St. Michael’s Cathedral, Springfield

The view of St. Michael’s Cathedral, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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From the same spot in 2013:

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The tree is somewhat blocking it, but St. Michael’s Cathedral is still there today, looking as good as it did when it was built in the 1860’s.  It was the first Roman Catholic church in Springfield, and it is currently the cathedral for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts, which covers all four counties in Western Massachusetts.  The 1908 photo shows the church and the rectory, both of which still exist, but it also shows St. Luke’s Sanitarium, to the left of the church, which no longer exists.  Note, however, the break in the curb along the sidewalk that once led to the building.

On an arborist note, the short but wide tree on the far right of the 2013 photo appears to be the same one in the 1908 photo.  In addition, this may be pure conjecture, but the tree that now all but obscures the church from this angle appears to be visible in the 1908 photo.  There is a young sapling that is barely noticeable in the photo, and it appears to be in the same location as the present-day tree.  The current tree looks like it could be around 100 years old – could it be the same tree?

Corner of State & Maple, Springfield

The corner of State Street and Maple Street in Springfield, between 1900 and 1909. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The same street corner in 2013:

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These photos were taken from the opposite side of State Street from the photos in this post, and show some of the changes that the Quadrangle area has undergone in the past 100+ years.  Some things remain – Christ Church Cathedral and the statue of Samuel Chapin are the two obvious ones.  Even minor details such as the short, bowling pin-looking granite posts on either side of the sidewalks are still there.  But, the big difference, aside from the traffic lights and complete lack of cobblestone in the 2013 photo, is the main Springfield Library building.

The library building in the early 20th century photo was built in the 1860’s as the first public library in Springfield.  Very shortly after this photo was taken, however, construction began on the new library (this happened in 1909, thus establishing the upper limit of the date range for the photo).  But, rather than demolishing the old structure, and to allow the library to function while the new building was being constructed, the old one was moved directly back, into the present-day Quadrangle.  The new library was dedicated in 1912, and the books were moved to the old one.  Whether the old building was demolished right after that, or whether it was used for something else in the intervening years, I don’t know at this time.

Post Office & Customs House, Springfield

The northwest corner of Main and Worthington in Springfield, sometime before 1890. Photo from Springfield Present and Prospective (1905).

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The same location, around 1905, after construction of the Post Office and Customs House. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The scene in 2023:

The first photo shows the Wilcox Block, an old commercial building that likely dated back to the early 19th century. Located on the west side of Main Street between Worthington and Fort Streets, it was demolished in 1889 and replaced with the city’s first purpose-built post office. As seen in the second photo this building was an imposing, castle-like Romanesque structure, built of brownstone quarried from nearby Longmeadow. It housed a post office on the first floor, with customs and other federal offices on the second floor, but within a few decades the building was too small for the growing population of Springfield. In 1932, a new, much larger post office and federal building opened on Dwight Street, and the old building here was demolished the following year. In 1939, it was replaced with the present-day Art Deco building, which was originally home to the Enterprise department store.

 

Today, there are still several buildings standing from the earlier photos, though. The Homestead Building, completed in 1903, was once used as the offices for the Springfield Homestead newspaper, and it is visible on the left side of the 1905 and 2023 photos. On the far right side, the only building that appears in all three photos is the Fort Block. Built in 1858, it was heavily altered in the early 1920s, but it is still standing, and is best known today as the longtime home of the Student Prince restaurant.

Railroad Arch, Springfield

Looking north toward the Boston & Albany Railroad arch over Main Street in Springfield, between 1900 and 1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The railroad arch in 2018:

 

For many years, there was no bridge over Main Street, forcing the busy rail line to cross the busy road at grade.  Finally, in 1890, the stone arch was built, and survives to this day, even when none of the other buildings from the first decade of the 20th century have.  See the 1882 photo in this post for a view of Main Street before the arch was built.

Massasoit House, Springfield, Mass

The Massasoit House in Springfield, around 1882. Image from Springfield Illustrated by James D. Gill (1882)

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The same scene around 1908, with the stone railroad arch in the distance. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The same scene in 2017:

This scene on Main Street in Springfield was prime real estate when the first two photos were taken.  The hotel building in those photos, the Massasoit House, opened in 1843, right next to the railroad depot (the building partially hidden by a tree in the right-center of the 1882 photo), just four years after the railroad came to Springfield.  It was the perfect place for a hotel, because the railroad depot made this location the transportation hub of the city, and the building was soon expanded, first with a wooden wing to the south along Main Street in 1847, and then a brick wing to the rear of the original building in 1853. Then, in 1857 the wooden section here on Main Street was demolished and rebuilt in brick. The first two photos show the original 1843 section of the hotel, which stands in the distance in the center of the photos. On the left side of both photos is the 1857 expansion, with its Italianate-style architecture.

With these additions, the Massasoit House had 130 guest rooms. It was one of the premier hotels in the region, and over the years it had many prominent visitors. Among these were authors such as Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Civil War generals William T. Sherman and George B. McClellan; abolitionist John Brown; prominent politicians such as Henry Clay, Jefferson Davis, Stephen Douglas, William Seward, and Daniel Webster; and at least four US presidents: Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s visit occurred right around the time that the first photo was taken, when he and his first wife Alice spent their wedding night here in 1880.

Also around the time that the first photo was taken, the Massasoit House hosted a series of meetings that helped to establish many of the important rules of football. This sport had become popular in the post-Civil War era, especially in Ivy League schools, but there were few standardized rules; some schools played a sport that was similar to modern soccer, while others had rules that were similar to rugby. Because of the need for unified rules, delegates from various schools gathered here at the Massasoit House in 1876 to iron out the details. The result was the adoption of 61 new rules, which helped form the basis for modern American football. Similar meetings would occur here on a regular basis through 1882, giving Springfield a strong claim to having been the birthplace of modern football, in addition to its more famous role as the birthplace of basketball.

In the meantime, the exterior of the hotel saw few changes between the 1882 and 1908 photos. However, within a few years it would undergo dramatic changes. In 1912, the Main Street façade of the building was rebuilt with a Classical Revival design, as shown in the present-day scene. It would remain a hotel until 1926, and then the building was again altered. The hotel rooms were converted into offices, and in 1929 the Paramount Theater was added behind the building. It was one of the finest movie theaters in the area during its heyday, but by the 1960s it was in decline. It was later renamed the Julia Sanderson Theater, and then in 1999 it became the Hippodrome nightclub.

Today, despite the many additions and alterations over the years, portions of the old 19th century hotel still stand behind the newer façade, although it is hard to tell in this scene. In recent years, the building has seen only sporadic use, aside from the ground floor storefronts along Main Street, but it nonetheless stands as an important landmark in downtown Springfield. As was the case nearly 180 years ago, it still enjoys a close proximity to the railroad station, being just a short walk away from the newly-restored Union Station. This building has likewise been the subject of revitalization plans, although none of these have quite come to fruition yet.

One thing lacking in the 1882 photo is the iconic stone arch, which wasn’t built until 1890. It helped to alleviate congestion on Main Street by elevating the railroad, and it also coincided with the opening of a new Union Station just a short walk away on Lyman Street. By the 1908 photo, the railroad arch is there, and the scene captures an interesting combination of transportation modes. Along with the railroad in the distance, it shows trolleys alongside a roughly equal number of automobiles and horse-drawn carriages, during the period of transition from draft animals to internal combustion engines.  Today, as seen in the 2017 photo, buses have replaced the trolleys, and automobiles clearly won out over horses; not a single horse-drawn carriage is to be seen on Main Street anymore.

Hotel Worthy, Springfield

The Hotel Worthy, at the corner of Main and Worthington in Springfield, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2017:

 

Unlike many of the other views of downtown Springfield from the turn of the last century, almost nothing has changed in this scene.  Taken from the corner of Main and Worthington, with Worthington to the left and Main to the right, most of the buildings in this photo have survived.  The only exception is the building to the immediate right of the Hotel Worthy, which is now a public square.  The historic hotel itself is now an apartment building, and the buildings beyond it to the left down Worthington Street now house a variety of bars and restaurants.  One of these, Smith’s Billiards, has actually been open since before the 1908 photo was taken, and it is supposedly the oldest pool hall in the United States.