Now standing isolated on block that once contained a row of houses, 284 Maple Street is the sole survivor of an affluent neighborhood in Holyoke. Nothing is now known about who built the house (c. 1880) or who first lived in it. The concrete steps are not original. Today the building houses a law firm.
At 28 King Street in Westfield is an octagon house, built between 1858, when Joseph H. Watson purchased the land, and 1864, when he sold the property, which by then included the house. Octagon houses were popularized by Orson Squire Fowler in his book, The Octagon House, A Home for All. A two-story rear extension was added to the house in the early 1870s. The front porch was added around 1900. Albert Steiger, founder of Steiger’s Department Stores, owned the house in the 1880s. After 1908, it was owned by the Loomis family. I’ve featured many other octagon houses on my Connecticut website.
Built c. 1889-1890 at 328 Maple Street, at the end of a group of row houses in Holyke, the former Maplewood Hotel was modeled on the elegant residential hotels of larger cities. It was constructed by Frank Beebe, of the Beebe, Webber & Co. woolen mill. He lived in the hotel from 1890 to 1906.
Next to the former hotel, at 330 Maple Street, is a Queen Anne-style house, built earlier in the 1880s. Since 1924, the house and the hotel have been connected on the interior and are regarded as a single property. 330 Maple Street is currently rented by Templo Emanuel Inc.
At 150 Main Street in Westfield is a colonial house, built c. 1780 for Silas King by his father Aaron, who lived across the street. In 1780, Silas King married Sally Eager Noble. Continue reading “Silas King House (1780)”
Dissatisfaction over the choice of minister at the Old South Church in Worcester in 1820 led Daniel Waldo (1763-1845) to organize a new parish, originally called the Calvinist Church. The name was officially changed to Central Church in 1879. Waldo paid for the construction of the congregation’s first meetinghouse in 1823-1825. Located on Main Street, near George Street, it was later replaced by the current church, built in 1884-1885 at the corner of Salisbury Street and Institute Road. The Romanesque Revival-style Central Church, built of Longmeadow brownstone, was designed by Stephen C. Earle. When the studio of John LaFarge proved too busy to design the interiors, the church commissioned Sarah Lyman Whitman, a former student of William Morris Hunt. Central Church merged with Chestnut Street Congregational Church in 1982 to form United Congregational Church.
The Pickman-Loring-Emmerton House, at 328 Essex Street in Salem, was built in 1818 as a Federal style house. In the mid-nineteenth century, it was the residence of George B. Loring (1817-1891), who served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1877-1881), as United States Commissioner of Agriculture (1881-1885) and as Minister to Portugal (1889-1890). The house was later owned by George R. Emmerton, a merchant and president of the Merchant’s National Bank. In 1885, he hired architect Arthur Little to expand and remodel the house in the Colonial Revival style. Emmerton was the father of Caroline O. Emmerton, the philanthropist and preservationist who established the House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association.
