WPA

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.

James R. Wells House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 62 Bowdoin Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The site in 2017:

Most of the homes in Springfield’s McKnight neighborhood were built in the last decades of the 19th century, with only a few homes built after the turn of the 20th century. This house was among the last to be built, and was completed in 1910 for James R. Wells, the Register of Deeds for Hampden County. He was about 50 at the time, and had recently married his second wife, Eliza. They had previously lived in a house a few blocks away on Clarendon Street, but they moved here around 1910 along with several of James’s children from his first marriage.

James lived here until his death in 1923, and the house was subsequently sold to Frederick J. Hillman, an accountant who was the president of the New England Audit Company and a member of the Springfield-based accounting firm of Hillman, Peters & Leary. Along with this, he was also the vice president of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce and secretary of the Bozart Rug Company. He and his wife Maude were in their late 40s when they moved into this house, and during the 1930 census they were living here with their daughter Muriel and their son, Frederick Jr.

Later in the 1930s, the family moved to a house on Federal Street, and by the 1940 census this house was being rented by Irene MacDonald, a nurse who lived here with her elderly father, William, along with a cook and three lodgers. At the time, she was paying $75 a month in rent, but she would later purchase the property, and she lived here until she sold it in 1951.

The house became part of the McKnight Historic District when it was established in 1976, but it was destroyed in a fire in 2011. The gutted, boarded-up remains of the house were deemed structurally unsound, but the house stood here for the next five years, until it was finally demolished by the city in 2016. However, the tree from the first photo survived the fire, and it still stands on the vacant lot nearly 80 years after the first photo was taken.

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.

Solyman Merrick House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 104 Maple Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The scene in 2017:

The house in the first photo was built in 1850 for Solyman Merrick, a tool manufacturer who had previously lived nearby in a house that still stands at the corner of Maple and Union Streets. Best known as the inventor of the monkey wrench, Merrick had patented his design in 1835 and later sold it to Bemis & Call, a Springfield-based tool manufacturer. He married his first wife, Henrietta Bliss, in 1841, and that same year they moved into the house at the corner of Maple and Union Streets. However, they were only there for a few years, because Henrietta died in 1845 and Solyman sold the property two years later. Then, in 1848, Merrick remarried to Anne Clapp, and in 1850 they moved into this new house at 104 Maple Street.

Although his new home was built less than a decade after his first one, it represented a dramatic shift in architectural styles. His first home had been a fairly conservative Greek Revival-style home, but his new one was a far more ornate Italian villa, designed by architect Leopold Eidlitz. It was one of the first buildings in Springfield to be designed by a formally-trained architect, and caused a considerable stir in the small but growing community. Born in Prague in 1823, he later came to America and studied under renowned architect Richard Upjohn, before starting his own firm in 1846. One of his first works was the home of P. T. Barnum in Bridgeport, and soon afterward he designed this house for Merrick in Springfield. He would go on to have a successful career, including designing Springfield’s old city’s hall, and later in life he was one of several architects who worked on the New York State Capitol.

Unfortunately for Solyman Merrick, he died in 1852, just two years after the completion of this house. He was only 45 at the time, and he left behind his wife Anne and their three-year-old son, William. The two of them continued to live here after Solyman’s death, along with Anne’s sister Caroline and her husband, Albert D. Briggs. During the 1860 census, Albert and Caroline lived here with their two young sons, John and Edward, and the household also included lawyer Franklin Chamberlin and his wife Mary, along with four live-in servants.

Albert Briggs was a bridge builder who, as a boy, had moved with his family to Springfield from Brattleboro, Vermont. When he got older, he found work as as a surveyor and engineer during the construction of the Western Railroad between Springfield and Albany. Despite being barely 20 years old, he was also an assistant engineer for the railroad bridge across the Connecticut River, where he worked under William Howe, the inventor of the Howe truss design. This set Briggs on a successful career as a bridge builder, and he worked closely with Howe for the next decade and even purchased Howe’s patent rights for several states. By the time he moved into this house in the 1850s, he had established a successful business that was building bridges in all parts of the country.

Aside from his bridge building, Briggs was also involved in politics, serving as a city alderman in 1864 and as mayor from 1865 to 1867. He did not, however, serve in the Civil War, but his widowed sister-in-law did. Anne Merrick was 42 years old at the start of the war, and she joined the war effort as a nurse for the 10th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The history of this regiment, published in 1909, highlights her service, writing that:

“When, in the fall of 1861, typhoid fever was decimating the ranks of the Tenth and Brighwood, two ministering angels in human form, left their happy northern homes to serve these men in camp. Their stay with the regiment was a blessing from the start and every soldier, whether well or ill, has never failed to sing their praises when the names of Mrs. Merrick and Miss Wolcott were mentioned.”

The author, Alfred S. Roe, went on to write:

“Mrs. Merrick, it will be observed, was a widow when she volunteered to minister to the suffering soldiers in Washington. In this capacity she continued until, herself stricken with fever, she was compelled to return home, Miss Wolcott accompanying her.”

Anne Merrick had died long before the book was published, but her fellow nurse, Helen Wolcott, wrote a short letter to the author, describing their experience in the war:

“In regard to Mrs. Merrick and myself, nurses in the old Tenth Regiment, I could tell you more than I can write. It is all very fresh in my mind. The first night we slept on the floor of the tent. The next day the carpenter made us a very good bedstead. I shall never forget how glad the sick men were to see us, as one said, ‘Any one in petticoats.’ I fully recall one from Northampton, who died very soon, his parents coming at the very last moment.”

After her service in the war, Anne Merrick continued to live here with her son William, along with Alfred and Caroline Briggs, until her death in 1879. In the meantime, William followed in his father’s footsteps as a businessman, eventually becoming treasurer of the Springfield Gas Light Company as well as a director of the John Hancock Bank. He was also involved in several city organizations, including the library and the Springfield Hospital, and he donated the land for Merrick Park, at the corner of State and Chestnut Streets. However, like his father, William died young, in 1887 at the age of 37.

Albert Briggs died two years after Anne Merrick, in 1881, but Caroline continued to live here in this house, even after William’s death. She died in 1895, and the house was subsequently sold to lumber dealer Frank C. Rice. He was the president of the Rice & Lockwood Lumber Company, and during the 1900 census he was living here with his wife Emily and their son Julian, along with Emily’s mother Charlotte Anderson and sister Martha Anderson.

A decade later, during the 1910 census, Frank and Julian were still living here, but Emily had died in 1907 from appendicitis, at the age of 50. Frank lived here until around 1916, when he moved into an apartment nearby at 169 Maple Street, and he sold this house to Dr. Richard S. Benner, an obstetrician who lived here with his wife Marion and their four children.

Dr. Benner lived here until his death in 1939, right around the same time that the first photo was taken. Marion continued to live here for at least a few more years, although by the mid-1940s she had moved to Randolph Street in Forest Park. In the meantime, her old house stood here on Maple Street until around the early 1960s. Despite its historical significance as the home of the inventor of the monkey wrench, and despite its importance as one of the city’s early architectural landmarks, it was demolished and replaced with the office building that now stands on the site.

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.