1860s Archives - Page 17 of 23

Sutton House, Center Harbor, NH

July 23, 2015July 20, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The home of Eliza Sutton in Center Harbor, around 1865-1885. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The house in 2015:

This house on the present-day Whittier Highway was built in 1865 for Eben Sutton, a wool merchant in Peabody Mass., and his wife Eliza. Eben died before the house was finished, but Eliza lived here for 24 years. She ran a dairy farm here, using the fields across the street as pastureland. The photo in this post, taken about 17 years after her death, shows the view from in front of her house looking across the street. In addition to her agricultural pursuits, she was also a philanthropist, and in 1869 she donated funds to build the Eben Dale Sutton Reference Library at the Peabody Institute Library in her hometown.

The first photo was taken during the time when Eliza Sutton lived there, and the photographer was Charles Bierstadt, a 19th century photographer who specialized in stereoscopic views. He is probably best known, though, as the older brother of landscape artist Albert Bierstadt. Most of the younger Bierstadt’s paintings were of the American west, but he did several of the White Mountains, not too far from where his brother Charles took this photograph.

The house was damaged by a fire in 1993, but it has since been restored to its original 19th century appearance and operates as the Sutton House bed and breakfast.

Steamboats on Lake Winnipesaukee in Weirs Beach, NH

September 1, 2019July 14, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The S.S. Lady of the Lake at Weirs Beach, around 1865. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The S.S. Mount Washington approaching the same pier around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The M.S. Mount Washington at the same location in 2019:

Lake Winnipesaukee is the third largest lake in New England, and the second largest entirely within the region (Lake Champlain, located on the border of Vermont and New York, is larger than the next 9 largest combined). Like Lake Champlain, Winnipesaukee has seen a number of steamboats over the years, with one of the first being the Lady of the Lake, which was completed in 1849 and is seen in the first photo. In the days before automobiles, the easiest way to access most of the towns on the lake was by boat, and much of this traffic in the mid 19th century was carried by the Lady of the Lake. Here in Weirs Beach, visitors arrived by train to the depot just behind the photographer, and then boarded the steamer to travel to their destination. The glory days of the Lady of the Lake lasted until 1872, when the larger, faster S.S. Mount Washington entered service. The older ship continued to operate in a losing battle to compete with the Mount Washington, until she was taken out of service in 1893. Two years later, she was filled with rocks and sunk, and today the wreck is a popular dive site.

Meanwhile, the Mount Washington continued to be the preferred method of transportation around the lake until the 1920s, when larger numbers of tourists began traveling by automobile. As a result, the ship’s owners, the Boston & Maine Railroad, sold her to a new owner, who marketed the ship as a tourist attraction instead of simply a method of transportation. It was a success, and the ship operated until 1939, when a fire at Weirs Beach destroyed the ship, along with the dock, the railroad depot, and the boardwalk.

In 1940, the ship’s owner purchased the S.S. Chateaugay to replace the Mount Washington. Built in 1888, the Chateaugay was a sidewheel steamboat on Lake Champlain, so transporting it to Winnipesaukee required cutting the hull into 20 pieces and shipping them by rail, where they were reassembled in Lakeport. Only the hull itself was used; everything else, including the superstructure and even the propulsion system, was replaced. Renamed the Mount Washington, the rebuilt ship made her first voyage on the lake in August 1940, and has been used for sightseeing cruises ever since. Aside from the 1940 reconstruction, the ship has been altered several other times, including in 1942, when the steam engines were removed for the war effort. After the war, the ship was fitted with diesel engines, which in turn were replaced in 2010. The other major change happened in 1982, when the ship was cut in half and a new 20-foot section of hull was added in the middle. Because of all of this, the 127-year-old ship bears essentially no resemblance to what she looked like when used as the Chateaugay; the photo below, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection, shows the Chateaugay plying the waters of Lake Champlain around 1910-1920:

First Congregational Church, Wilbraham Mass (3)

June 15, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The old meeting house for the First Congregational Church in Wilbraham, around the 1860s or 1870s. Image courtesy of the Wilbraham Public Library.

The site of the church in 2015:

There aren’t too many photos of the church in the first scene, in part because of the building’s short lifespan. It was built in 1857 to replace Wilbraham’s original First Congregational Church, which had been built in 1748 on Wigwam Hill, near the corner of present-day Tinkham Road and Bolles Road. Given its rather inconvenient location, though, the building was brought down the hill and into the center of town in 1794. It stood here until 1857, when it was moved again and converted into stables near the new church. The new building would’ve been the home church for many of of Wilbraham’s 228 men who served in the Civil War, and the first photo was probably taken during or soon after the war. However, both the old and the new churches were destroyed in a fire in 1877, and a new building was built on the site; this also burned down, after being struck by lightning in 1911. Today, Gazebo Park is located on the spot where a total of four generations of Wilbraham churches once stood, from 1794 to 1958.

Old Church and Courthouse, Northampton, Mass

April 12, 2018May 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking up Main Street from Pleasant Street in Northampton, toward the old church and courthouse in 1864. Photo from Reminiscences of Old Northampton (1902).

The location in 2018:

The 1864 photo is one of the oldest existing photographs of downtown Northampton, and none of the buildings from that scene survive today, 151 years later. To the left in the 1864 photo is the old church, which was built in 1812. It was Northampton’s fourth meeting house, and it replaced the 1737 building that had been built during the pastorate of Jonathan Edwards. It was from here that the influential pastor and theologian helped to spark the Great Awakening revival that spread across the American colonies and in Europe, but by the turn of the century the town was in need of a new building. The 1812 church was designed by Northampton architect Isaac Damon, who just a few years later would design Old First Church in Springfield, 15 miles to the south. However, while Old First Church survives to this day, the Northampton church seen in the 1864 photo burned in 1876, and was replaced two years later by the current brownstone church.

On the far right of the 1864 photo is the old Hampshire County Courthouse. I don’t know when it was built, but it is virtually identical to the 1821 Hampden County Courthouse, seen on the far left of the 1882 photo in this post. Because of its similar appearance, the Hampshire County Courthouse was probably built around the same time, shortly after some major changes to the county’s borders. Originally, Hampshire County included all of Western Massachusetts, but it was steadily broken up into multiple counties, beginning in 1761 when Berkshire County was established to the west. Then in 1811, Franklin County was created in the northern part of the Connecticut River Valley with Greenfield as the county seat, and a year later Hampden County split off to the south, with Springfield as the county seat. I don’t know what happened to the old courthouse seen here, but it was gone by 1886, when the present-day Hampshire County Courthouse opened on roughly the same spot at the corner of Main and King Streets.

In between the two prominent buildings in the 1864 scene is a relatively small commercial block, the Whitney Building. The photograph was actually commissioned by George D. Eames, the owner of the building, and was probably intended to advertise the building’s prominent location in town. Part of the building housed the offices of the Hampshire Gazette, and the newspaper was published in the basement. This is evidently the reason for the large sign on the building that reads “Caloric Printing Establishment.” The Whitney Building was demolished in 1876, and a bank building was put in its place. Today, the 1916 Northampton Institute for Savings building occupies the site where the Whitney Building once stood.

South Church, Springfield Mass

June 28, 2017April 20, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The old South Church building on Bliss Street in Springfield, probably around 1865-1875. Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The location in 2015:

For many years, the First Church in Springfield was the only church in town; it wasn’t until the first half of the 19th century that other churches started to form. Many of these were offshoots from the first church, some of whom left because of doctrinal differences, such as the Unitarian Church. However, others left the church on better terms, in order to form new congregations to meet the needs of the growing town (and soon to be city). The South Church was one of these. They were formed in 1842, and originally met in the parish house of the First Church before building their own church a few blocks away on Bliss Street.

The first pastor was Noah Porter, who served from 1843 to 1846, when he accepted a position as a professor at his alma mater, Yale College. He later went on to serve as president of Yale from 1871 to 1886. Following Porter’s departure, Dr. Samuel G. Buckingham became the pastor, and served for 40 years. Buckingham was also an author, and he wrote a biography of his brother William Alfred Buckingham, who was Governor of Connecticut from 1858 to 1866 and a US Senator from 1869 to 1875.

During Buckingham’s tenure as pastor, the church outgrew the building on Bliss Street, and in 1875 they moved to a new location on Maple Street. South Congregational Church is still there, and still meets in the 1875 building. Meanwhile, on Bliss Street, the old church was demolished by 1884, which was the year that the Women’s Christian Association built a boarding house on the site. That building is still there as of 2015, serving as the home of the Springfield Rescue Mission, although it is scheduled to be demolished later in the year to make way for the MGM Springfield casino.

Tremont Street, Boston

July 19, 2023October 13, 2014 by Derek Strahan

The view looking down Tremont Street from School Street, around 1860. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

The same scene in 2014:

A lot has changed on this section of Tremont Street in the past century and a half, but a few constants remain. The front pillars of King’s Chapel are on the left-hand side, and the steeple of Park Street Church can be seen in the distance on the right. Another landmark in the first photo is the Tremont House, which can be seen from the opposite angle in this post. At the time of the 1860 photo, this was one of the best hotels in the city, and as mentioned in the post on the hotel, it had a number of prominent visitors throughout the 1800s.

Tremont Street has always been a major road in the city, but the first photo shows a very different scene. On the eve of the Civil War, it was a narrow dirt road with a few horse-drawn carriages. Within a few years, though, things would start to change, and by the end of the century this scene would be clogged with streetcars, which prompted the construction of the Tremont Street Subway, the first subway in the country. Today, this part of Tremont is located along the Freedom Trail, with a significant number of tourists walking along the sidewalk on a warm summer Saturday in the 2014 photo.