The Fisher House, at 227 South Pleasant Street in Amherst, was built in 1830, possibly by brick mason Hiram Johnson. The house was used as a school by the Nelson sisters, but opinion is divided as to whether or not Emily Dickinson attended school there or not in 1837. Amherst College purchased the house from Anna A. Fisher, wife of G. Edward Fisher, in 1917 and it served for a time as a student residence. It is now a single family home.
John McClellan was a lawyer in Woodstock, Connecticut, active in the first half of the nineteenth century. His law office in Woodstock, built around 1796, was acquired by Old Sturbridge Village in 1962 and was moved there in 1965.
Yin Yu Tang (“Hall of Plentiful Shelter”) is a Qing Dynasty Chinese merchant’s house, built around 1800, which was moved to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and reconstructed there in 1997-2002. The house was first built by a merchant of the Huang family in the village of Huang Cun, located in Xiuning County of the Huangshan Prefecture (a region traditionally known as Huizhou) in Anhui Province. Eight generations of the family lived in the house for nearly two centuries. By the 1980s, the house stood empty, as Huang family members had moved to other parts of the country. In 1996, family members decided to sell the house and the following year, Chinese authorities approved Yin Yu Tang’s move to the United States as part of a cultural exchange helping to protect and promote the architecture of the Huizhou region. It is now open to the public and contains original family furnishings. Also check out my post on the New York Chinese Scholar’s Garden.
The Bixby House was built around 1807 in the community of Barre Four Corners. It was constructed by Nathan Hemenway or by his father Daniel, both housewrights, for Nathan’s brother, Rufus Hemenway, a carpenter. The house was then extended on the east side after Rufus’s marriage in 1815. The next owner was wheelwright Alanson O. Green in 1824. The house and adjacent barn were then acquired by Emerson Bixby, a blacksmith, in 1826. Two new rooms were added to the original three-room house between 1838 and 1845. The house remained in the Bixby family until Bixby descendants gave it to Old Sturbridge Village, to where it was moved in 1986.
The Perry House, located on Pleasant Street in South Natick, was built in 1856 by John Jones Perry. In 1834, he had married Mary, the daughter of Oliver N. Bacon, author of A History of Natick (1856). Perry also acquired a barn on the property and moved it back from the street where he used it to stable horses used in his coal business. In 1907, the house and barn were purchased by Anna Kneeland Haggerty Shaw, widow of Robert Gould Shaw. She gave the barn (now Shaw Gym) for use by the town and renovated the house to become a children’s home for the Unitarian Society in Boston. The house has since had other owners, who have used it as a private residence.
In 1852, master mechanic Silas Noble began manufacturing toy drums in his kitchen. In 1854, Noble and his partner, James Cooley (who handled the business side of their operation and whose descendants still run the business), built a factory in Granville (the current structure dates to 1872). Taking advantage of nearby water power (an electric generator was installed in 1915), the Noble & Cooley Drum Company prospered. They made marching drums for the Union Army during the Civil War, but their main business continued to be the production of toy drums. In the 1980s, the company entered the professional drum market, producing a highly regarded single-ply solid shell snare drum using an original steam bending machine from the nineteenth century. The factory, which has a drum weathervane, is now also home to a museum, the Noble & Cooley Center for Historic Preservation.
A famous Natick landmark is Casey’s Diner, famous for its steamed hot dogs. Casey’s began as a horse-drawn lunch cart on Natick Common. In 1927, Fred Casey purchased a 1922 Diner, originally located in Framingham, and brought it to Natick. The Diner, produced by the Worcester Lunch Car Company, was first on Washington Street and was moved to its current location, on South Avenue, in 1977, to make way for a bank parking lot.
