Established in 1895, the Berkshire Loan & Trust Company was for a time located in the Berkshire County Savings Bank Building until constructing its own Classical Revival building, at 54 North Street in Pittsfield, circa 1923.
The Columbus Building, at 91-99 Elm Street in Westfield, was built in 1912 by John J. Hearn for his furniture store, Hearn & Company. There is a large c. 1950s slab on the lower right of the building’s front facade where the name “Hearn’s” was once displayed. Some years ago, the building’s upper floors were converted to apartments. Continue reading “Columbus Building (1912)”
The F. L. Brigham House is located at 73 Washington Road in the Springfield neighborhood of Forest Park Heights. It is a Colonial and English Revival house built in 1902. F. L. Brigham M.D. was associated with the Worcester Sanitarium in 1905.
Holyoke‘s most striking old factory building was constructed by the Albion Paper Company at what is now 15 Water Street. An earlier mill building on the site, belonging to the Hampton Company, was acquired by the Albion Company after the latter was formed in 1869. The Albion Company was sold to D.H. & J.C. Newton in 1877, who rebuilt the mill complex with substantial additions in 1878. The building features two mansard-roofed towers (the second one added post-1887), whose bells summoned workers for their shifts. The company manufactured book paper and engine sized flat paper. After experiencing accumulating large debts in the 1890s, the company was incorporated into the American Writing Paper Company in 1899. Another adjacent mill building, which was built circa 1880 by the Nonotuck Paper Company and later became the Mt. Tom Division of American Writing Paper Company, was destroyed by a fire earlier this year.
The E. N. Childs House is a French Second Empire-style house at 54 West Street in Worcester. It was constructed circa 1868. Childs was a boot manufacturer. As related in Charles G. Washburn’s Industrial Worcester (1917):
In 1853 E. N. Childs came to Worcester from Millbury, and engaged in business with Albert Gould for one year. In 1854 Albert S. Brown became a partner. They did business as Childs & Brown until 1857, when Mr. Brown retired, and A. G. Walker was admitted under the firm of E. N. Childs & Co. In 1862 Mr. Walker retired and Mr. Childs continued under the same firm name until 1881. During the preceding few years his sons were interested with him in the business.
The house is now owned by Becker College. In the past it was a dormitory, but now it houses the Maintenance offices.
The Isaac S. Parsons House is an Italianate residence, built in 1860 at 4 Park Street in the village of Florence in Northampton. The house was designed by E.C. Gardner, who was an architect and author. Originally from Florence, he later settled in Springfield. Isaac S. Parsons ran a store, I. S. Parsons & Co., on Nonotuck Street and became Florence’s first postmaster in 1852, a position he held for 16 years. He was an organizer of the Florence Manufacturing Company. The house was sold in 1889 to Henry F. Cutler, one of the owners of Cutler, Plympton and Co., a grocery and dry goods business. Cutler was also post master. The house has lost its original Italianate cupola.
There were two St. John the Evangelist Churches in Clinton before the current one, at 80 Union Street, was built in 1886. Begun as a mission church to the growing community’s Irish immigrants in the 1840s, the the first church was dedicated on October 4, 1850. It was a wood frame church on South Main Street. As described by Andrew Elmer Ford in his History of the Origin of the Town of Clinton, Massachusetts, 1653-1865 (1896):
The inclosure of pine trees which today makes the former location of the church conspicuous, was set out under the direction of Father Boyce. At first, this church was much more simply furnished than in its later days. The galleries, the pews, the organ and the furnace were put in as the means of the people increased.
This building was soon outgrown, as was the second church, a temporary structure also built of wood, which was occupied in 1869. The original church was demolished in 1874. As related in a historical sermon by Rev. Edward J. Fitzgerald that appears in the volume commemorating the Semi-centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Clinton, Mar. 14, 1850, which took place on June 17, 18, 19, 1900:
Already the old church was inadequate and the growing numbers and the increasing prosperity of the Catholics made the plan of erecting an enduring church, which would be a glory to the God who dwelt therein and an ornament to the town, no longer a chimera. The year 1875 saw the consummation of this project, when on August 8 the erstwhile curate, now the first Bishop of the Springfield diocese, laid the corner-stone of St. John’s Church in which we are assembled today. The basement finished, the work lagged somewhat for five years, when by the united efforts of the loyal and generous people of the parish, the superstructure was raised and ornamented, and 1886 saw it dedicated to God with the beautiful ceremonial of our church, the Right Reverend Bishop being surrounded by the most dignified members of his clergy, and the lesson of the event being pointed out by eloquent lips.
The parish is called Saint John the Guardian of Our Lady Parish at St. John the Evangelist Church.
