Street Scenes

Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, Chicopee, Mass

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The Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, seen from the corner of South and Springfield Streets in Chicopee, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The church in 2017:

During the mid-19th century, Chicopee began to develop into a major industrial center, with factories located along the Chicopee River at Chicopee Falls and further downstream here in the center of town. With the factories came immigrant workers, starting with the Irish and followed in later years by French-Canadians and Poles. Primarily Roman Catholic, these immigrants brought significant cultural changes to the Connecticut River Valley, which had been predominantly Congregationalist and almost exclusively Protestant until this point.

The Church of the Holy Name of Jesus was one of the first Roman Catholic churches in the area, and was built between 1857 and 1859, just to the south of the center of Chicopee. Its Gothic-style design was the work of Patrick Keely, an Irish-born architect who designed nearly 600 Catholic churches across the United States and Canada, including St. Michael’s Cathedral in nearby Springfield. Along with the church itself, the property also included the rectory, which was built around the same time and can be seen in the left center of the photo. This was followed in the late 1860s by a school for girls and a convent, and in 1881 by a school for boys, all of which were located on the opposite side of the church.

By the time the first photo was taken, around the early 1890s, both the Irish and French-Canadian immigrant groups were well-established in the area, and Polish immigrants had just started to arrive in large numbers. Primarily Catholic, many of them joined this church, and the parish records showed that Polish families accounted for nearly 30 percent of the baptisms and more than half of the marriages here at the church between 1888 and 1890. However, the Polish community soon formed a church of their own, establishing the St. Stanislaus parish in 1890 and dedicating its first building in 1895.

Around 125 years after the first photo was taken, the church is still standing, along with the rectory. although they are mostly hidden by trees in this view. The only significant change to the church over the years has been the steeple, which was struck by lightning and was replaced by the current copper spire in 1910. However, the church has been closed and boarded-up since 2011, when a renovation project uncovered deteriorating masonry and significant termite damage. The following year, the Holy Name School was closed amid declining enrollment, and in 2015 the school buildings and the convent were demolished. The church itself was not part of the demolition plan, although it remains vacant and its future seems uncertain.

Springfield Street and Casino Avenue, Chicopee, Mass

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Looking north on Springfield Street from the corner of Casino Avenue in Chicopee, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2017:

These views show the same scene as the ones in the previous post, just from the opposite angle. As mentioned in that post, this section of Chicopee was developed in the late 19th century by Frank E. Tuttle and James L. Humphrey, with Tuttle living in the large house in the center of the photo. This house was built in 1888, and most of the other ones in this area date to around the same time. Development was still ongoing when the first photo was taken in the early 1890s, and several more homes would be built in this scene by the early 20th century.

The Queen Anne-style house on the left was built in 1885, and was the home of William W. McClench, an attorney who served as the second mayor of Chicopee in 1892. He had been the unsuccessful Democratic candidate in the city’s first mayoral race, but in the next election he was nominated by both political parties and was unanimously elected mayor. In 1893, he returned to his law practice, forming a partnership with Frederick H. Gillett, a Congressman who later went on to serve as Speaker of the House from 1919 to 1925.

William McClench and his wife Katherine had three children: Marion, Cora, and Donald, and they lived here in this house until 1900, when they moved to a house on Sumner Avenue in Springfield. In 1898, William had become the general counsel for the Springfield-based Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, and he would later become second vice president and, in 1908, the president of the company.

Much has changed here in the 125 years since the first photo was taken, and the neighborhood is now the home of Elms College, which is located just out of view on the right side of the photo. Both of the houses from the first photo are still standing, although both have had significant exterior alterations. The Tuttle house has been the Grisé Funeral Home since the 1920s, and now has a cupola, artificial siding, and changes to some of the porches. The McClench house also has modern siding, along with an enclosed porch, and most of its original Queen Anne-style details are now gone. However, despite these changes, both houses are now part of the Springfield Street Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Springfield Street and Stearns Terrace, Chicopee, Mass

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Looking south on Springfield Street from the corner of Stearns Terrace in Chicopee, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

The scene in 2017:

Until the late 19th century, this section of Chicopee was primarily farmland, with little development to the south of South Street and Fairfield Avenue. However, this began to change by the 1880s, as Chicopee grew into a major manufacturing center. This particular area, located just south of the city center between Springfield and Hampden Streets, was developed by Frank E. Tuttle and James L. Humphrey, who built a number of upscale homes on a 50-acre parcel that had once been the farm of Veranus Chapin. The development was named Veranus in his honor, and consisted of gently-curving side streets, as well as an elm-lined Springfield Street, as seen here.

The house in the center of the photo was Frank Tuttle’s own home, and was built in 1888 on the west side of Springfield Street. Originally from Chicopee, Tuttle had moved to Springfield with his parents when he was a teenager, and he spent his early adulthood working as a bookkeeper for Howard & Brothers, a railroad supply company. He later went into business for himself, forming a partnership with John Olmstead. They dealt in cotton waste, using excess material from cotton mills to produce items such as felt mattresses, carpet linings, floor mops, comforters, and a variety of other consumer products. Their company was originally located in Springfield, but in 1887 they moved to a new facility here in Chicopee, next to the land that he and Humphrey would develop.

Frank Tuttle’s first wife was Mary C. Stearns, whose father, George M. Stearns, was a politician and lawyer who, from 1886 to 1887, served as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. They were married in 1876, and had two children, one of whom died in infancy. Mary died in 1883, and two years later Frank remarried to Sarah F. Knapp. He and Sarah did not have any children together, but they lived here in this house with Emily, Frank’s daughter from his first marriage, who was about 10 years old when this house was built.

Frank lived here in this house until his death in 1913, and within a few years Sarah and Emily moved to Boston. However, Sarah later returned to western Massachusetts, living in Springfield until her death in 1947. In the meantime, this house was sold to Charles C. Abbey, a businessman who owned the Springfield Coal and Wood Company. Along with this, he was the president of the Chicopee Falls Wheel Company and the Chicopee Co-Operative Bank, and he was also a director of the Chicopee Street Railway. Charles lived here with his wife Emily and her elderly mother, Mary Lombard, until his death in 1919 at the age of 66. Emily’s father had died in 1865 while serving in the Civil War, and her mother died in 1920, at the age of 89.

Emily moved out of this house soon after her mother’s death, and by the late 1920s the house had become the Grisé Funeral Home. At some point over the years, the house saw some changes, including an addition of a cupola, some alterations of the second-story porch, and modern siding. However, it is still in use as the Grisé Funeral Home, and it is part of the Springfield Street Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

The surrounding neighborhood has also undergone some significant changes since the first photo was taken. Most of the homes that Tuttle and Humphrey built in the late 19th century are still standing, but there are also a few more recent homes, including the one on the right side of the photo, which was built in 1926. The elm trees that once lined Springfield Street are long gone, presumably lost to Dutch Elm Disease in the mid-20th century. However, the name of the trees lives on with The College of Our Lady of the Elms, better known as Elms College, which is located directly across the street from here on the left side of the photo.

William Street, Springfield, Mass

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Looking east on William Street from the corner of Main Street in Springfield, sometime around 1902-1915. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society.

William Street in 2017:


William Street, located in the South End of Springfield, was developed around the middle of the 19th century, as development of Springfield’s downtown area steadily moved southward. The area around this site had once belonged to Alexander Bliss, who operated a tannery on the site. His son, Elijah, inherited his father’s large estate after his death in 1843, and began subdividing the property. The 1851 city map shows a number of buildings here, all owned by Elijah, although the ones in the first photo were probably not built until around the 1860s or early 1870s.

The houses in the first photo were primarily rowhouses, with a larger wooden apartment block further in the distance and a few single-family homes interspersed among the larger buildings. The rowhouses feature Second Empire-style architecture, with the distinctive mansard roofs on the third floor, but their designs also incorporate elements of the earlier Italianate style, such as the curved window lintels and the decorative brackets under the eaves.

The South End has long been home to a variety of immigrant groups, many of whom were living here when the first photo was taken in the early 20th century. The 1910 census shows many different working-class residents living here in apartments and lodging houses, including French-Canadian and Irish immigrants along with native-born Americans. The house on the right side, for example, was a lodging house that was owned and operated by Abbie E. Neale, a 49-year-old widow who also owned the smaller house behind it. She rented the property to 14 lodgers, which included a mix of single people and married couples who were mostly in their 20s and 30s. They held a variety of working-class jobs, including several painters, a hotel bellman, a cotton mill spinner, and a machine shop laborer.

Around the corner on William Street, the three brick rowhouses on the left side of the photo were rented by three French-Canadian families during the 1910 census. The house closest to the camera, at 169 William Street, was rented by Ovide and Elmina Bouley, immigrants from Quebec who lived here with their infant daughter and Elmina’s father. The middle house was rented by Onesime Grise, a 65-year-old French-Canadian widow who lived here with her brother-in-law, three of her sons, her widowed daughter-in-law, and her young grandson. Furthest from the camera, the last of the three rowhouses was rented by another French-Canadian widow, 58-year-old  Alphonsie Archambeau. According to the 1910 census, she had 12 children, only one of whom was still alive. This child, 17-year-old Eva Tatro, was living here at the time, as were three lodgers who rented rooms from Alphonsie.

In the years after the first photo was taken, the South End shifted from predominantly French-Canadian to Italian, a legacy that remains in the neighborhood today, with many Italian restaurants, shops, and bakeries. However, none of the buildings from the first photo are still standing here. The brick ones in the foreground appear to have been demolished prior to the late 1930s, because they were not among the buildings photographed as part of the 1938-1939 WPA project. The wooden apartment building in the distance was still standing at the time, but it has also since been demolished, and today this side of William Street is now primarily vacant lots, with a parking lot here at the corner.

Central Street, Springfield, Mass

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Looking east on Central Street from the corner of Main Street in Springfield, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

Central Street in 2017:

In the 1880s, Springfield acquired the sobriquet of the “City of Homes,” thanks to the city’s abundance of fine single-family homes. Because such homes were the predominant residential construction of the 19th century, rowhouses were comparatively scarce, and were only built in a few parts of the city. Aside from a few small groups of homes on Temple and Maple Streets, only Mattoon and Central Streets have rowhouses in significant numbers, and this block of Central Street has, by far, the longest unbroken row of these homes.

In general, these rowhouses are less ornate than the ones on Mattoon Street, but they were built around the same time, over the span of about 10 years in the 1870s and early 1880s. They have similar Second Empire-style architecture, with two lower floors and a mansard roof on the third floor, and the western half of the block was built by B. F. Farrar, the same mason who was responsible for some of the homes on Mattoon Street.

The earliest of these houses are the five in the foreground, which were built in 1873 by Farrar. That same year, a financial panic hit the country, leading to a significant drop in demand for new houses, but despite the recession Farrar built nine more identical rowhouses in 1875, directly adjacent to his original five. The eastern half of the block, further in the distance, was built in 1882, and generally matches the design of Farrar’s original homes. However, many of the newer homes have bay windows, which contrast with the flat front facade of the earlier homes.

Although the entire south side of Central Street became a continuous set of rowhouses, the north side was never developed in a similar way. When the first photo was taken, the left side was lined with single-family homes, many of which would later be demolished to build a factory for the Springfield Knitting Company. This factory has, in turn, since been demolished, and today only one 19th century home still stands on the left side of the street.

Unlike the left side of the street, the right side of this photo has remained remarkably unchanged, 125 years after the first photo was taken. All of the historic rowhouses are still standing, after having been restored in the mid-1970s. The only significant change to this side of the street is the building on the far right, at the corner of Main Street. Known as The Central, this five-story Classical Revival building was built in 1908, with four stores on the first floor and 27 apartments on the upper floors. Like the neighboring rowhouses, the apartment building was restored in the 1970s, and it is still standing, with few changes from its original exterior appearance.

Bemis & Call Tool Factory, Springfield, Mass

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The factory of Bemis & Call Hardware and Tool Company at 125 Main Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The scene in 2017:

The origins of the Bemis & Call Hardware and Tool Company started in the 1830s, when merchant Stephen C. Bemis began manufacturing hardware here in Springfield. One of his early business moves was to purchase Solyman Merrick’s patent of the monkey wrench, which would become one of the company’s leading products. He subsequently formed a partnership with Amos Call, and in the 1840s Bemis & Call began manufacturing tools and hardware in a factory here on this site along the Mill River. The company initially rented space in a factory building that they shared with several other tenants, but later in the 19th century they would purchase the entire site.

Stephen C. Bemis retired from the company in 1855,   and went on to have a career in politics. He served as a city alderman from 1856 to 1858, as mayor in 1861 and 1862, and in between he was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1859, although he lost the general election to fellow Springfield politician Eliphalet Trask. In the meantime, his son, William C. Bemis, became treasurer when Stephen retired, and remained with the company for the next half century.

William became president in 1897, and that same year the company built a large addition to the original factory. This three-story brick building, seen in the center of both photos, was joined four years later by the more ornate two-story section on the right, which was used as the company’s offices. The original wooden building stood on the left side until around 1920, when it was demolished and replaced with the current four-story brick building. During this time, Bemis & Call continued to specialize in wrenches, but also produced punches, pliers, calipers, and eventually combination locks.

Bemis & Call finally sold their wrench line in 1939, around the same time that the first photo was taken. However, unlike so many other Springfield-based companies, they survived the Great Depression and remained in business until finally closing in 1988. The factory buildings themselves are still standing, though, with hardly any exterior changes since the first photo was taken nearly 80 years ago, and they serve as a reminder of Springfield’s legacy as an important industrial city in the 19th and early 20th centuries.