Springfield Massachusetts

Henry J. Davison House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 76 Buckingham Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


This house was built in 1883 for Henry J. Davison, a jeweler who owned a shop on Elm Street at Court Square. He and his wife Julia lived here with their three children, Henry, Ralph, and Jennie. The two boys were both teenagers when they moved into this house, but Jennie was significantly younger than her brothers, and was only about five at the time. By the 1888 directory, the younger Henry and Ralph were in business for themselves, selling fruit and groceries out of a store on State Street.

Henry was 25 when he married his wife, Clara Casey, in 1890. They had two sons, Howard and George, but Clara died in 1898. Less than a year later, Henry remarried to Carrie Mills, and that same year his mother Julia died. By the 1900 census, the older Henry was living here alone except for his daughter.. In the meantime, the younger Henry and his family were living on Walnut Street, and he had apparently abandoned the grocery business by then, because he was listed as being a jeweler.

After his father’s death in 1904, Henry moved back into this house, but tragedy struck again a year later when Carrie died from pneumonia. Widowed twice by the age of 40, Henry remarried again a year later, to Marian Morgan. They were still living here as late as the mid-1910s, but they moved by the end of the decade. The 1920 census shows the house divided into two units, with two different families renting part of the house. In one unit was clothing store owner Archibald Ruggles and his wife Minnie, and in the other was Irish-born chauffeur Dennis J. Carney, his wife Bridget, and their two daughters.

By the 1930 census, the house was owned by Joseph B. Elvin, a teacher at the Springfield Trade School. He was 39 at the time, and lived here with his wife Ruth and his mother, Caroline. They also rented a portion of the house to road contractor Thornton Moulton, who lived here with his wife and three children. A decade later, shortly after the first photo was taken, the Elvins were still living here, and they were still renting part of the house, this time to Bruce and Viola Trumble, for $40 per month. Joseph’s sister, who was also named Ruth, was also living here at the time, with the census indicating that she was an arts and crafts teacher for a WPA program.

The Elvins were living here until the late 1950s, and since then the exterior of the house has remained well-preserved, with few changes from the first photo. Like many of the other homes on this block of Buckingham Street, it is a good example of early Queen Anne style architecture, and it is now part of the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Daniel A. Tuttle House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 70 Buckingham Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


Daniel A. Tuttle was born in Montpelier, Vermont in 1815, but he spent much of his life in Connecticut, where he operated a paper mill. By the 1880 census, he and his wife Harriet were living in East Hartford, along with their son Lyman, his wife Mary, and their two young children, Bertha and Daniel. However, a year later the family moved to Springfield, with Daniel purchasing this newly-built home in the McKnight neighborhood. The house is an early example of the Queen Anne style of architecture that would soon come to dominate the area in the following decade. Although modest in size and design compared to many of the later homes, its defining feature is its gables, with the large ornamental arches under the roof.

After living in this house for only about a year, Daniel died in 1882, at the age of 67. By the following year, Harriet had moved to Central Street, but Lyman and Mary remained here in this house with their two children. A veteran of the Civil War who saw combat in seventeen battles, Lyman joined his father in the paper business at the end of the war, and he married Mary in the mid-1870s. Of their two children, Daniel died young, in 1886, from scarlet fever at the age of nine, but Bertha, who never married, lived here with her parents for many years.

Lyman died in 1929, and Mary died at some point in the 1930s, but Bertha continued to live here for several more decades after the first photo was taken. By this point, she was among the last of the neighborhood’s original residents, and she owned the house until her death in 1962, more than 80 years after her grandfather purchased the property. Since then, the house has been maintained in its original exterior appearance, with hardly any difference between the two photos. It is now part of the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

C. Wesley Hale House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 60 Buckingham Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


This house is slightly newer than most of the other homes on this block of Buckingham Street,  and dates back to around 1892. It was built for C. Wesley Hale, an insurance agent ho appears to have only lived here for a few years. He was living here as late as the 1896 city directory, but by 1900 the house was owned by Daniel P. Horr, a post office clerk. Both he and his wife Lydia were originally from Maine, and they were in their late 50s when they moved into this house, along with their sons Frank and Irving. At the time, Frank was working as the secretary of the school committee, while Irving worked as a clerk for a bookstore.

Lydia died in 1906, and by the 1910 census Daniel and his sons were still living here, with Frank’s occupation listed as a publisher and Irving as working in advertising for a department store. Although both of his sons were bachelors well into adulthood, Irving married in 1919, and appears to have moved to Chicago around the same time. Daniel and Frank were still here during the 1920 census, and they also rented space to Harry E. Wheaton, a brass foundry employee who lived here with his wife Vera and their two young daughters. The Horrs also employed a live-in nurse, who was presumably hired as a caretaker for the aging Daniel, who died later that year.

Frank was no longer living here by the 1930 census, and the house was being rented to Jessie L. Blair, a widow who lived here with her son John and three roomers. However, Frank reappears here in the census a decade later, shortly after the first photo was taken. Curiously, though, the census lists George Mulholland as the owner, and he lived here with his wife Mildred and their three sons. Frank is listed only as a boarder, although this may have been an error on the part of the census taker. Adding even more mystery to this census record is Frank’s occupation, which is listed as “Research”, complete with the quotation marks around it.

City directories show Frank living here as late as 1945, but by the end of the decade the house was sold again. Today, the house is still standing, and very little has changed with the exterior since the Horr family lived here. Like the rest of the 19th and early 20th century homes in the neighborhood, it is now part of the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Edwin L. Knight House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 50 Buckingham Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


This house was built around 1877, in the early years of the development of the McKnight neighborhood. Unlike the more ornate Queen Anne-style homes that later dominated the neighborhood, this house has a more plain, Italianate-style design that is often seen in some of the older McKnight homes. It was originally the home of Asa M. Knight, a plumber from Brimfield, Massachusetts who had moved to Springfield in the 1850s. Here, he operated the plumbing supply firm of A. M. Knight & Son, with his son Edwin joining the company in the 1860s.

A veteran of the Civil War, Edwin Knight had served as lieutenant and later captain in the 10th Massachusetts regiment. He was badly wounded in 1864 in the Battle of Spotsylvania, but he survived and was later promoted to brevet major. Just two months after the war ended, he married his wife Harriet, and together they had five children. Edwin and Harriet did not initially move into this house with Asa, and the 1880 census shows him living here alone except for a servant. However, they were living here with Asa by about 1882, and they remained here even after his death three years later.

By the 1900 census, they were living here with two of their sons, Arthur and John, who were working as a draughtsman and a bank clerk, respectively. Long after moving out of this house, John would go on to have a successful career in the banking industry, including serving as treasurer and a trustee of Chicopee Falls Savings Bank. In the meantime, Harriet died in 1903, and the house was sold around 1907, a few years before Edwin’s death in Georgia in 1909.

The house was sold to Howard Baldwin, a butcher who owned a shop on State Street opposite the Armory. During the 1910 census, he was living here with his wife Fannie and his elderly father William, and they also rented a room to a boarder, Carrie Lyman, who worked as a dressmaker. Their only surviving child, Edith, was not living in the house at the time, but she was here by 1912, and would go on to have a long career in Springfield as a physician.

Both Howard and Fannie lived here until their deaths in the 1930s, and Edith was still living here at the end of the decade when the first photo was taken. By this point, the house had been covered in faux-brick asphalt siding, which was a popular exterior material in this era, much to the chagrin of historic preservationists later in the century. Edith continued to live here long after the first photo was taken, remaining here until she finally sold the property in 1969, more than 60 years after her father had purchased it.

By the time Edith moved out of here, the neighborhood had entered a serious decline. As affluent families left Springfield for the suburbs, many of the historic homes in McKnight were converted into rooming houses, nursing homes, and group homes, and many more were altered from their original appearance, as shown with this house. However, many of these homes began to be restored in the 1970s including this house, which had the old asphalt siding replaced with wooden clapboards. Around the same time, the house became a contributing property in the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Appleton B. Greenwood House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 44 Buckingham Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:


This house was built around 1876, as part of the first wave of development in the McKnight neighborhood. It likely would have looked different when it was first built, though, because some of the features did not come into common use until the Colonial Revival era of the early 20th century. If it was like the other 1870s houses in the neighborhood, it would have had an Italianate design with two stories and a flat roof, perhaps with a cupola in the center of the roof. The third floor was likely added about 20 or 30 years later, during the time when hip roofs and Palladian windows were in style.

The original owner of this house was Appleton B. Greenwood, a wholesale shoe merchant and partner in the firm of McIntosh & Company. He was 29 years old during the 1880 census, and he lived here with his wife Clara and their two young children, Grace and Roland. They were living in this house until the end of the decade, but had moved elsewhere by the early 1890s. Over the next two decades, the house saw a variety of residents, including James W. Stebbins, George W. Bristol, and Charles Hill. During this time, the house seems to have been used primarily as a rental property up until 1912, when it was sold to William and Carrie Blake.

Not to be confused with the English poet of the same name, William Blake was the treasurer of the Blake Manufacturing Company, which produced brass goods here in Springfield. He and Carrie had eight children, three of whom were still living here in this house during the 1920 census. William died during the 1920s, but Carrie was still living here when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, along with her daughter Mabel, Mabel’s husband James L. Hanchett, and their children. The 1940 census also shows four roomers living here, mostly young adults with jobs ranging from office clerk to church secretary to an electrical inspector.

Carrie and her family were still living here as late as the 1944 directory, but the house appears to have been sold soon after. At some point around this time, the exterior of the was covered in faux brick asphalt siding, which still remains on the house. Popular in the mid-20th century, this same type of siding can be seen on the house to the right in the first photo. Curiously, this situation is now reversed,  with the house on the right having a restored exterior, while its neighbor now has the artificial siding. Despite this, though, the house still retains most of its details from the first photo, and it is now part of the McKnight Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

Adolphus F. Chapin House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 36 Buckingham Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The scene in 2017:


This house was built sometime in the 1870s for Adolphus F. Chapin, a prominent local clothing merchant. He was living here during the 1880 census, along with his wife Caroline and their son Alfred, and he remained here until his death in 1895 at the age of 48. The house was subsequently sold to William W. Broga, who moved in around the same time that he married his wife, Sarah. They were living here during the 1900 census, along with Sarah’s three children from her previous marriage, and William was listed as working as a physician. However, he also appears to have been something of an inventor, receiving patents for inventions such as “Flushing apparatuses for water-closet bowls,” “Coin separating and packaging machine,” and “Resilient tire for vehicle wheels.”

It does not seem clear whether Broga ever profited off any of his inventions, but by the 1910 census he and Sarah were living in an apartment nearby on State Street, and by the following census they had divorced. In the meantime, their house was sold around 1911 to Newrie D. Winter, a businessman who had served as the city’s mayor in 1896 and 1897. Along with this, he also served as vice president and treasurer of the Northampton Street Railway, and by the early 1920s he was president of the Springfield Five Cents Savings Bank. At some point, during either Broga’s or Winter’s ownership, the house appears to have been altered from its original appearance, giving it more of a Colonial Revival style that matched contemporary architectural tastes.

Newrie’s wife Delia died right around the same time that he purchased this house, but by the 1920 census he was living here with his son Dwight, his wife Marguerite, Delia’s sister Kate V. Beach, and a servant. Like his father, Dwight also went on to become mayor of Springfield, serving from 1930 to 1933, while he was living in this house. He was only the third Democratic mayor to be elected since his father, more than 30 years earlier, and he was also the first Democrat in the city’s history to serve for more than three years. However, he lost the party’s nomination in 1933, and subsequently returned to his private business as a real estate broker.

Both Newrie and Dwight were still living here when the first photo was taken, but Dwight died a few years later in 1943. His father outlived him by five more years, before his death in 1947 at the age of 88. Their house was still here in the late 1960s, but it was demolished sometime before 1976, when the McKngiht Historic District was created. Today, the site is a parking lot, and the only trace of the house that once stood here is the tree in the foreground, which appears to be the same one that was in the first photo nearly 80 years ago.