broken down by his loss. He had become greatly attached to his mountain home, and tears filled his eyes as he told of the loss he had sustained.”

Another article, published in the Republican the day after the fire, provided the following descriptions of Street and his hotel:

The old house, built originally over 40 years ago, was for years a popular resort in the days before the electric and cable roads made the southern promontory of the range easily accessible. There William Street, the picturesque hermit of the mountain, has lived for years, visited lately by few, and seemingly content to live in his lofty home apart from his fellow-men. The house formerly rang with the shouts and laughter of merry-makers, and the long dance hall was the scene of many gay parties in the days of the resort’s prosperity. Of late the house has fallen into decay and had presented a somewhat dilapidated appearance. . . .

William Street, the owner of Nonotuck, is noteworthy and individual;—there is nobody else like him. He has loved the mountain and his eyrie there, where for a great part of the year he has led a solitary life, which just suited him. He used to be fond of collecting various wild creatures to show his visitors, and his rattlesnake den, very carefully made on the north side of his old house, was an object of much interest, and had something to do with the popularity of it. He has lived so much in the midst of the forest that he knows a vast lot of things that happen therein, the ways of its denizens, the birds that have surrounded him so many springs and summers; the osprey’s nests he has seen, and the eagle he has personally become acquainted with. Mr. Street has become a silent man, as is the wont of those who dwell where more is said than meets the ear or can be put into words. But to those who appreciate the manner of man he is, he can discourse most interestingly. A tall, spare, rugged figure, absolutely careless of dress or grace of any sort, he is nevertheless worth knowing; and there are few who have seen him in his beloved Eyrie who will not sympathize with him in the destruction of the queer structure which has been his home so long.

The loss of the hotel was obviously devastating for Street, but he would soon lose the mountain itself as well. By the early 20th century, the state was eyeing the property as part of a proposed Mount Tom State Reservation, which would encompass much of the Mount Tom Range. They offered him $5,000 for his now-empty mountaintop property, but he refused, insisting on $25,000 instead. The state ultimately took the land by eminent domain, and deposited the $5,000 in a bank account in his name. In his later years he continued to live as a recluse, rarely receiving visitors or leaving his house in Holyoke, except for occasional trips to buy supplies every few months. He died in 1918 at the age of 80, supposedly without ever having touched the money that the state had given him for his land.

It is hard to say what exactly happened to the $5,000 that the state paid to William Street, but his property remains a part of the Mount Tom State Reservation nearly 120 years later. The days of croquet, concerts, and overnight lodging here on Mount Nonotuck are long gone, yet the mountain remains a popular spot for modern-day visitors, who are drawn here by the ruins of the hotel buildings and grounds. The most impressive ruins are the massive stone walls of the unfinished 1893 building, although these are located out of view in this particular scene, down the slope on the left side of the photo. Here at the summit area, the ruins of the original Eyrie House are a little less visible, consisting primarily of a few low stone walls and several pieces of iron embedded in the exposed rock at the summit. A portion of the building’s former footprint is now occupied by a beacon tower. It was built during World War II, and it is partially visible through the trees near the center of the 2021 photo.

Although the Eyrie House was located in Northampton, this site is now part of the city of Holyoke. For many years, the Mount Tom Range was part of an unusual exclave of Northampton, which was separated from the rest of the city by a narrow wedge of Easthampton. However, this arrangement led to disaffected residents of the Smith’s Ferry neighborhood at the base of the mountain, who believed that Northampton was failing to provide services for them. They successfully lobbied the state legislature to transfer the land, and in June 1909 it became the northern section of Holyoke.

Aside from the changes in ownership and jurisdiction, the other major difference here on Mount Nonotuck is the view. Once heralded as being the near-equivalent of the view from Mount Holyoke, the mountaintop is now almost entirely forested. There is a scenic overlook a little below the summit, at the end of a now-abandoned park road, but otherwise there are only limited views here at the site of the Eyrie House. Overall, though, this scene probably does not look all that different from how it would have appeared to Edward Hitchcock and the other attendees of the 1858 christening ceremony, before any buildings or other structures were added to the summit. Perhaps some of Hitchcock’s rocks from around the world are also still here on the summit, intermingled with the 150-year-old remains of the hotel and the 200-million-year-old basalt traprock of the Metacomet Ridge.

Judges Cave, New Haven, Connecticut

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The Judges Cave on West Rock in New Haven, around 1901. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2024:

The immediate origins of the American Revolution can be traced back to the 1760s, when colonists began protesting taxes that were being levied on the colonies in the aftermath of the French and Indian War. However, this was hardly the first time that the colonies had defied the British crown. A century earlier, following the English Civil War and the eventual restoration of the monarchy, the colony of New Haven protected several regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I in 1649. This ultimately helped lead to the downfall of the colony and its merger with Connecticut in 1664, but none of the regicides were ever captured, and the incident has lived on in New England lore.

John Dixwell, William Goffe, and Edward Whalley were three military officers who had fought on the side of Parliament during the English Civil War in the 1640s. Following the defeat of the Royalists, King Charles I was captured put on trial for treason, and was found guilty of being a “tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy.” These three men were among the 59 commissioners who signed his death warrant, and he was subsequently beheaded on January 30, 1649.

This led to a decade-long interregnum, during which time Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell took on the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England. However, this government collapsed soon after Cromwell’s death in 1558, and in 1660 Charles II, the son of Charles I, returned from exile became king. That same year, Parliament passed the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, which pardoned most of the people who took part in the war but specifically excluded the 59 regicides and other high-ranking leaders who were connected to the trial and execution of Charles I. Over the next few years, royal officials tracked down many of these people, who were then imprisoned or executed. Even those who were already dead could not escape punishment; the bodies of Cromwell and several other dead regicides were exhumed from their graves, publicly executed, and then beheaded.

In the meantime, Dixwell, Goffe, and Whalley fled to the New World, to seek shelter among the Puritans. The exact date and location of Dixwell’s arrival is unknown, but he was presumed dead by the British and was not actively pursued by royal authorities. As for Goffe and Whalley, they arrived in Boston in July 1660, and they lived openly in Cambridge, before news of the Indemnity and Oblivion Act reached the colony in the fall. Over the next few months, the colonial leaders debated what to do about the two men. Although many were sympathetic to them and their cause, they feared the consequences to the colony if they continued to shelter them. So, on February 26, 1661 Goffe and Whalley left Cambridge for New Haven, where they arrived on March 7.

Here in New Haven, the men initially lived with the Reverend John Davenport. However, within a few months they were again in danger. News of their formal arrest warrant, dated March 5, reached New Haven around the end of April. This was soon followed by the arrival of royal officials in nearby Guilford, where they met with Governor William Leete. He managed to delay them in Guilford for several days, allowing Goffe and Whalley to quite literally take to the hills in order to escape arrest.

Goffe and Whalley spent several nights in temporary lodgings, aided by local farmers, before they were brought here to this rock formation on May 15. Although commonly referred to as Judges Cave, it is a cave in only the most generous sense of the word. In reality, it is a pile of boulders that, in a few areas, overhang enough to provide minimal shelter from the elements.  It is located high atop West Rock, a traprock ridge located about three miles northwest of the center of New Haven. At the time, this was a remote, sparsely-settled area, and they were able to live here for nearly a month without being detected.

Throughout this month, Goffe and Whalley received food every day from Richard Sperry, a local farmer who lived about a mile from here. They spent several nights at a nearby house during periods of inclement weather, but otherwise they lived here on the hill, which they named Providence Hill. In the meantime, royal officials were diligently searching for them in New Haven, offering generous rewards for their capture while also threatening Reverend Davenport for having aided them. The two regicides considered turning themselves in, in order to spare the colony any further trouble, but Governor Leete convinced them to remain in hiding. Within a few years, though, New Haven’s aid to the regicides would be a contributing factor in the demise of the colony, which was absorbed by the neighboring Connecticut colony in 1664.

According to legend, it was ultimately not royal officials who drove Goffe and Whalley from this cave, but rather a mountain lion that made an appearance at the entrance to the cave and frightened the two men. They left here on June 11, and lived at two other locations in the vicinity of West Rock for the next few months before finding more permanent lodgings at a house in Milford. They remained at this house for the next two or three years, before eventually moving to Hadley, Massachusetts, where they spent the rest of their lives in safety.

Because of the obvious need for secrecy in the movements of the regicides, there are few contemporary sources to corroborate these events. Perhaps the only primary source document was a diary that Goffe kept from 1660 to 1667, which he wrote in an easily-decipherable shorthand. This diary is now lost to history, but in the mid-1700s it was owned by Thomas Hutchinson, the royal lieutenant governor and later governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Aside from his role in colonial government, Hutchinson was also a historian, and in 1764 he published The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. This book included an account of the regicides, which was based largely on Goffe’s journal. However, as a loyalist in the years leading up to the American Revolution, Hutchinson took a dim view of the regicides, and this bias is evident in much of his narrative. For example, he emphasizes the role that colonial officials had in trying to apprehend them, in an effort to portray the majority of 17th century New Englanders as having been loyal to the crown

Regardless of the biases, and the fact that it was written a century after the events happened, Hutchinson’s book provides the earliest significant account of the regicides and their flight through New England. The section relevant to their time here at Judges Cave, which is part of a lengthy footnote, reads as follows:

About that time, news came to Boston that ten of the judges were executed, and the governor received a royal mandate, dated March 5, 1660, to cause Whaley and Goffe to be secured. This greatly alarmed the country, and there is no doubt that the court were now in earnest in their endeavours to apprehend them; and to avoid all suspicion, they gave commission and instruction to two young merchants from England, Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, zealous royalists, to go through the colonies, as far as Manhados, in search of them. They had friends who informed them what was doing, and they removed from Mr. Davenport’s to the house of one Jones, where they lay hid until the 11th of May, and then removed to a mill, and from thence, on the 13th, into the woods, where they met Jones and two of his companions, Sperry and Burril, who first conducted them to a place called hatchet-harbor, where they lay two nights, until a cave or hole in the side of a hill was prepared to conceal them. This hill they called Providence hill; and there they continued, from the 15th of May to the 11th of June, sometimes in the cave, and, in very tempestuous weather, in a house near to it. During this time, the messengers went through New-Haven to the Dutch settlement, from whence they returned to Boston by water. They made diligent search, and had full proof that the regicides had been seen at Mr. Davenport’s, and offered great rewards to English and Indians who should give information that they might be taken, but, by the fidelity of these three friends, they remained undiscovered.

Goffe’s journal remained in Hutchinson’s possession until 1765, when his house was ransacked by a Patriot mob in protest of the Stamp Act. The journal was either lost or destroyed in the process, making Hutchinson’s book the only surviving description of its contents. However, at least one other prominent historian, future Yale president Ezra Stiles, had the opportunity to examine the journal before its disappearance. He saw it during a 1763 visit to Hutchinson’s house, and he subsequently wrote his own history of the regicides.

Unlike Hutchinson’s description of the regicides, which fills just seven pages in his massive multi-volume history of the colony, Ezra Stiles published an entire book about their exploits in 1794. Titled A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I, the book is over 350 pages long, and it relies heavily on oral traditions that were passed down to the descendants of the men involved in helping the regicides. Like Hutchinson’s account, Stiles’s book also has a political slant, although in the opposite direction. Writing just a decade after the American Revolution, in the midst of republican, anti-monarchical sentiment, Stiles viewed the regicides in a positive light, and he even included a chapter in which he justified their actions.

Stiles’s seemingly uncritical use of oral tradition in his book would come under criticism from later scholars, including biographer Edmund S. Morgan. Writing in his 1962 book The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795, Morgan asserted that it “represents Stiles at his worst. It is a tedious hodgepodge of fact and fancy, compounded mainly out of dim recollections by old men and women of things their grandfathers had told them fifty years before.” One such recollection, which relates to the Judges Cave, came from an interview with Joseph Sperry, whose grandfather Richard Sperry had aided the regicides in 1661. Stiles provided the following account in his book, including a description of this cave:

In 1785 I visited aged Mr. Joseph Sperry, then living, aged 76, a grandson of the first Richard, a son of Daniel Sperry, who died in 1751, aged 86, from whom Joseph received the whole family tradition. Daniel was the sixth son of Richard, and built a house at the south end of Sperry’s farm, in which Joseph now lives, not a half a mile west from the Cave, which Joseph shewed me. There is a notch in the mountain against Joseph’s house, through which I ascended along a very steep acclivity up to the Cave. From the south end of the mountain for three or four miles northward, there is no possible ascent or descent on the west side, but at this notch, so steep is the precipice of the rock. I found the Cave to be formed, on a base of perhaps forty feet square, by an irregular clump or pile of rocks, or huge broad pillars of stone, fifteen and twenty feet high, standing erect and elevated above the surrounding superficies of the mountain, and enveloped with trees and forest. These rocks coalescing or contiguous at top, furnished hollows or vacuities below, big enough to contain bedding and two or three persons. The apertures being closed with boughs of trees or otherwise, there might be found a well covered and convenient lodgement.

After this description of the cave and its surroundings, he wrote of what he learned from Joseph Sperry:

Here, Mr. Sperry told me, was the first lodgment of the Judges, and it has ever since gone and been known by the name of the Judges’ Cave to this day. Goffe’s Journal says, they entered this Cave the 15th of May, and continued in it till the 11th of June following—Richard Sperry daily supplied them with victuals from his house, about a mile off; sometimes carrying it himself, at other times sending it by one of his boys, tied up in cloth, ordering him to lay it on a certain stump and leave it: and when the boy went for it at night he always found the basons emptied of the provisions, and brought them home. The boy wondered at it, and used to ask his father the design of it, and he saw no body. His father only told him there was some body at work in the woods that wanted it. The sons always remembered it, and often told it to persons now living, and to Mr. Joseph Sperry particularply [sic].

They continued here till 11th of June. Mr. Joseph Sperry told me that the incident which broke them up from this Cave was this, that this mountain being a haunt for wild animals, one night as the Judges lay in bed, a panther, or catamount, putting his head into the door or aperture of the Cave, blazed his eye-balls in such a hideous manner upon them, as greatly affrighted them. One of them was so terrified by this grim and ferocious monster, her eyes and her squawling, that he took to his heels, and fled down the mountain to the Sperry’s house for safety. They thereupon considered this situation too dangerous, and quitted it. All the Sperry families have this tradition.

Aside from the events here in New Haven, the subsequent lives of Goffe and Whalley in Hadley are shrouded in mystery and legend. They lived at the home of the Reverend John Russell, but it appears that most townspeople were unaware of their identities. At some point around 1664, they were reunited with John Dixwell, the third regicide who had fled to New England. He eventually moved to New Haven, where he lived under the name John Davids until his death in 1689. Because the authorities believed that he was dead, he was able to live in relative security, and does not appear to have required the use of this cave or any other improvised shelters.

In the meantime, Edward Whalley died in Hadley around 1675 of natural causes, but Goffe lived long enough to become the subject of perhaps the most memorable regicide legend. According to tradition, at some point in either 1675 or 1676 the town of Hadley was facing an attack by Native Americans during King Philip’s War. The townspeople started panicking, but then an elderly man, identified in the legend as William Goffe, emerged and began to take charge. Some 30 years after he fought the Cavaliers on the battlefields of the English Civil War, he rallied the people and led their defense, and succeeded in saving the town. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, the “Angel of Hadley” was gone.

As is the case for nearly all of the regicide-related stories, the first published account of the Angel of Hadley did not appear for nearly a century, until Thomas Hutchinson included it in his book in 1764. He included it at the end of his lengthy footnote on the movements of the regicides, writing:

The town of Hadley was alarmed by the Indians in 1675, in the time of publick worship, and the people were in the utmost confusion. Suddenly, a grave elderly person appeared in the midst of them. In his mien and dress he differed from the rest of the people. He not only encouraged them to defend themselves; but put himself at their head, rallied, instructed and led them on to encounter the enemy, who by this means were repulsed. As suddenly, the deliverer of Hadley disappeared. The people were left in consternation, utterly unable to account for this strange phœnomenon. It is not probable, that they were ever able to explain it. If Goffe had been then discovered, it must have come to the knowledge of those persons, who declare by their letters that they never knew what became of him.

Writing in his book 30 years after Hutchinson, Stiles repeats essentially the same account of the incident, although his wording tends to be more explicitly favorable to Goffe. Rather than describing him as “a grave elderly person,” Stiles writes of “a man of a very venerable aspect.” He copies Hutchinson’s wording by saying “the inhabitants could not account for the phœnomenon,” but then added “but considering that person as an Angel sent of God upon that special occasion for their deliverance; and for some time after said and believed that they had been delivered and saved by an Angel.”

Stiles’s romanticized description helped to solidify the idea of the “Angel of Hadley,” and by the early 19th century the story had become a part of early American folklore. In his 1823 novel Peveril of the Peak, Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott alluded to the incident, and in 1829 James Fenimore Cooper included it in his novel The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was never one to pass up a good story about the Puritans, also took inspiration from it. As a young man, he visited Judges Cave here in New Haven, and one of his early short stories, “The Gray Champion,” was loosely based on the Angel of Hadley legend. In the story, the title character is a shadowy, mysterious figure who embodies the Puritan ancestors of New England. Instead of defending a town against Native Americans, Hawthorne’s hero challenges the authoritarian rule of Edmund Andros in the 1680s. The Gray Champion disappears once the threat to the colony is over, but over the years he continues to make appearances whenever American liberty is at stake, including nearly a century later on the battlefields at Lexington and Bunker Hill.

Although Hutchinson’s and Stiles’s accounts provided plenty of material for 19th century authors, many historians began calling into question the accuracy of these tales, especially the ones that were handed down to Stiles through multi-generational hearsay. Legends such as the Angel of Hadley might very well have some basis in reality, but at this point it is difficult to sort out fact from fiction, given the inherent secrecy involved in the regicides and their activities here in New England. As for the tradition that the regicides spent a month hiding here in this rock formation, it is impossible to state with certainty that this is true. However, this belief does not seem to have been seriously questioned, and it seems plausible that this was, in fact, their hiding place during the spring of 1661.

The first photo was taken around 1901, showing the south side of the rock formation. By this point, the surrounding land was owned by the city of New Haven as part of West Rock Park. In the early 1890s a road was opened up here to the Judges Cave, and then in 1896 a plaque was installed here on the rocks. This plaque, which is visible here on the right side of the scene, commemorates the role that this site played in sheltering the regicides, and it was presented to the city by the Society of Colonial Wars. The formal dedication occurred on October 14, 1896, and it was attended by dignitaries such as Mayor Frederick B. Farnsworth, state adjutant general Edward E. Bradley, future governor Simeon E. Baldwin, and writer Charles Dudley Warner. Along with providing a short description of the regicides, the plaque features the phrase “opposition to tyrants is obedience to God,” which had apparently been inscribed on the rocks here as early as 1803.

Today, more than a century after the first photo was taken, the Judges Cave still looks essentially the same. It is still preserved as parkland, although it was acquired by the state in 1975, and it is now named West Rock Ridge State Park. The Judges Cave remains an important landmark within the park, and the only real difference between these two photos is the loss of the plaque, which was evidently stolen at some point. Its replacement is a somewhat larger plaque on the left side, although it bears the same inscription as the original one. It includes the same closing line about how “opposition to tyrants is obedience to God,” reflecting the beliefs that had led two Puritans across the Atlantic Ocean and to this secluded cave on the fringes of European settlements in the New World.

 

Meriam’s Corner, Concord, Mass

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The view looking northeast at Meriam’s Corner in Concord, with Old Bedford Road to the left and Lexington Road on the right, around 1900. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2020:

The battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 marked the start of the American Revolution, when colonial militiamen resisted British attempts to seize military supplies in Concord. However, the fighting did not consist of a single battle, but rather a series of skirmishes spread out across several towns between Boston and Concord. It began at dawn in Lexington, when about 80 of the town’s militiamen gathered on the town common to confront the advancing British. A tense standoff led to both sides exchanging gunfire, killing eight colonists before the British continued their march to Concord. There, they seized some of the colonial supplies, but their advance was halted at Old North Bridge, where militiamen fired the famous “shot heard ’round the world” and forced three companies of redcoats to retreat.

Up until this point, the day was relatively bloodless for the British, who had one soldier wounded at Lexington, three killed at Old North Bridge, and nine wounded there. They had partially succeeded in their objectives, having destroyed some of the colonial cannons and supplies, but they now found themselves deep in hostile territory, with an ever-increasing number of militiamen streaming in from the surrounding towns. Facing a 17-mile march back to the safety of Boston, the redcoats ate lunch in Concord before leaving the town around noon.

Lt. Colonel Francis Smith, the commander of the British soldiers here, ordered a flank guard to protect the column of redcoats as they marched out of Concord. However, just beyond this intersection the road crosses a small stream, requiring the flank guard to return to the road in order to cross the bridge. At the same time, militiamen from Reading, Chelmsford, and Billerica arrived on scene. Observing that the British were vulnerable to attack without a flank guard, Captain John Brooks of the Reading minutemen ordered his soldiers to open fire, beginning what would soon turn into a long and bloody struggle for the British as they made their way back to Boston.

This intersection is known as Meriam’s Corner because it was the longtime home of the Meriam family, who had lived here since the mid-1600s. By 1775 there were three different houses here that belonged to members of the family, including the one on the left side of these photos. Built around 1705 by Joseph Meriam, it was subsequently owned by his son Nathan, who was living here with his wife Abigail and their children in 1775. Nathan was 54 years old at the time, and he was serving as one of the three town selectmen in Concord. He does not appear to have participated in the fighting here, but accounts of the battle suggest that his house and outbuildings were probably among the structures that the militiamen used for cover when they opened fire on the British column.

Contemporary descriptions of the day’s fighting lack specific details about how the fighting unfolded here at Meriam’s Corner, but several later accounts provide more information. Among these is a letter, written in 1825 by Reverend Edmund Foster, who had been one of the Reading minutemen who fought here a half century earlier. In this letter, he wrote the following, which is quoted from the National Park Service’s Historic Structure Report on the Meriam house:

We rendezvoused near the middle of the town of Bedford; left horses, and marched forward in pursuit of the enemy. A little before we came to Merriam’s hill, we discovered the enemy’s flank guard, of about 80 or 100 men, who, on their retreat from Concord, kept that height of land, the main body [being] in the road. The British troops and the Americans, at that time, were equally distant from Merriam’s corner. About twenty rods short of that place, the Americans made a halt. The British marched down the hill with very slow, but steady step, without music, or a word being spoken that could be heard. Silence reigned on both sides. As soon as the British had gained the main road, and passed a small bridge near that corner, they faced about suddenly, and fired a volley of musketry upon us. They overshot; and no one, to my knowledge, was injured by the fire. The fire was immediately returned by the Americans, and two British soldiers fell dead a little distance from each other, in the road near the brook. The battle now began, and was carried on with little or no military discipline and order, on the part of the Americans, during the remainder of that day. Each one sought his own place and opportunity to attack and annoy the enemy from behind trees, rocks, fences and buildings, as seemed most convenient.

As noted in the letter, the brief exchange of fire here at Meriam’s Corner was only the beginning of what would become an afternoon of guerilla warfare and ambushes on the part of the colonial militiamen. They inflicted particularly heavy casualties less than a mile to the east of here, at a spot now known as the Bloody Angle, where 30 British soldiers were killed or wounded. By the time the column reached Lexington the retreat had turned into a rout, and only the timely arrival of reinforcements from Boston saved the British from total disaster.

The British retreat marked the beginning of the Siege of Boston, which lasted until they evacuated the town 11 months later in March 1776. In the meantime, no further fighting occurred here in Concord for the rest of the war, and life in the town largely returned to normal. Nathan Meriam continued to live here in this house until his death in 1782. His son Ephraim subsequently acquired the property, and it would remain in his family until the death of his son Rufus in 1870. Rufus was a bachelor with no children, and the family sold the house a year later, ending two centuries of Meriam family ownership of this lot.

In 1871, the house was purchased by Thomas and Rose Burke, two Irish immigrants who lived here with their four children. He was a farmer, and he and Rose were still living here when the first photo was taken around 1900. According to that year’s census, all four of their children, who were now adults, were also still here, along with a hired hand who worked on the farm and lived with the family.

The first photo shows the scene looking northeast from the intersection. From here, the road on the left is Old Bedford Road, the route that the Reading minutemen took to get here. Out of view on the right is Lexington Road, which the British took on their way to and from Boston on the day of the battle. In the foreground on the right side of the scene is an inscribed boulder, which was installed in 1885 as part of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Concord’s founding. It reads: “Meriam’s Corner. The British troops retreating from the Old North Bridge were here attacked in flank by the men of Concord and neighboring towns and driven under a hot fire to Charlestown.”

Today, around 120 years after the first photo was taken, this scene has not changed substantially, except for the paved roads and increase in vegetation. The commemorative boulder is still there, as is the Meriam House in the distance, although it is now mostly hidden by trees from this angle. This site, along with much of the land surrounding the historic Battle Road, is now preserved and administered by the National Park Service as part of the Minute Man National Historical Park, which was established in 1959.

Melvin Memorial, Concord, Mass (2)

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The Melvin Memorial at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2020:

As explained in the previous post, the Melvin Memorial was created in honor of Concord natives Asa, John, and Samuel Melvin. These three brothers all died during the Civil War, and in 1897 their only surviving brother, James C. Melvin, commissioned prominent sculptor Daniel Chester French to design a memorial for them. It was dedicated here in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in 1909, and it features a relief sculpture titled Mourning Victory. The sculpture shows Victory draped in a flag and carrying a laurel sprig to symbolize the Union victory in the war, but it also shows Victory with downcast eyes, representing the loss of life that was required in order to win the war.

In more than a century since the first photo was taken, remarkably little has changed here in this scene. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was designed as a natural, park-like cemetery that could be used by both the living and the dead, and it has retained that same appearance over the years. Even the tree in the center of the first photo appears to be the same one that is still standing here in the 2020 photo. As for the memorial itself, it underwent a major restoration from 2018 to 2019, including cleaning, repointing, and repairing the marble, along with replacing the tablets beneath the sculpture of Victory. As a result, the memorial now looks essentially the same as it did the first photo, and it stands as a significant work by one of the nation’s leading sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.