National Register of Historic Places

John McFethries House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 52 Cornell Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This elegant home was built in 1888 for John McFethries, a Scottish-born mechanical engineer who was in his late 50s at the time. He had come to America as a young man, where he married his first wife, Juliette McLean, in 1864 in Ludlow, Massachusetts. However, they subsequently moved to Russia, where John worked for the St. Petersburg and Moscow Railroad. Juliette died there in 1886, and three years later, while still in Russia, John remarried to Emily Pudan, who was originally from England.

By the early 1880s, John had moved back to the Springfield area along with Emily, and he became a prominent resident in the city. For several years they lived in a house nearby at 69 Clarendon Street, but around 1888 they moved into this house on Cornell Street, along the northwestern edge of the McKnight neighborhood. John was involved in several different local businesses, including serving as treasurer of the Waltham Watch Tool Company. He was also involved with the Highland Extension Company, which developed much of the land in the Upper Hill neighborhood of Springfield, and from 1890 to 1891 he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Emily died in 1900, and that year’s census shows John living here with his daughter Olga, her husband John E. Cowan, their infant daughter Martha, and Emily’s brother Frank. The Cowans subsequently moved to California, and John McFethries lived here in this house until his death in 1907 at the age of 76. His heirs owned the house for a few more years, and rented it to several different tenants, including Frank W. Watkins, who lived here from about 1910 to 1912. He lived here with his wife Mary and their daughter Lila, and he worked as a designer for the Taber-Prang Art Company, a Springfield-based firm that was a leading producer of fine art prints in the early 20th century.

Around 1913, the house was sold to Augustus C. Lamb, who lived here with his wife Effie and their three sons. He was a salesman for the American Writing Paper Company in Holyoke, and in 1917 he was promoted to sales manager. However, he resigned two years later to become factory manager of the Russ Gelatin Company, although he only stayed there for a few years before returning to American Writing Paper in 1922. Around the same time, he and his family also moved out of this house, and into an apartment in Forest Park at 143 Belmont Avenue.

This house then became the home of George S. Lewis, a firearms manufacturer who had previously worked for J. Stevens Arms of Chicopee. By the time he and his wife Fannie moved into this house around 1922, George had left Stevens and was in business for himself, starting the Page-Lewis Arms Company. He was vice president, general manager, and designer for this company, and he was also the general manager of the affiliated Page Needle Company, both of which were located in the same factory in Chicopee. However, in 1926, Page-Lewis was purchased by J. Stevens Arms, and George later began working for Winchester Repeating Arms in New Haven, Connecticut.

George and Fannie appear in city directories here as late as 1934, but by the end of the decade the house had been divided into several different apartments. During the 1940 census, which was done shortly after the first photo was taken, the house was owned by Robert W. Leduc, an accountant who lived here and rented out two other units in the home. One was rented by Edward J. Sawyer, a supervisor at Westinghouse who lived here with his wife Jean and their son, Edward Jr., and the other unit was rented by Nellie M. Allen, a widow who was 74 years old at the time.

In subsequent years, the city directories show a number of different residents living in this house, and it appears to have frequently changed owners in the mid-20th century. However, it is now a single-family home again, and it is one of the hundreds of historic 19th century homes in the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Mary McKnight House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 2 Glen Road in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

The McKnight neighborhood was developed in the late 19th century, with hundreds of upscale homes in the area, but some of the finest of these homes were built in the vicinity of the McKnight Glen, a wooded ravine in between Dartmouth Terrace and Ingersoll Grove. This particular house was built in 1899 for Mary E. McKnight, the widow of John McKnight, who had been one of the area’s developers along with his brother William. Like the McKnight brothers, Mary was originally from western New York, but she later moved to Springfield, where she married John in 1864. About six years later, John and William entered the real estate business, transforming a sparsely-settled section of Springfield into one of its most fashionable residential areas.

After John’s death in 1890, Mary had lived in several different homes in the neighborhood, including a house on Ingersoll Grove on the opposite side of the glen, but by the end of the century she was living in this large, elegant home on Glen Road, right at the corner of Dartmouth Terrace and Cornell Street. The 1900 census shows Mary living here with two of her children, Marion and Robert, along with her sister Ada. She went on to live here for the rest of her life, until her death in 1906 at the age of 64.

The house was subsequently sold to Mark Aitken, a florist who was living here during the 1910 census, along with his wife Effie and their three young daughters. However, they did not live here fore very long, because by 1915 this house was owned by John D. Plummer, the publisher and treasurer of the Springfield Union newspaper. He was about 45 years old at the time, and five years later he was still living here, along with his wife Alice, their two teenaged children, and Alice’s parents, Albert and Ada Belden. Like the two previous owners, though, the Plummers lived here for less than a decade, and moved out by 1924.

The next owner of this house was Emmett H. Naylor, a lawyer who was originally from Minnesota. He was educated at three Ivy League schools, earning degrees from Dartmouth, Harvard, and Columbia, before moving to Springfield. Here, he was involved in the paper industry, working in a variety of roles, including as secretary and treasurer of the Writing Paper Manufacturers Association, Cover Paper Manufacturers Association, and Tissue Paper Manufacturers Association. In addition, Naylor served as secretary of the Springfield Board of Trade and as the editor of the Western New England Magazine, along with involvement in a variety of other trade organizations.

In 1914, Emmett Naylor married his wife Ruth, and they had three children before divorcing in 1925, shortly after moving into this house. Two years later, Emmett remarried to his second wife, Janet, and by the 1930 census they were living here along with his children from his first marriage: Genevieve, Winford, and Cynthia. They were still living here as late as the 1934 city directory, but by this point Emmett’s second marriage had also ended in divorce, and he subsequently moved to New York City, where he lived on East 64th Street in the Upper East Side. However, he continued to own this house in Springfield, and he also maintained a summer home in Cummington, Massachusetts, where, at the age of 52, he suffered a heart attack and drowned in the swimming pool in 1938.

In the meantime, Emmett’s daughter Genevieve would go on to become a prominent photographer. In the early 1930s, she attended the Music Box, an art school in the Berkshires, where she fell in love with, and subsequently married, one of her teachers, Ukranian painter Misha Reznikoff. Later in the decade, she worked as a photographer for the WPA and the Associated Press, and from 1940 to 1943 she and Reznikoff traveled to Brazil, where she documented Brazilian culture as part of a State Department program to strengthen wartime ties between the United States and Brazil. Following the war, she was given a one-woman show at the Museum of Modern Art, and subsequently worked as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar and as the personal photographer for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Here in Springfield, Genevieve Naylor’s childhood home stood vacant for several years after Emmett’s departure. Around the time the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, though, it was sold to Lewis L. McShane, who lived here with his wife Lorena and their daughters, Doris and Marjorie. Originally from Illinois, Lewis worked in the publishing industry, and since 1927 he had worked as the manager of the subscription department for G. & C. Merriam, the famous Springfield-based publishers of Webster’s Dictionary. He later became the vice president of the company, and he lived in this house until the early 1950s, when he moved to Pennsylvania.

Since then, this house has remained well-preserved, and has hardly changed in the nearly 80 years since the first photo was taken. The house still occupies one of the most desirable lots in the neighborhood, and it is now part of the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and encompasses most of the land that Mary McKnight’s husband had developed in the late 19th century.

Frederick H. Stebbins House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 86 Bowdoin Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This house was built in 1911, at the very end of the development of the McKnight neighborhood. As such, its design is very different from most of the other homes in the area, with a symmetrical Colonial Revival-style design and brick exterior that contrasts with the eclectic wood-frame Queen Anne-style homes that dominate the neighborhood. It was originally built for Frederick H. Stebbins, a Harvard-educated lawyer who served on the city council and the school committee in the early 20th century. He lived here with his wife Martha and their son Frederick, who was born around the same time that they moved into this house.

The Stebbins family was still living here nearly 30 years later, when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s. Frederick died in 1939, but Martha and Frederick Jr. were still living here during the 1940 census. Like his father, the younger Frederick became a lawyer, and later moved to Longmeadow. However, Martha continued to live in this house for many years, and was later joined by her widowed sister, Bessie Lyford. Both women lived well into their 90s, and Bessie was still living even after Martha’s death in 1964. She later moved into a nursing home, where she died in 1974 at the age of 99, and in the meantime Frederick sold the house in 1972, more than 60 years after his father had purchased it.

Nearly 80 years after the first photo was taken, and over a century after the house was built, very little has changed in this scene. In 1976, only a few years after Frederick sold the house, it became part of the McKnight Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and today the house still stands as a well-preserved example of Colonial Revival architecture in the McKnight neighborhood.

Josiah Wright House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 78 Bowdoin Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

Josiah Wright was originally from Plympton, Massachusetts, but in 1849 he moved to Springfield, along with his wife Sarah and their young children. Here, Josiah formed a partnership with Henry Webster and began manufacturing axles for railroad cars. They later sold the firm to Norman W. Talcott, who continued to operate it for many years, but Josiah Wright remained in the metallurgy business, eventually purchasing the Agawam Foundry on Liberty Street (present-day Frank B. Murray Street), where the current Union Station is now located. He and his business partner, Warren Emerson, formed the firm of Wright & Emerson, which was described in the 1871 city directory as manufacturing “Cast Iron Fences for Cemetery Lots, Balconies and Verandas, also Machinery and Building Castings of all descriptions.”

Josiah’s son Andrew also had a successful business career, becoming treasurer of the Springfield Fire and Marine Insurance Company in 1872. Three years later, Andrew moved into a new house here on Bowdoin Street in the fashionable McKnight neighborhood, and Josiah followed soon after. This house was completed around 1877, and was located just up the street from Andrew’s house. Josiah retired a few years after moving here, and in 1882 he sold his business to the Springfield Foundry Company. He and Sarah continued to live in this house for the rest of their lives, until his death in 1890 and her death three years later.

By the end of the 19th century, the house was owned by Andrew’s son Fred, who lived here with his wife Emily. Fred followed his father into the insurance industry, working as an agent for the Springfield Fire and Marine Insurance Company, and by the 1900 census he and Emily had two young children living here, along with two nurses and a servant. However, they did not live here for very long, because by 1905 they had moved closer to the center of Springfield, to an apartment at 97 Spring Street.

Around 1905, this house was sold to Fred S. Morse, a lumber dealer who was originally from Maine. He came to Springfield in 1889, and over the next decade he worked for several different wholesale lumber companies before going into business for himself in 1899. A year later, he married his wife, Nellie Gloyd, and in 1905 he established the Fred S. Morse Lumber Company. He and Nellie had one child, Samuel, who was born in 1907, and the family lived here until around 1915, when they moved to a house nearby on Bay Street.

By 1918, this house was the home of Ellen T. Hyde, the widow of prominent local businessman and politician Henry S. Hyde. He had, for many years, served as treasurer of the Wason Manufacturing Company, and held positions in a variety of other companies, along with serving as a city councilor, alderman, state senator, and delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1884 and 1888. Ellen was also from a prominent family, with her father, Eliphalet Trask, having served as mayor of Springfield and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. She moved into this house shortly after Henry’s death in 1917, and she lived here until her death in 1923.

The house was subsequently owned by Fred C. Brigham, a physician who lived here with his wife Emma and their three children. They moved in around 1924, and by the 1930 census they were living here with their daughter Alice, her husband James McClelland, and their two young children. By the time the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, James and Alice had moved out, but Fred and Emma were still living here, although he died in 1940.

Emma would go on to live here until the mid-1940s, when she moved to State Street, but the house has remained well-preserved over the years, with few changes from the first photo nearly 80 years ago. It stands as a good example of one of the older homes in the McKnight neighborhood, and it now forms part of the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Andrew J. Wright House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 54 Bowdoin Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

Andrew J. Wright was born in Enfield, Connecticut in 1842, but in 1849 he and his parents moved to Springfield, joining the large number of people who were migrating to the rapidly-growing industrial city in the mid-19th century. After graduating high school in 1860, Andrew worked for the Springfield post office for a few years, before enlisting in the army during the Civil War. He served a one-year enlistment, and upon returning to Springfield he became a bookkeeper for the Springfield Fire and Marine Insurance Company, a position that he held from 1864 to 1872.

In 1872, Andrew was promoted to treasurer of the insurance company, and three years later he and his wife Mary moved into this house, along with a growing family that would, by 1877, include five children. The house was newly-built when they moved in, and was part of the early wave of development in the McKnight neighborhood.  Like many of the other early homes in the neighborhood, it has an Italianate-style design, but it is unusual in that it is built of brick, while nearly all of the other homes in the area were wood-framed.

Andrew Wright would go on to become vice president of the insurance company in 1890, and a year later became president after the death of the previous president. Along with this, he was also a director of the Agawam National Bank and the Franklin County National Bank, and he was elected to the city’s common council in 1877 and 1878, serving as the council president in 1878. He lived here in this house for the rest of his life, and he died in 1895 from septic meningitis, which he contracted after having the flu.

During the 1900 census, Mary Wright was still living here, along with her son Royal, daughters Josephine and Grace, and Grace’s husband, Henry H. Bosworth. Mary died in 1908, but Henry and Grace continued to live here, along with their only child, Mary. Henry was a lawyer who was also involved in politics, serving as a city alderman and, from 1897 to 1898, as a state representative. However, he died in 1927, and Grace lived here for only a few more years, before moving to a house nearby on Ingersoll Gove.

By 1930, this house was owned by Raymond T. King, an attorney who lived here with his wife Olive and their large family. When they moved in, they had five daughters and a son, and they would soon add a sixth daughter. They were living here when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, and they would remain here for the next two decades, until finally selling the house in the early 1960s. Then, in the 1970s, the house was sold to Christian Hill Baptist Church, which has owned the property ever since.

Over the years, there have been a few changes to the house, including the loss of the second-story porch, the chimneys, and the brackets under the eaves. However, it survives as one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, and it is part of the McKnight Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

76-78 Maple Street, Springfield, Mass

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The townhouses at 76-78 Maple Street, at the corner of Park Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This double townhouse was built in 1879 at the corner of Maple and Park Streets, directly adjacent to a block of three townhouses to the left, which were built almost a decade earlier. Architecturally, the two groups of townhouses have similar Second Empire-style architecture, although the 1879 homes show the beginnings of the more elaborate Stick and Queen Anne styles, which would become dominant in the 1880s. These two homes were originally owned by Seth Hunt, who lived in the more desirable house on the right at the corner, and his son David, who lived in the house on the left.

Born in Northampton in 1814, Seth Hunt was a longtime employee of the Connecticut River Railroad, and served as the company’s treasurer from 1858 until his death in 1893. Aside from his work on an actual railroad, though, Hunt was also an abolitionist who was active in the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War. He lived in Northampton at the time, and used his house to help shelter runaway slaves. During this time, he had friendships with some of the country’s leading abolitionists, including Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth.

Seth and his wife Juliet moved from Northampton to Springfield after this house was completed, and they lived here until their deaths in the summer of 1893, only six weeks apart from each other. In the meantime, in the early 1880s their son David and his wife Grace lived in the house next door on the right side, and he worked with his father as assistant treasurer of the Connecticut Valley Railroad. However, later in the 1880s the city directories show David living with his parents on the right side.

By the late 1880s, the house on the left was the home of Maria Browne, a writer and retired teacher who was about 70 at the time. Born in Northampton, she grew up in Templeton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1840. She subsequently moved to New York City, where she worked as a teacher while also writing magazine and newspaper articles as well as short books. Her writings included moral stories for children, and in 1866 the book The Female Prose Writers of America described her, with regards to her writing, as being “playful, pathetic, serious, earnest, full of life and intensity, never prosaic, never tedious, never common-place, deeply imbued with the religious, largely read in that school of sensibility which enables her to sympathize with all forms of human sorrow and suffering; her writings, consequently, find their way directly to the heart and bosom of the reader.”

Browne never married, and she lived here in this house from around the late 1880s until her death in 1908 at the age of 89. Two years later, the house was still owned by her heirs, who rented it to real estate broker Henry F. Waters, his wife Frances, and their young daughter, who was also named Frances. During that same time, the house on the right was owned by physician Ralph B. Ober, who lived here with his newlywed wife Eleanor. Dr. Ober was a 1901 graduate of Harvard Medical School, and he began practicing medicine here in Springfield in 1904. By the early 1910s, he was a assistant medical director for Massachusetts Mutual, an assitant surgeon at Springfield Hospital, and president of the Springfield Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis.

The Obers had two children, Frederick and Mary, and they were still living here when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s. In the meantime, though, most of the nearby townhouses, including the house on left, had become lodging houses in the first half of the 20th century. During the 1930 census, the lodging house was run by Harry A. Engel, who rented it for $85 a month and, in turn, rented rooms to six different families with a total of 19 people. A decade later, shortly after the first photo was taken, it was still a lodging house, although by this point it was being run by Orelina Menard, who had only seven lodgers here.

Ralph Ober died in 1945, but Eleanor continued to live here until her death in 1972, at the age of 86. Just four years later, the house became part of the Maple-Union Corners Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and very little has changed in this scene since then. The only major difference between the two photos is the house in the distance on the far right. Completed in 1899 as the home of firearms manufacturer Daniel B. Wesson, it was later used as the clubhouse of the Colony Club, until it burned down in 1966. A medical office building, visible on the right side, now stands on the site.