WPA

80-82 Maple Street, Springfield, Mass

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The townhouses at 80-82 Maple Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The houses in 2017:

These three Second Empire-style townhouses were built in 1870, at the corner of Maple and Union Streets. They were constructed by local builder Abel Howe, and they originally had a fairly uniform appearance, although two of the three have since been significantly altered. As mentioned in the previous post, the house on the left was the home of Edmund D. Chapin, the longtime cashier and eventual president of the John Hancock National Bank. During the 19th century, the other two houses had similar upper middle class residents, including Dr. David F. Atwater, who lived in the house in the middle, and insurance clerk and real estate agent Frank H. Fuller, who lived in the house on the right.

David F. Atwater was born in 1817 in North Branford, Connecticut, and was the younger brother of George M. Atwater, who established Springfield’s streetcar system. David attended Yale, earning his undergraduate degree in 1839 and his medical degree in 1842, and he practiced medicine in Brooklyn and in Bridgeport before moving to Springfield. He and his wife Sarah were living here at 82 Maple Street by about 1883, and they lived here for the rest of their lives. Sarah died in 1910, and David in 1916, at the age of 98. Prior to his death, David was the oldest living Yale graduate, and he was also the last living Yale graduate from the 1830s. His name still lives on today in Camp Atwater in North Brookfield, a summer camp that was named in his honor after his daughter Mary donated $25,000 in 1926.

In the meantime, the house on the right at 80 Maple Street was the home of Frank H. Fuller, who was living here with his wife Elizabeth and their daughter Grace by the mid-1870s. He worked for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, first as a clerk and later as a real estate agent, and he was responsible for the development of the Fuller Block, which still stands at the corner of Main and Bridge Streets.

By the early 20th century, many of the upscale townhouses in Springfield had been converted into lodging houses, including the homes on the right and the left here. During the 1920 census, for example, 80 Maple was rented by a family of four, who in turn rented rooms to nine lodgers, mostly single factory workers. A decade later, during the 1930 census, the house had a similar number of tenants, although most of them were married couples.

Of the three houses, the one in the middle at 82 Maple remained a single-family home for the longest. Daniel Atwater’s daughter Mary continued living here until her death in 1927, and by the end of the decade the house was being rented by John E. Hummel, who lived here with his wife Agnes, their two children, and Agnes’s sister Delia. They also rented rooms to several lodgers, and the 1930 census shows John’s occupation as being a lodging house keeper. However, John was also a retired Major League Baseball player who played second base and outfield for the Brooklyn Superbas and Robins from 1905 to 1915, and the Yankees in 1918. He also played minor league baseball for several years, including here in Springfield in 1922, but he had retired from baseball by the time he and his family moved into this house.

By the time the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, John Hummel and his family were still living in the house in the middle. The 1940 census shows them paying $50 per month in rent, with John working as a foreman for a match factory, earning $1,440 per year. Their daughter Joan, 22 years old at the time, was also employed, working as a clerk in a department store. A few years later, though, the family left this house and moved to Oswego Street and then to Sumner Avenue, where they lived until John’s death in 1959.

In the 80 years since the first photo was taken, both of the houses on the left have been dramatically altered. The third floor of 84 Maple was removed in the mid-1940s, and at some point the entire facade of 82 Maple was replaced, including a new front door in the basement level. Only 80 Maple on the right has remained relatively unchanged, and today it continues to be used as a private residence. Despite the changes, though, all three houses are still historically significant, and they are now part of the Maple-Union Corners Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Edmund D. Chapin House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 84 Maple Street, at the corner of Union Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This house is one of three adjacent brick townhouses that were built in 1870, at the corner of Maple and Union Streets. When completed, all three had mostly identical Second Empire-style designs, and they were constructed by local builder Abel Howe. This house, at 84 Maple Street, was originally the home of Edmund D. Chapin, a banker who had worked as cashier of Springfield’s John Hancock National Bank since its establishment in 1850. He and his wife were in their mid-50s when the house was built, and they lived here for the rest of their lives. In 1890, after working as the cashier of the bank for 40 years, he became the president, and he held this position into the 20th century, when he was in his early 90s.

Chapin died in 1907, at the age of 93, and the house appears to have been vacant for several years. Like many of the city’s other elegant 19th century townhouses, it became a lodging house in the mid-1910s, with city directories of the period showing a number of different residents living here, typically for no more than a year or two. By the early 1920s, though, it had become a single-family home again, and was owned by John J. Kennedy, a dentist who had his office here in the house. He was living here as early as 1922, and he was still here during the 1930 census, along with his wife Loretta and their daughters, Catherine and Mary.

However, around the time that the first photo was taken, the house again reverted to being a lodging house. During the 1940 census, it was being rented by Adolph and Ida Samson for $50 a month. They, in turn, rented rooms to lodgers, with the census showing 14 lodgers living here. Most of the lodgers were young, single people who worked in local factories, although there was one married couple here, although with a young widowed mother with her two young children. According to the incomes that were listed on the census, nearly all of the lodgers earned under $1,000 a year (under $18,000 today), with the one exception being 27-year-old John Minney, who earned $1,092 as an assembler at a toy factory, presumably the nearby Milton Bradley factory.

Nearly 80 years later, all three of these townhouses are still standing, although both 82 and 84 Maple have both been heavily altered. In the mid-1940s, only a few years after the first photo was taken, the third floor of 84 Maple was removed, along with the original front entrance. The bay window on the left side has also been removed, although the house retains its original brick exterior, unlike the house to the right at 82 Maple. Despite these changes, though, all three of these townhouses are contributing properties in the Maple-Union Corners Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

James Cornish House, Simsbury, Connecticut

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The house at 26 East Weatogue Street in Simsbury, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library, WPA Architectural Survey Collection.

The house in 2017:

The town of Simsbury is situated along the banks of the Farmington River, with most of the town to the west of the river. On the east side, though, is the village of East Weatogue, which is located between the river to the west and the Metacomet Ridge to the east, near the corner of Hartford Road and East Weatogue Street. This area was first settled by Europeans in the 17th century, but it was destroyed by Indians in 1676 during King Philip’s War. It was subsequently rebuilt, though, and this house is one of the oldest existing homes in the village, dating back to around 1720.

Like many other New England homes of the early 18th century, the house has a distinctive saltbox-style design, with two full stories in the front, one story in the back, and a large chimney in the center of the house. The original owner was Captain James Cornish, a farmer who was about 26 years old when he moved in here with his newlywed wife, Amy Butler. He and Amy had ten children, who were born between 1720 and 1740, and he became a prominent citizen in colonial Simsbury, earning the rank of captain in the town militia in 1736. After Amy’s death in 1763, James remarried to Hannah Hickox, who died in 1779. James himself lived long enough to see the end of the American Revolution, and he died in 1784, a few months shy of his 90th birthday.

Over the years, East Weatogue remained a small farming village, and many of the colonial-era homes in the area have been preserved. The first photo was taken around the late 1930s or early 1940s, as part of a WPA architectural survey to document the historic homes in the state, and this was among several homes in the area that were included in the project. At the time, the exterior of the house had been somewhat altered by the addition of porches on the front and right side, but overall its saltbox-style architecture was still readily apparent, and the survey listed the house as being in “good” physical condition.

In the nearly 80 years since the first photo was taken, the house has been expanded with a large addition on the back, and the front of the house has been restored to its original colonial-era appearance, without the porches. Although not visible in this scene, the property also includes James Cornish’s original 1720 barn, and both it and the house are now part of the East Weatogue Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

James H. Morton House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 123-125 Mulberry Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This fine Italianate home was built in 1853, and was the home of James H. Morton, a lawyer and judge on the city’s police court. He was born in Taunton in 1825, and was the son of Marcus Morton, a lawyer and judge who served in Congress, on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and as governor of Massachusetts. James attended Brown and Harvard, and subsequently moved to Springfield, where he married his wife, Elizabeth W. Ashmun, in 1852. Her father was George Ashmun, a lawyer and politician who served three terms in Congress from 1845 to 1851, and he lived nearby at the corner of Mulberry and School Streets.

During the 1870 census, James and Elizabeth were living here with their five children, George, Elizabeth, Lucy, Charlotte, and Walter, and they also employed three live-in servants. James was a wealthy man at this point, with the census listing the value of his real estate as $105,000 (over $2 million today), and the value of his personal estate as $60,000 (over $1.1 million today). However, James died six years later, at the age of 51. His cause of death was listed as “congestion of the brain,” a somewhat vague 19th century term that could have included such conditions as meningitis, encephalitis, or a stroke, and was also sometimes used as a euphemism for deaths caused by alcoholism.

By 1880, Elizabeth was living here with four of her children, plus her niece, three boarders, and three servants. The house was far less crowded by the 1900 census, though, when Elizabeth was living here with her daughters Elizabeth and Lucy, along with a single servant. Soon after, the house was divided into a two-family home, with Elizabeth and her family living in one half and renting out the other half. Starting about 1904, this half was rented to Olin H. Smith, who was the president of E. O. Smith Company, a Springfield-based wholesale grocery.

Neither Elizabeth nor Lucy ever married, and Lucy lived here until her death in 1911 at the age of 51. Her mother Elizabeth died five years later, at the age of 86, after having outlived James by 40 years. Olin Smith also died in 1916, and by 1920 the younger Elizabeth was living here with a servant and a roomer. She continued to rent the second unit to a variety of tenants throughout the 1920s, and she was still living here as late as the 1929 city directory. However, by the 1930 census she was living in a boarding house on Union Street, and she died later that year.

In the meantime, by the 1930 census the other half of the house was being rented by Percy W. Long, a dictionary editor for G. & C. Merriam. A Harvard graduate, Long had also served as secretary of the American Dialect Society, and during his time in Springfield he was one of the editors for the second edition of Webster’s International Dictionary. He and his wife Florence lived here in this house for several years, but they moved to New York in the mid-1930s, where he worked as an English professor at New York University and served as the executive director of the Modern Language Association, a position he held from 1935 to 1947.

By the time the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, the house was owned by William B. Remington, who moved into the house around 1933, along with his wife Helen and their son William. Originally from the Rochester area, Remington entered the advertising business, and worked for a number of different companies before coming to Springfield in 1925 as a partner in the J. B. Bates Advertising Agency. Two years later, he started his own advertising firm, William B. Remington, Inc., and was working as the company’s president and treasurer when he moved into this house.

Helen Remington died in 1938, right around the time that the first photo was probably taken, and the following year William remarried to Margaret L. Brown. During the 1940 census, Margaret was working as a copywriter for William’s company, and she was earning $4,000 a year, which was a considerable sum at the time, equal to over $70,000 today. William’s income was listed as $5,000+, which was the highest bracket on the census, and was equal to over $88,000 today.

The Remingtons lived in this house until the early 1940s, but around 1943 they moved to a nearby house on Ridgewood Place. Since then, this house on Mulberry Street has remained well-preserved. The interior is now divided into three units, but the exterior looks essentially the same as it did in the 1930s, aside from the missing shutters and the balustrade above the front porch. Alogn with the rest of the neighborhood, it is now part of the city’s Ridgewood Local Historic District.

Mary A. Chapman House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 127 Mulberry Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This house was built in 1894, and it is located where Mulberry Street makes a sharp turn next to Springfield Cemetery. It was originally the home of Mary A. Chapman, a widow who was in her late 40s at the time. She lived here with her three children, Temple, Grenville, and Heloise. All three were in their 20s during the 1900 census, and Temple worked as a mine manager while Grenville worked as a bank bookkeeper. Mary was living here as late as the 1909 city directory, but by 1910 the house was owned by George D. Chamberlain, an accountant who lived here with his wife Ellie and their four children, Emily, Sydney, Eleanor, and Rodger.

Chamberlain was originally from Troy, New York, but later came to Springfield. Here, he held a number of different positions, including working in the paymaster’s office at the Armory, as an auditor for the Connecticut River Railroad, and as treasurer of the Warwick Cycle Manufacturing Company. He also worked in the publishing industry, and from 1898 to 1901 he was the publisher and editor of Good Housekeeping. By the time he moved into this house, he was just beginning a career in politics. From 1907 to 1908 he served on the city council, and from 1909 to 1912 he was on the board of aldermen. He then entered state politics, serving as a state representative from 1913 to 1916, as a state senator from 1917 to 1928, and as a member of the governor’s council from 1929 to 1933.

George and Ellie lived in this house until the late 1920s, and by 1929 it was the home of James G. Gilkey, the pastor of the South Congregational Church. A graduate of Harvard and Union Theological Seminary, Gilkey became the pastor of the church in 1917 and went on to serve in that role for the next 38 years, until his retirement in 1955. During this time, he also wrote a number of books, mostly on theology, along with a 1942 book commemorating the 100th anniversary of the South Congregational Church.

James Gilkey was living in this house when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, along with his wife Calma and their children, Gordon, Margaret, and Edith. They remained here until the early 1950s, and the exterior of the house has been essentially unchanged since then. The surroundings have also remained the same, including the cemetery fence on the left and the house on the right, and even the tree in the front is still there. The rest of the neighborhood is also well-preserved, and today it forms the city’s Ridgewood Local Historic District.

Albert W. Fulton House, Springfield, Mass

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The house at 5 Ridgewood Terrace, at the corner of Union Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

Albert W. Fulton was born in Iowa in 1859, but later moved to Chicago, where he worked as a reporter and commercial editor for the Chicago Tribune. However, he came to Springfield in 1893, and that same year he married his wife, Rena E. Day. Early in their marriage, they lived in a new house on Spruceland Avenue in the Forest Park neighborhood, but around 1909 they moved into this newly-completed, much larger house on Ridgewood Terrace. At the time, Fulton was the treasurer of the Phelps Publishing Company, a Springfield-based firm that published a variety of agricultural-related periodicals, including the New England Homestead, Farm and Home, American Agriculturalist, Orange Judd Farmer, and, perhaps most notably, Good Housekeeping.

Albert and Rena had two daughters, Dorothy and Anna, and they lived here until about 1924, when they moved to a nearby house at 372 Union Street. Albert would eventually go on to become president of Phelps Publishing, and he lived in Springfield until his death in 1938. In the meantime, this house was sold to William S. Warriner, who was living here during the 1930 census, along with his wife Jennie. He was an insurance agent, but he was also involved in politics, having previously served as a city alderman and as a state legislator. Along with this, he was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, where he was badly wounded in Cuba, and he went on to serve for many years in the state militia, eventually attaining the rank of colonel.

The Warriners were still living here when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, but they moved out soon afterward, because by 1940 they were living nearby on Mulberry Street. The house was then sold to Raymond H. Kendrick, an Episcopal priest who was serving as canon of Christ Church Cathedral. He was native of Springfield, and the son of former mayor Edmund P. Kendrick, but after completing his education he served in a number of different churches, including in Albany, New Bedford, Boston, and North Andover, before finally returning to Springfield. After purchasing this house on Ridgewood Terrace, he and his wife Sarah went on to live here for the rest of their lives, until her death in 1956 and his death in 1968.

Nearly 80 years after the first photo was taken, very little has changed with the Ridgewood area. Developed at the turn of the 20th century with a number of upscale homes, this area between Union and Mulberry Streets has retained its original appearance, including here at the corner of Ridgewood Terrace and Union Street. Both this house and the neighboring house to the left at 351 Union are well-preserved, and they are now part of the city’s Ridgewood Local Historic District.