Located next to the Steiger Building in Holyoke is a three-story building that was once a Woolworth store. Located at 255 (253-257) High Street, it was originally built as a double gabled red brick structure but was altered with a Beaux Arts facade around 1912.
The Worcester Women’s Club was founded in 1880. Josephine Wright Chapman, one of the country’s first woman architects, designed the Women’s Club Building, which stands at 10 Tuckerman Street in Worcester. The builder was C. H. Cutting & Company of Worcester. Built in 1902, the building has three sides, with differing main facades facing Tuckerman and Salisbury Streets. In 1976, the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra took up residence in the building, acquiring ownership of it in 1981. The building became known as Tuckerman Hall (a name that originally referred only to the larger of the structure’s two public halls), named in honor of Elizabeth Tuckerman, the grandmother of Stephen Salisbury III who donated the land for the structure in 1898. Tuckerman Hall underwent restoration in 1999 and 2004-2005. Continue reading “Worcester Woman’s Club – Tuckerman Hall (1902)”
The Springfield Safe Deposit and Trust Company was established in 1886. After initially occupying quarters in the ground floor of the Hall Building on Main Street, in 1908 the bank moved to the ground floor of the new Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company building at the corner of State and Main streets. Continuing to prosper even in the midst of the Great Depression, the bank erected its own building at 127 State Street in 1933. Designed by the Boston architectural firm of Thomas M. James Company, the building is considered to be an outstanding example of the Art Deco style. This includes both the exterior and interior details, the latter having survived with only minor changes. The Springfield Safe Deposit & Trust Company later merged with other banks. In 1996, Fleet Bank donated the building to the Community Music School, which owns in today.
The building at 245 High Street in Holyoke was built c. 1885. It was originally owned and designed by architect James A. Clough. By 1888 the building was owned by Gilbert Russell and Archie J. Osborne, who ran a hardware and cutlery shop. By 1891, William W. Porter’s Springfield, Chicopee and Holyoke Express, a trucking and teamsters service, operated out of the same shop. As described in the Hardware Dealers’ Magazine (May, 1918):
The firm of G. E. Russell & Co., which has been in business for 35 years in Holyoke. Mass, has changed its name to the Osborne Hardware Co. There is no change in the personnel of the firm. A. J. Osborne, whose name the firm adopts, has been conducting the business since 1907. Mrs. G. E. Russell’s interest purchased by Mr. Osborne.
Archie J. Osborne went with Mr. Russell as clerk to learn the hardware business. Six years later he was taken into the firm. Mr. Russell died in 1907 and since then Mr. Osborne has conducted the business.
Mr. Osborne is one of the charter members of the New England Hardware Dealers’ Association. He was its first vice president and was president in 1914; is also an active member of the Western Massachusetts Hardware Dealers’ Association and was president of that organization also. For thirty years or more Mr. Osborne has been engaged in the hardware trade. He was born in North Hadley, Mass, on Jan. 18, 1862, and attended the schools of that town.
Mr. Osborne is president of the Chamber of Commerce, an organization with which he has been actively connected years. He was vice president for a number of years, when he carried the burden of the association, being always ready to put his shoulder to the wheel in any movement for the betterment of Holyoke. He is also active as a member of the Rotary Club.
The building’s original first floor has been much altered. Just to the left of the Russell-Osborne Building is the Mayberry Building, 249-251 High Street, built c. 1881.
L. J. Rigali, a dealer in cigars and tobacco, erected the building at 341-346 High Street in Holyoke (on the right in the image above) in 1887. It was designed by George P. B. Alderman. Various businesses have occupied the building over the years. Just to the left of the Rigali building in the picture above is the building at 345-347 High Street, occupied by the YMCA from the late 1880s until 1893 and then occupied by the YWCA until 1910. In the late 1940s the two buildings were taken over by Henry A. Moquin (1919-1976), a dance instructor who restored the structures and had his dance studio on the third floors.
The house at 182 Sumner Avenue in the Forest Park neighborhood of Springfield was built in 1893. It was the home of Smith Harrison Platt (1829-1912), a Methodist minister and doctor whose medical office was in his house. His obituary by W. A. Layton appeared in The Christian Advocate, Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 3 (January 16, 1913):
He was the son of Marshall S. and Tryphena M Platt and was born in New Milford, Conn., on December 14, 1829. A child of Prayer, his parents were Methodists. He was converted at the Stepney camp meeting, on August 30, 1845, licensed to exhort soon afterward and then to preach, December 18, 1847. To be privileged to be the Lord’s accredited messenger for sixty-five years is a favor accorded to but few, and for most of this time to be recognized as one of the ablest preachers of so great a Conference as New York East is to be honored indeed. Thus was our brother blessed.
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He was kicked by a horse a few weeks before going to his first charge and was forced to walk with crutch and cane for five years, and with cane alone for sixteen additional years, when the other knee was injured, and with two canes he managed to get about for four additional years. Forced by failing health to abandon the pastorate during his second year, he located and traveled for a time and then entered business, but with improved physical condition he was eager for his chosen life work and reentered the Conference in 1853, having been absent from the pastorate for one year only. For three years he did regular work, but in 1856; he was again obliged to rest, and this was repeated in 1859-62. These, however, were not idle years, as they were spent in writing books, which from many sources brought tokens of helpfulness.
His pastorates were: 1850-51, Cornwall Bridge and Ellsworth; 1852, located; 1853, readmitted, Fairfield; 1854, Olinville Mission; 1855, Greenport; 1856, supernumerary; 1857-58. Brooklyn, Nathan Bangs’s church (New York Avenue); 1859-62, supernumerary; 1-t:3-64, Newtown and Southville; 1865-67, West Winsted; 1868-70, Brooklyn, Fleet Street: 1871-73, Bridgeport, First Church; 1-74-76, Brooklyn, De Kalb Avenue; 1877, Brooklyn, Tabernacle; 1878-80, Ridgefield; 1881-83, Southampton. In 1884 he retired, succumbing to the strain of building the new church at Southampton.
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While in De Kalb Avenue, after twenty-five years of trouble with his injured knees, accentuated by rheumatism, causing him for years to sit while preaching, the Lord healed him in answer to prayer.
Dr. Platt did not have the advantages of the schools except for parts of three years at Amenia Seminary, when between sixteen and eighteen years of age, but he was a great reader and a careful student and by private tutoring he kept abreast of his brethren and secured his honorary degree of A.M. from Wesleyan University, while through a correspondence school and such clinical work as he could command, he graduated in medicine, and when, in 1884, he was obliged to permanently retire from the regular pastorate, he devoted his time to the practice of medicine and built up a lucrative practice in Southampton, I. I., and afterward, removing to Waterbury, Conn., he was equally successful.
Knowing of his faith healing, the writer, who succeeded him at Southampton, and who was his pastor there for three years, asked how he reconciled his medical practice with his faith in divine healing. He replied: “The Lord is able to heal either with or without remedies. He employs both methods. When, however, He heals without remedies, in my judgment He either reveals His intent to the individual to be healed or to some second person concerning him.” Thus he consistently believed in faith healing and practiced medicine.
His was a metaphysical mind and his heart was as warm as was his mind intense. His interest in things philosophical and spiritual seemed, if possible, to increase as the result of his pastoral deprivations, and his later years were largely spent in evolving a theological system which he believed when published was to be of incalculable blessing to the Christian world. About a week before he died the writer received a letter from him in which he told of a severe illness from which he had just recovered, and said that he hoped that the Lord had spared him to complete his theological work, which he expected to have ready for the publishers in about twelve months. He was grateful to have been spared, that this work might be accomplished, and gave evidences of devotion to a chosen task which has rarely, if ever, been excelled. He has an opportunity now to prosecute his studies under most favorable auspices.
In 1853 he was married to Miss Catherine H. Bangs, daughter of the late Rev. William H. Bangs, who, throughout his effective ministry, was his companion and helper. To them were born three children [. . . . .] For years he had spent his summers with his daughter in Springfield, Mass., and his winters in North Carolina. He responded to the summons calling him from sickness to health, from the retired to the permanently effective ranks of God’s chosen ones at the home of his sister, Mrs. Flora E. Barnes, Southern Pines, N. C., on October 29, 1912. The funeral services were conducted by the undersigned in Springfield, Mass., on Saturday, November 2, and his body was laid to rest in the Oak Grove Cemetery of Springfield.
The Greek Revival house at 47 Court Street in Westfield was built in 1840 for Ronald Ingersoll and is the work of architect Chauncey Shepard. The Ingersoll Family owned the house into the 1930s, when it was purchased by the Baptist Church of Westfield for use as a parsonage. Later it was used by Dr. Kenneth Phillips as an office and residence.
