The house at 229 Elm Street in Northampton was built c. 1895 for the Pratt family and may have been designed by William F. Pratt, Jr., son of the architect William Fenno Pratt. The property was sold to Jennie C. Pratt in 1895.
Lewis J. Dudley was a prominent citizen of Northampton who built the Queen Anne house at 293 Elm Street sometime between 1891 and 1895. He may be the same Lewis J. Dudley who was the principal and owner of Northampton Collegiate Institute, a private school for boys, and the president of the Clarke School For The Deaf. Frances T. Krause bought the house in 1918 and Dr. David Koffman, the “Singing Chiropractor,” in 1974.
Judge Charles E. Forbes, who wished to build a library for Northampton, left a bequest which funded the construction of the Forbes Library. Opened in 1894, the Richardsonian Romanesque building was designed by architect William Brocklesby of Hartford. The first Librarian (1894-1903) of Forbes was Charles Ammi Cutter, who had created the Cutter Expansive Classification System when he was Librarian at the Boston Athenaeum. The Forbes Library is also home to the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum. Continue reading “Forbes Library, Northampton (1894)”
Samuel L. Hill was one of the founders of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI), a nineteenth-century utopian community located in the village of Florence in Northampton. In the 1830s, S. L. Hill had worked as an overseer in a cotton factory in Willimantic, Connecticut. He came to Florence in 1841, where he became a leading citizen and established the Nonotuck Silk Company. An abolitionist, Hill actively aided slaves on the Underground Railroad. Among his other acts of philanthropy was the founding of the Florence Kindergarten, now the Hill Institute. His house, at 29-33 (or 31-35) Maple Street in Florence, was built around 1845. The south wing is the earliest section of the house, which is Arthur G. Hill, his son, also became one of Florence’s leading citizens and lived in the house until the 1920’s.
Attached to Duckett House, an 1810 residence in Northampton that is now a Smith College dorm, is the Mary Ellen Chase House, another dorm named for a Smith College professor and author. Chase House was built in 1827 (or perhaps as early as 1810) as a residence by Elijah Hunt Mills (1776-1829), a lawyer and politician. After Mills’ death, the house was owned and occupied by Thomas Napier, originally from North Carolina, who was a slave-auctioneer and anti-abolitionist. The house later passed through other owners until 1877, when it was sold to Miss Mary Burnham to establish a school for young ladies (the Northampton Classical School for Girls). The objective was to provide better academic preparation for young women wishing to attend the new Smith College. A new rear wing was soon added to the house to accommodate the school, as well as a central tower (later removed) and a Mansard roof (which remains). The Burnham School later moved out of Northampton and Smith acquired the house in 1968.
Smith College did not originally have a chapel because its founders wanted students to be part of the Northampton community and attend local churches. Finally in 1953, an alumna from the class of 1908 named Helen Hills Hills (her maiden name was hills and she married a husband named Hills) offered funds for a college chapel. She stipulated that the building should strictly follow the design of traditional New England meeting houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Designed by William and Geoffrey Platt (sons of Charles Adams Platt) of New York, the nondenominational Helen Hills Hills Chapel was completed in 1955. The interior of the Chapel (123 Elm Street, Northampton) has recently been modified to create a more flexible space: the old fixed pews have been removed in favor of 300 custom-made oak chairs that can be laid out in different configurations.
The Gothic Revival cottage at 29 Arlington Street in Northampton was built on land acquired by Lucretia Daniels, wife of Charles Daniels, in 1873. By 1880 the couple were living in the house with their two teen-aged sons and by 1884 Lucretia was listed as a widow. She lived in the house through 1917.
