Day: July 26, 2011

Henry F. Hills House (1863)

by Dan//Amherst, Houses, Italianate, Second Empire

The Henry F. Hills House (pdf) is a striking mansion at 360 Main Street, recently renumbered as 38 Gray Street, in Amherst. It was designed by William Fenno Pratt of Northampton and was built in 1862-1863 for Henry Francis Hills, next to the lot where his father, Leonard M. Hills would soon also build a house by the same architect. Father and son owned a factory complex near the railroad depot that made palm leaf hats. Henry Hills succeeded his father as president of the company in 1877. After Hills’ death in 1924, the house, which had been built as a wedding gift for his bride Adelaide Spenser of South Manchester, Connecticut, was next occupied by his daughter, Susan C. Hills Skillings, who lived there until her death 1968. From 1976 to 2007, the property was owned by the Amherst Boys and Girls Club. It was then sold to a developer, who has restored (pdf) the house and three other historic houses that had been moved to new lots on the former Hills property: the Chapin-Ward House, the Potwine House and the Tuttle Farmhouse.

Baxter Marsh House (1896)

by Dan//Amherst, Colonial Revival, Houses

Baxter Marsh was a carpenter in Greenfield, who settled with his wife, Jane H. Ware Marsh, in Amherst in 1873. He built several houses in town and in 1896 he probably was the builder of his own large Georgian Revival home on Main Street. Rooms were rented out to instructors working at nearby Amherst College including, from 1918 to 1920, Robert Frost. Another tenant was literature professor John Erskine, who included reminiscences of his residence in the Marsh House in his book, The Memory of Certain Persons (1947). The Baxters’ son, Edward Baxter Marsh, attended Amherst and later continued to reside in his own house in town. The house was later used by the Amherst Record and in 1989 it was moved from 109 to 401 Main Street to make way for the new Police Department building.