Detroit Publishing Company

Washington Street, Salem, Mass

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Looking north on Washington Street from the corner of Essex Street in the center of Salem, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2017:

One of the great features of Salem is its remarkably well-preserved downtown area, with hundreds of historic buildings that date as far back as the 17th century. Here in the center of the city, both Washington Street and Essex Street are lined with historic commercial blocks, although this particular view of Washington Street does not have very many buildings that survive from the first photo. In fact, the only building that is easily identifiable in both photos is the Neal and Newhall Building on the far right. This was built in 1892 at the northeast corner of the intersection, and is still standing with few significant changes except for the ground floor storefront and the balustrade atop the roof.

The other buildings beyond the Neal and Newhall Building on the right side of the street are still standing from the first photo, although it is hard to tell from this angle. These include, starting in the foreground, the Newhall Annex (c.1902), City Hall (1837), and the Kinsman Block (c.1882). However, on the more visible left side of the street, not much remains from the first photo. In the distance, near the center of the photo, is the Tabernacle Congregational Church, which was built in 1854 and demolished in 1922 to build the current church building on the site. Next to the church, barely visible at the base of the steeple, is the Odell Block, which was built in 1890. This three-story brick commercial block is the only building on the left side of the first photo that has survived largely unaltered.

The only other building on the left side of the street that apparently still stands today is the one on the left side, with the American flag flying above it in the first photo. This was the home of the William G. Webber dry goods business, and the signs on the building advertise for other tenants such as the New York Life Insurance Company and the Merchants National Bank. It was known as the Endicott Building, and its National Register of Historic Places listing indicates that it was built in 1885 and remodeled in 1911. However, the first photo shows a date of 1872, which suggests that it was actually a little older. The 1911 renovations apparently altered most of the original exterior, though, and the building went through even more dramatic changes in recent years, adding several stories to the top of the original building, and today there are no visible remnants from its original turn-of-the-century appearance.

Skinner Gymnasium, Northfield, Mass

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The Skinner Gymnasium, on the former Northfield campus of the Northfield Mount Hermon School, around 1900-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2017:

The present-day Northfield Mount Hermon School dates back to 1879, when it was established as the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies. Its founder was the noted evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody, who opened the school near his birthplace in the northern part of Northfield, just a little south of the New Hampshire border. Two years later, Moody established the Mount Hermon School for Boys on a separate campus in nearby Gill, Massachusetts, and the two schools would remain separate institutions for nearly a century.

By the early 1890s, the Northfield school was in need of a gymnasium, in order to promote health and physical fitness among the girls. The result was this building, which was completed in 1895 and named the Skinner Gymnasium in honor of its benefactor, Holyoke textile manufacturer William Skinner. The building had a variety of amenities, including a bowling alley, a swimming tank, and the gymnasium itself, which included an elevated running track. At the time, basketball was just beginning to gain popularity after having been invented a few years earlier, and by the turn of the century the girls were playing here in the gym on intramural teams.

The first photo was taken within about a decade of the building’s completion, and shows its Queen Anne-style architecture, which was common for public and institutional buildings of the era. It also shows some elements of the popular Romanesque Revival style, including the asymmetrical design, the rounded arch over the door, and the use of towers and turrets. However, over time the building would be expanded and altered with several 20th century additions, although this portion was not significantly changed. The first of these additions came in 1930, when a pool was added to the rear of the building. Then, after the completion of a new gymnasium in 1971, this building was converted into a student center, and in 1987 a large library wing was added to the left side, just out of view in the 2017 scene.

The Northfield School formally merged with Mount Hermon in 1972, but continued to use both campuses for many years. This building was used as the student center and, after 1987, the library for the Northfield campus up until 2005, when the school consolidated its operations at the Mount Hermon campus. The Northfield property was subsequently sold to Hobby Lobby, which, in turn, donated it to the National Christian Foundation. Then, in 2017, it was given to Thomas Aquinas College, a Catholic college that is based in California. The school is currently in the process of converting the property into a branch campus, and hopes to open by the fall of 2019.

Soldiers’ Monument, Brattleboro, Vermont

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The Civil War monument and bandstand on the town common in Brattleboro, around 1905. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2017:

Civil War monuments are a near-ubiquitous feature of almost every town common across the country, and Brattleboro is no exception. Dedicated in 1887, the Brattleboro Soldiers’ Monument has a granite base, with bronze plaques on all four sides and an eight-foot-tall bronze infantryman on top. As indicated on one of the plaques, the monument was to commemorate “the loyalty and patriotism of the men of Brattleboro, who fought for liberty and the union in the great rebellion of 1861-1865.” According to the plaque, the town had a total of 381 residents who served in the war, 31 of whom died.

The monument was built at a cost of $6,000, and the June 17, 1887 dedication ceremony drew a number of dignitaries here to the common. It was presided over by Frederick Holbrook, a Brattleboro native who served as governor for the first two years of the war, and whose father once lived in a house across the street from the common. The dedication speech was given by James R. Tanner, a Civil War veteran who had lost both of his legs at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Tanner was the stenographer who had been summoned to Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed in order to record eyewitness testimonies from the assassination, and he later went on to become Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, serving from 1905 to 1906. Aside from Holbrook and Tanner, other dignitaries included Governor Ebenezer J. Ormsbee, and Brattleboro resident Colonel George W. Hooker, who was later awarded the Medal of Honor for single-handedly capturing 116 Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Crampton’s Gap in 1862.

The dedication ceremony drew about 5,000 people to the common, but an even larger crowd – estimated at 8,000 – gathered here on September 1, 1902, when Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech during a presidential tour of Vermont. This took place only a few years before the first photo was taken, and Roosevelt spoke from the bandstand in the center of the photo, just to the right of the monument. The president was accompanied by a number of notable Vermonters, including Frederick Holbrook, then-Governor William W. Stickney, federal judge Hoyt H. Wheeler, and U.S. Attorney James L. Martin, whom Roosevelt would later appoint as Wheeler’s successor on the bench. Roosevelt was escorted here from the train station, spoke from the bandstand for about 15 minutes, and was presented with a bouquet of roses. He was then escorted back to the station, and from there he traveled south across the border to Northfield, Massachusetts, where he spent the night at the Northfield Hotel.

Today, more than a century after the first photo was taken, this scene has not significantly changed. The old bandstand was evidently replaced at some point, and a different gazebo now stands on the site. Along with this, the cannon and shot are now gone, and its approximate location is now a picnic table. Otherwise, though, this site continues to be used as the town common, and the Soldiers’ Monument still stands here, now accompanied by a second memorial to the Brattleboro residents who were killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Williston Street, Brattleboro, Vermont

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Looking west on Williston Street in Brattleboro, around 1894. Image from Picturesque Brattleboro (1894).

The street in 2017:

During the second half of the 19th century, Brattleboro developed as a small but prosperous mill town, becoming a commercial hub for southeastern Vermont. As the population grew, so did demand for new housing, and this period saw the development of new, middle class neighborhoods near downtown. This included the opening of Williston Street in the mid-1880s, on land that had previously belonged to merchant and bank executive Nathan B. Williston (1798-1883). The parallel Chapin Street was also developed around the same time, with these two streets connecting Asylum (now Linden) Street and Oak Street.

The first photo shows Williston Street around the early 1890s, shortly after it was developed. The most visible house in this scene, on the left side of the photo, was also probably the most architecturally noteworthy of the houses on the street. It was probably built sometime in the late 1880s, with a Stick-style design that includes a prominent tower on the corner closest to the camera. Around the time that the first photo was taken, it was owned by John S. Brown, a wood carver who worked for the Estey Organ Company here in Brattleboro. Brown was 76 years old and listed as being retired in the 1900 census, and he was living here with his wife Harriet. He would remain here until his death in 1908, and Harriet died in 1916, presumably while still residing in this house.

Nearly 125 years after the first photo was taken, this scene on Williston Street has not significantly changed. Although paved now, the street is just as narrow as it was in the 19th century. The right side is partially hidden by trees and bushes, but all of the houses from the first photo appear to still be standing. Most of the houses have been well-preserved on the exterior, including the one on the left, which hardly looks any different from its appearance when the Browns lived here. However, the building’s use has changed over the years, and at some point it was converted from a residence into a commercial property.

Brattleboro High School, Brattleboro, Vermont

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The Brattleboro High School, at the corner of Main Street, Linden Street, and Putney Road in Brattleboro, around 1900-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2017:

This school was built in 1884, replacing an earlier wooden high school building that had been used since 1832. Its design is a somewhat more subdued version of the High Victorian Gothic style that was popular in the 1860s and 1870s, and features a brick exterior with contrasting marble trim, pointed dormer windows on the roof, and three turrets on the front of the building. It was built at a cost of $48,000, and served the needs of a growing town that, by the 1890 census, had a population of over 6,800, more than triple the size of the town from when the old high school building had opened in 1832.

When this new school opened, the principal was Benjamin F. Bingham, an educator who served in this capacity from 1863 until his death in 1889, at the age of 65. The 1921 book Annals of Brattleboro, 1681-1895 includes a description of Bingham and his tenure at the school, describing how:

Every year there came up under Mr. Bingham’s hand a new class of boys and girls, many of them timid and shrinking and watching with half-scared eyes his quick, alert movements and his ominous eyebrow. On some of these he inflicted severe discipline; some he admonished with all a father’s tenderness; the obstinacy and conceit of others he pierced with a ridicule that was worse than blows; but everyone was loyal to the High School where truth and honor were taught by precept, discipline and example in the original methods employed by Benjamin F. Bingham to develop the mental character of his pupils.

This building was used as Brattleboro High School until the mid-20th century, and during this time the school had several notable graduates. George Aiken, who may have been a student when the first photo was taken, graduated in 1909, and went on to become governor from 1937 to 1941, and a U.S. Senator from 1941 to 1975. Another graduate was Aiken’s political ally, Ernest W. Gibson, Jr., class of 1919, who served as a U.S. Senator from 1940 to 1941, governor from 1947 to 1950, and a federal judge from 1949 until his death in 1969. Aside from politics, other noted graduates included Major League Baseball pitcher Ernie Johnson, who graduated in 1942 and played for the Boston Braves, Milwaukee Braves, and Baltimore Orioles before starting a long career as a radio and television broadcaster for the Atlanta Braves.

The school finally closed in 1951, upon completion of the present-day Brattleboro Union High School in the southern part of the town, at the site of the old fairgrounds. This new location allowed for more expansion as the student population grew, compared to the relatively confined space here in the center of town, and there was also room for athletic fields. Following this move, the old school building was converted into town offices. The exterior remained essentially unchanged, though, and today it remains in use as the Brattleboro Municipal Center, with hardly any noticeable difference between the two photos.

Wells Fountain, Brattleboro, Vermont

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The Wells Fountain, at the corner of Putney Road and Linden Street in Brattleboro, around 1905. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2017:

The Wells Fountain has been a feature here in the center of Brattleboro since 1890, when it was given to the town by William Henry Wells, a New York businessman who had grown up in Brattleboro. The fountain was originally located about 20 feet from here, but it was moved to its current site in 1906. The first photo appears to have been taken shortly before this move, because the photo shows it closer to the street than it is now, so the original location was probably on the far left side of the present-day photo.

The fountain was the the work of William Rutherford Mead, a noted architect who, like Wells, was a Brattleboro native who moved to New York as an adult. Mead was a cousin of President Rutherford B. Hayes, whose family also had roots in Brattleboro, and he was a partner in the prominent architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. Mead did not have the same architectural genius of his two partners, Charles Follen McKim and Stanford White, and he designed few works on his own. Instead, his talents were as an office manager, serving as a stable, practical-minded counterbalance to the more fanciful McKim and White. Under his leadership, the firm became one of the country’s leading architects of the late 19th and early 20th century, with commissions such as the Boston Public Library, the Rhode Island State House, and Penn Station, along with many other public buildings and Gilded Age mansions.

The original location of the fountain marked the spot where Mead’s older brother, Larkin Mead, had created an eight-foot-high snow sculpture in 1856. The Recording Angel, as it was called, stood here for about two weeks, and the subsequent publicity helped to launch his career as prominent sculptor. He would later go on to design works such as the statue atop the Vermont State House, a statue of Ethan Allen in the United States Capitol, and the statues on Abraham Lincoln’s tomb. He died in Florence, Italy in 1910, and his grave was topped with a replica of his original Recording Angel sculpture.

Today, the Wells Fountain still stands here at the corner of Linden Street and Putney Road, although its surroundings have changed significantly. The trolley tracks in the foreground of the first photo are long gone, as are many of the surrounding buildings. The land just up the hill behind the fountain was once privately owned, with a house that once stood just out of view to the right. However, this land is now a small public park in front of the courthouse, and part of the foundation of the old house can still be seen on the far right side of the present-day photo.