Massachusetts

Westfield Normal School, Westfield, Mass

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The Westfield Normal School on Court Street in Westfield, around 1891. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1891).

The building in 2018, which is now used as Westfield City Hall:

The mid-19th century saw the development of public normal schools, which were colleges that focused on training public school teachers. Here in Massachusetts, a system of normal schools was pioneered by education reformer Horace Mann, who opened ones in Lexington and Barre in 1839, and in Bridgewater a year later. The Bridgewater school has remained there ever since, and it is now Bridgewater State University, but the other two schools soon relocated. The Lexington Normal School moved to Newton in 1843 and later to Framingham, becoming the precursor to Framingham State University, and the Barre Normal School came to Westfield in 1844, eventually becoming Westfield State University.

Here in Westfield, the school’s first long-term home was a building at the corner of Washington and School Streets, which was completed in 1846. This building was used throughout much of the 19th century, but by the late 1880s it had become too small for the school’s growing programs. As a result, in 1889 the state purchased this lot on Court Street, and later that year construction began on a new, much larger building. It was originally expected to be completed in time for the fall of 1891, but construction delays postponed its opening until April 1892. The first photo was probably taken around this same time, as the small leaves on the trees seem to suggest that it is either late April or early May.

The building was designed by the noted Boston firm of Hartwell and Richardson, and it featured a Romanesque-style exterior of brick with brownstone trim. Its footprint was L-shaped, with the main section facing Court Street and a wing extending back in the direction of King Street, as seen on the right side of the photo. This wing originally housed the training school, with classrooms for the various grade levels that were taught by the student teachers here. These were accessed via the basement-level doors of the wing, while the main entrances for the normal school itself were at the front of the building.

The state Board of Education, in its annual report published several months before the building opened, provided the following description of the interior:

To the left of the south-west entrance are the zoölogical, botanical, mineralogical and geological laboratories, fitted with appropriate appliances; and to the right of this entrance is the reception room, and beyond a large room for the critic, while across the corridor, which traverses the centre of the L-shaped building, are the large cloak room for women, with toilet room and a teacher’s room.

There are three stairways which carry from the basement up through the building. Two of them are next the entrances for the normal school on the south side. The third is in the L, and leads directly from one of the basement entrances. There is a lift near this staircase.

On the second floor there are three rooms: toward the east there are recitation rooms, with a women’s retiring and toilet room, and a book store-room; toward the west a recitation room, the principal’s room, the reading-room and book alcove; and in the center part of the building the large school-room sixty feet square.

On the third floor is a completely fitted chemical laboratory, with a teachers’ room, weighing-room, and a supply room opening out of it; the apparatus room and physical laboratory, fully equipped; and between these two laboratories, so that it can be used from either, a lecture room with raised tiers of seats.

Over the large school-room is a series of studios, and at the western end of the building are a recitation room, a cast room and a drawing room. Above the two end portions there are unfinished attics.

In the basement are the janitor’s room, men’s coat-room and toilet; the gymnasium with the men’s dressing-room and baths on the one side, and on the other women’s bath-rooms, with a staircase leading up to the women’s toilet room above; space for coal and boilers, and toward the east, play and toilet rooms for girls and boys, and a large work room.

Overall, the building was designed with a capacity of 175 normal school students, plus 125 children in the training school. A subsequent Board of Education annual report, covering the 1892-1893 school year – this building’s first full year in use – indicates that it was not quite at capacity, but it was close. During that year, it had a total of 155 students, including 27 who graduated at the end of the year. At the time, the student body was still overwhelmingly female, with only six men enrolled in the school and just one in the graduating class.

The report also provides interesting demographic information about the students. Of the 155 students, 26 had prior teaching experience, and 78 were receiving some sort of financial aid from the state. The vast majority were from Massachusetts, mostly from the four western counties of Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire counties, but there were also some out-of-state students, including five from Vermont, four from Connecticut, two each from New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, and Rhode Island, and one each from Washington D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, and Nebraska.

Another table in the report classified students based on their fathers’ occupations. The most common was farmer (26), followed by skilled workmen (15), factory officials (8), merchants (8), unskilled workmen (4), manufacturers (2), and professional men (2). However, perhaps the most surprising information, to modern audiences, might be the prior education of students here at the normal school. Of 112 students recorded on the table, only 32 had graduated from a high school or academy. Another 40 attended high school without graduating, and 17 had attended either district or grammar schools, evidently without any high school education at all.

At the time, the school had nine faculty members, in addition to four elementary teachers in the training school, and many of them taught a rather eclectic mix of courses. For example, Elvira Carter taught geography, English literature, and algebra; Frances C. Gaylord taught geometry, grammar, history, and composition; and Laura C. Harding was evidently a sort of Renaissance woman, teaching geometry, astronomy, bookkeeping, reading, vocal music, French, and composition. The principal, James C. Greenough, was also a classroom teacher, and his courses consisted of psychology, didactics, civil polity, and rhetoric.

Over the next decade, the school would continue to grow with several new buildings. In 1900, the training school was relocated to a newly-completed building at the corner of Washington and School Streets, on the site of the original 1846 normal school building. With about 650 elementary-aged students, this meant a substantial increase in the size of the training school, and it also opened up space here in the main building on Court Street. Then, in 1903, the school opened a new dormitory, Dickinson Hall. It was located in the rear of the Court Street property, along King Street, and it could house up to 75 students.

The enrollment at the normal school continued to grow in the early 20th century, and by the 1920s it had about 200 students. By this point, a high school diploma was required for admission, and applicants also had to be in good physical condition, at least 16 years of age, and of good moral character. Starting in 1912, only women were admitted to the school, and it would not become coeducational again until 1938. At the time, tuition and textbooks were free for Massachusetts residents, but out-of-state students had to pay $25 per semester, equivalent to about $380 today. Students who lived on campus in Dickinson Hall had to pay $250 per year for room and board, or about $3,800 today.

For most of its early history, the school offered a two-year program for future teachers, but in 1928 it was expanded to three years, and then in 1931 to four years for those who would teach in junior high schools. In 1932, the school was renamed the Westfield State Teachers College, and two years later it began conferring bachelor of science degrees in education. By the early 1940s, though, the school was no longer free for in-state students. Tuition for Massachusetts residents was $75 for the 1941-1942 school year, and $300 for out-of-state students. Textbooks were $35 per year, and a dormitory room was $60 per year, plus about $4.50 per week for meals. In total, an in-state student who lived on campus paid about $300 per year, or nearly $5,300 today.

This building here on Court Street remained in use until 1956, when the growing college moved to its present-day campus on Western Avenue, about two miles to the west of here. It subsequently expanded its programs beyond just training teachers, and it has since gone through several more name changes, becoming the State College at Westfield, Westfield State College, and finally Westfield State University in 2010. Its enrollment has also grown significantly during this time, with nearly 4,900 undergraduate students in 31 different programs.

In the meantime, the old building here on Court Street was sold to the city of Westfield, and it was converted into a new city hall. It replaced an older building on Broad Street, which had been in use by the municipal government since 1837. This project included major renovations to the interior of the old school, but the exterior remained largely unaltered. From this angle, the only visible change to the building was the addition of a brick vault on the right side. It is three stories in height and measures about 16 feet by 17 feet, but it is mostly hidden from view behind the trees in the present-day photo.

The building was renovated at a cost of $150,000, and the work was completed by 1959. Along with housing the city government, the building was also occupied by the Westfield District Court, which was located on the left side. The court later moved into its own facilities, but this building continues to be used as city hall, with hardly any difference in its exterior appearance since the first photo was taken more than 125 years ago. In 1978, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2013 it also became a contributing property in the Westfield Center Historic District.

Woronoco House, Westfield, Mass

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The Woronoco House on Elm Street in Westfield, around the 1860s. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2018:

The Woronoco House was an important hotel here in Westfield throughout much of the 1800s. It was built at some point early in the century, and it stood on the west side of Park Square in downtown Westfield. It was brick, three stories in height, with a distinctive two-story porch here on the Elm Street side. The hotel could accommodate between 80 to 100 guests, and the building also included a tavern, in addition to a barber shop that was marked by a tall striped pole on the left side of the first photo.

The hotel was a stagecoach stop in the years before the railroad, and it also served as a gathering place for locals, ranging from the farmers who lived in the villages on the outskirts of town, to the wealthy cigar and whip manufacturers who dominated the local economy of the mid-19th century. During this time, the Woronoco House also saw a number of notable guests from out of town. These included author Bayard Taylor, Senator Charles Sumner, zoologist and anthropologist Paul Du Chaillu, abolitionist Wendell Phillips, New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Governor John A. Andrew, and politician Edward Everett, who served variously as governor, senator, ambassador to the United Kingdom, and secretary of state.

In 1871, the Woronoco House property was sold for $25,000, and the new owners soon made significant changes to the building. The original structure was evidently retained, but the exterior was completely reconstructed, including the removal of the porches. At some point, probably as part of this renovation, a fourth floor was added to the hotel, and the original gable roof was replaced by a flat roof. Upon completion, the hotel reopened as the Wilmarth House, but it was renamed again in 1886, becoming the Park Square Hotel.

The hotel remained in use well into the 20th century. It underwent another renovation in 1914, and was subsequently rebranded the New Park Square Hotel. However, the building was completely destroyed by an early-morning fire on December 7, 1942. It was one of several catastrophic fires in downtown Westfield during the mid-20th century, and it took firefighters some 13 hours to extinguish the blaze.

There were 35 guests in the hotel at the time of the fire, some of whom appear to have been long-term residents. Four of them were survivors of the fatal 1936 Van Deusen Inn fire, which had killed seven people, but everyone safely escaped from the New Park Square Hotel. One of the survivors of both fires was Minnie Hutchinson, who was carried out of the building by Deputy Chief Joseph Guinasso. Coincidentally, he was the same firefighter who had rescued her from the Van Deusen six years earlier.

The hotel proved to be a total loss, but firefighters were able to prevent the fire from spreading. Aside from minor smoke and water damage, the buildings on either side of the hotel survived largely unscathed. Today, the site of the hotel is now a parking lot, but these two neighboring buildings are still standing. On the left is the former Westfield Cooperative Bank, and on the right is the Snow and Hays Block. This building dates back to 1813, and was probably built around the same time as the Woronoco House, although it has been significantly altered over the years. As shown in the first photo, it was once four stories in height, but it was trimmed down to two stories in the 1940s. However, it survives as the only remnant from the first photo, and it is one of the oldest commercial buildings in downtown Westfield.

First Methodist Church, Westfield, Mass

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The First Methodist Church on Court Street, seen from Park Square in Westfield around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2018:

The origins of Westfield’s Methodist church date back to 1794, when the first Methodist services were held in a village in the southwest corner of the town that came to be known as Mundale. The first Methodist church in the center of Westfield was constructed on Main Street in 1833, and it was followed a decade later by a new building at the northwest corner of Elm and School Streets. This one was used by the church for the next 33 years, and it actually still stands today, albeit in an almost unrecognizable condition.

In 1875, the church began construction on a new, much larger building, which was located on the south side of Court Street, just west of Park Square. The cornerstone was laid on June 3 of that year, in a ceremony that featured remarks by at least four former pastors of the church, including Jefferson Hascall, who had begun his pastorate here in Westfield back in 1829. Another was Mark Trafton, who had served as pastor for several different stints in the 1840s and early 1850s before being elected to a single term in Congress in 1854, as a member of the Know-Nothing Party.

According to an account that was published in the Springfield Republican, Trafton’s speech “was interrupted by a half-crazy woman, who wanted all to know “that Jesus didn’t order the building of that church, and Moses was the one to whom the stones were given.” However, she was escorted away by the police, and the ceremony continued. Trafton was followed by the singing of a hymn, and then a box was placed under the cornerstone. It contained newspapers, church member and donor lists, and other documents for posterity. The current pastor of the church, Dr. John Hanson Twombly, then said a few words before laying the cornerstone. Twombly had been pastor of the church more than two decades earlier, from 1851 to 1853, but he returned to Westfield in 1874, after having served as president of the University of Wisconsin for the previous three years.

The church took about 10 months to complete, and it was dedicated on April 4, 1876. Unlike its wooden, Greek Revival predecessor, this church building was constructed of brick, and it featured an ornate High Victorian Gothic-style exterior. As was typical for this style of church, its front façade was asymmetrical, with a shorter tower on the left side and a taller one on the right. It was built at a cost of $80,000, although it does not seem clear as to whether this was just for the building itself, or the furnishings as well. In either case, these furnishings included a new organ, which was presented to the church by the young people’s society, who purchased it for $7,000, or about $170,000 today.

Dr. Twombly was still the pastor of the church when this building was completed, and he gave brief remarks at the dedication ceremony. However, the keynote speaker of the day was Bishop Matthew Simpson of Philadelphia. He had risen to prominence during the Civil War, giving pro-Union speeches and even serving as a friend and advisor to Abraham Lincoln. He gave a eulogy at Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield, Illinois, and three years later he officiated the wedding of the president’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln. Here in Westfield, the well-known clergyman spoke for almost two hours to a crowd of about 1,500 people, and the Republican noted that his topics included “the progress and growing power of Christianity,” and that “he believed in building costly churches, and said that one church like the one he stood in did more for good morals than a dozen jails ,or a hundred policemen.”

The first photo shows the church about 15 years later, in the early 1890s. In the foreground of the photo is Park Square, and in the distance on the left side is the Morgan Block, a commercial building that was constructed in the late 1810s. In front of this building, and visible in between the trees of the first photo, is Westfield’s Civil War monument, which was dedicated in 1871 in memory of the 66 Westfield residents who died during the war. Further to the right, in the center of the photo, both the Morgan Block and the monument are dwarfed by the Methodist church, which would stand here as a prominent landmark in downtown Westfield for many years.

The church building remained in use for nearly a century, but it was ultimately demolished in 1967, and a new church was completed on this site a year later. The new building is much shorter than its predecessor, and its modernist architecture bears no resemblance to the Gothic style of the old building, but its design did incorporate several salvaged elements, including chandeliers and a window. Because of its shorter height, the church is barely visible from this angle in the present-day scene. Only the large cross atop the church is noticeable, and it can be seen just to the right of the Morgan Block, which remains largely unaltered since the first photo was taken some 125 years earlier.

Civil War Monument, Westfield, Mass

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The Civil War monument at Park Square in Westfield, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2018:

Westfield’s Civil War monument is located here at the southwest corner of Park Square, on a traffic island at the end of Court Street. It was an early work by noted sculptor Melzar Hunt Mosman, a native of Chicopee, Massachusetts. He was a Civil War veteran, and he went on to have a successful career, specializing in Civil War monuments during the late 19th century. This statue here in Westfield was dedicated on May 31, 1871, and it memorialized the 66 Westfield residents who died in the war. The model for the soldier atop the monument was Captain Andrew Campbell of Westfield, with whom Mosman had served in the 46th Regiment during the war.

The keynote speaker at the dedication ceremony was General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, a Civil War officer from New Jersey who had recently returned from a four-year stint as the U. S. Minister to Chile. In his speech, he praised the bravery and dedication of the soldiers from Massachusetts. He reminded the audience of the righteousness of the Union cause, while also denouncing the treason and atrocities of the Confederacy. In particular, he rebuked former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, declaring him to be “the arch-traitor who long since should have passed from a scaffold to an unhallowed grave.” At this point, the audience interrupted his speech with applause, and after he finished his thoughts on Davis, they responded with “great cheering,” according to the Springfield Republican account of the speech.

Aside from General Kilpatrick, the ceremony also included short speeches from Lieutenant Governor Joseph Tucker and three Civil War officers from Massachusetts: Brigadier General Henry Shaw Briggs of Pittsfield, Brevet Brigadier General William Sever Lincoln of Worcester, and Colonel Joseph B. Parsons of Northampton. Reverend Henry Hopkins, a Civil War chaplain who served as pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Westfield, gave the opening prayer and also read a poem. The ceremony was presided over by District Attorney Edward Bates Gillett, who made brief opening remarks and later introduced Mosman to the crowd after the statue was unveiled.

The first photo was taken about 20 years later, at a time when the Civil War was still within the living memory of many Westfield residents. It shows the view of the statue from the north, and in the background of the photo is the Morgan Block. This brick commercial building was already old by this point, having been constructed around the late 1810s by Major Archippus Morgan. He ran a general store here, while also renting space in the building to other retail tenants. Later in the 19th century, the building briefly served as the first home of the Westfield YMCA, and over the years it was used by a variety of other businesses, eventually becoming commercial offices in the first half of the 20th century.

Today, more than 125 years after the first photo was taken, remarkably little has changed in this scene. The monument has remained a landmark here in downtown Westfield, with few changes aside from the shrubbery at the base and the blue-green patina on the bronze surfaces. The Morgan Block is also still standing in the background. It has seen minor exterior alterations, including the addition of a dormer window on the left side and a bay window on the first floor of the right side, but overall it stands as a rare surviving example of an early 19th century commercial block here in Westfield.

Church of the Atonement, Westfield, Mass

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The Church of the Atonement, on King Street in Westfield, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2018:

Westfield’s Episcopal church was established in 1863, and ten years later it became the Church of the Atonement. During its early years, its parishioners worshiped in several temporary locations, including in the Universalist church, but in 1880 the church broke ground on this building here on King Street, just west of Washington Street. The cornerstone was laid on May 15 of that year, in a ceremony that was officiated by Benjamin Henry Paddock, the Bishop of Massachusetts, and the work was completed eleven months later.

The church was first used on Easter Sunday, April 17, 1881. The Springfield Republican, in an article published two days earlier, declared it to be “one of the prettiest specimens of Gothic architecture in the town,” and provided the following description of the building:

The building is of brick with a slate roof, and has a tower at the northeast corner to which it is intended at some future day to add 50 or 75 feet and put in a chime of bells. The main entrance is from the east side of the tower, but admission may also be gained by the door in the wing or vestry leading into the chapel. The church has a seating capacity of 200, and is 70 feet long and 30 feet wide, not including the vestry, 15 by 18 feet. The interior, including casings and ceilings, will be handsomely finished in butternut, while the chancel trimmings and altars are to be of black-walnut. All the windows are of richly-stained glass, and the chancel and nave windows are beautiful specimens of art.

The first photo was taken about a decade later, and it shows the east side of the building, including the short tower at the main entrance. Despite the intentions of the parish, the planned bell tower had not been added by this point, and it would ultimately remain unbuilt, as the present-day photo shows. By the mid-1890s, though, the parish had grown to 50 families, with a total of 250 people, which must have put a strain on the building’s seating capacity of just 200.

The Church of the Atonement remained here in this building into the early 20th century. During this time, the house on the left side of this scene was constructed, evidently as a rectory. However, in 1924 the church moved to its current location at the corner of Court and Pleasant Streets, and sold this King Street property to Westfield’s First Church of Christ, Scientist. This congregation used the church throughout most of the 20th century, and the house was used as a Christian Science reading room.

The Christian Scientists sold the church and house in the early 1990s, and today both buildings are owned by the Christian Church of New Jerusalem. The exterior of the church remains largely unchanged since the first photo was taken, although it is somewhat difficult to tell, because the adjacent house now blocks part of the view of the church from this angle.

Agawam National Bank, Springfield, Mass

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The Agawam National Bank building, at the corner of Main and Lyman Streets in Springfield, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2018:

This building was completed in 1870 to house the Agawam National Bank, which had been established in 1846 and had previously occupied an older building here on this spot. The new building was designed by Henry H. Richardson, a young architect who would go on to become one of the leading American architects of the late 19th century. Although best-known today for Romanesque-style churches, railroad stations, and government buildings, Richardson’s early works included a mix of relatively modest houses and commercial building, many of which bore little resemblance to his later masterpieces.

Richardson’s first commission had been the Church of the Unity here in Springfield, which he had earned in part because of a college classmate, James A. Rumrill, whose father-in-law, Chester W. Chapin, was one of the leading figures within the church. Chapin was also the president of the Western Railroad, and when the railroad needed a new office building, Richardson received the commission without even having to enter a design competition. This building, which stood just a hundred yards to the north of here, was completed in 1867, and two years later he was hired to design a new building for the Agawam National Bank. In what was likely not a coincidence, Chapin had been the founder of this bank, and by the late 1860s, Richardson’s friend James A. Rumrill was sitting on its board of directors.

The design of the Agawam National Bank bears some resemblance to the railroad office buildings. Both were constructed of granite, and they both had raised basements, four stories, and mansard roofs. However, while the railroad building was purely Second Empire in its design, the bank featured a blend of Second Empire and Victorian Gothic elements. Perhaps most interesting were the rounded arches on the ground floor. Although this building could hardly be characterized as Romanesque in its design, these arches bear some resemblance to the ones that he would later incorporate into his more famous works of Romanesque Revival architecture.

Architectural historian and Richardson biographer Henry-Russell Hitchcock did not particularly care for the design of the bank building, criticizing its “square proportions, crude monotonous scale and hybrid detail,” and describing it as a “hodge-podge” that was “pretentious and assertive.” However, he did concede that the building’s virtues “are more conspicuous if one does not look at it so carefully and so hard. To a casual glance, it must have had certain granite qualities of solid mass and strong regular proportions which tend to disappear when it is studied in detail.”

These “qualities of solid mass” likely served the bank well, since 19th century financial institutions often constructed imposing-looking buildings in order to convey a sense of strength and stability. As shown in the first photo, the Agawam National Bank was located on the right side of the first floor, but the building also housed other tenants, including the Hampden Savings Bank, which occupied the basement. These two banks had shared the same building since Hampden Savings was established in 1852, and they would remain here together until 1899, when Hampden Savings moved to the nearby Fort Block.

Agawam National Bank remained here in this building until the bank closed around 1905. By this point, its architecture was outdated, with trends shifting away from thick, heavy exterior masonry walls. The advent of steel frames in the late 19th century had enabled commercial buildings to be taller while simultaneously having thinner walls, and this allowed for large windows with plenty of natural light. The bank building was ultimately demolished around 1923, and it was replaced by a new five-story building that exemplified this next generation of commercial architecture.

Known as the Terminal Building, it was the work of the Springfield-based architectural firm of E. C. and G. C. Gardner, and it was completed around 1924. It was built with four storefronts on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors, and it was designed to support up to seven stories, although these two additional stories were never constructed. Today, the building still stands here, with few exterior changes. It is a good example of early 20th century commercial architecture here in Springfield, and in 1983 it became a contributing property in the Downtown Springfield Railroad District on the National Register of Historic Places.