Category: Westfield

Cobb-Norton House (1830)

by Dan//Greek Revival, Houses, Westfield

The Greater Westfield Chapter of the American Red Cross is headquartered in a Greek Revival house at 48 Broad Street in Westfield. Known as the Cobb-Norton House, it is believed to have been built by Cephas Cobb around 1830. Cobb‘s son, Gilbert, was a newspaper publisher and town clerk of Westfield. Gilbert Cobb‘s sister Clara married H.B. Smith, a boiler manufacturer. In 1855, the house was sold to Lewis K. Norton, a hardware merchant and bank president. The house was converted into a Red Cross headquarters in 1945 through the gift of Frederick L. Parker and his wife. Parker was president of the United States Whip Company.

Landlord Fowler Tavern (1761)

by Dan//Colonial, Taverns, Westfield

Built around 1761 (perhaps as early as 1755), the Landlord Fowler Tavern is located at 171 Main Street in Westfield. Daniel Fowler was granted a tavern license in 1761 and the building continued to function as an inn until the 1830s. At the start of the American Revolution, Daniel Fowler served on the Committee of Correspondence, which met at the tavern. As related in The Westfield Jubilee (1870):

It is said that General Burgoyne, when he passed through this town as a prisoner from the field of Saratoga, spent the night at this tavern, and with true military politeness, kissed the wife of the landlord, on the morning of his departure.

Another prisoner of war to stay in the house during the Revolutionary War was Hessian commander General Friedrich von Riesdesel. H. C. Schaeffer owned the property between 1885 and 1916, during which time he conducted a cigar-making business on the premises. More recently, the former tavern has been restored and converted into apartments. The Fowler Tavern‘s original Connecticut River Valley broken scroll pediment doorway was removed in 1920 by Wallace Nutting and placed in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The current doorway on the building is a replica.

Joseph Dewey House (1735)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Westfield

The Joseph Dewey House, at 87 South Maple Street in Westfield, was built in 1735 as a saltbox house. Joseph Dewey was a prosperous farmer who also served as a militia sergeant and had been a town selectman in 1726. In 1756, Dewey sold the house to his son, also named Joseph. In the early nineteenth century, Benjamin Dewey made extensive interior and exterior alterations to the family home, replacing the roof, realigning the chimney and altering the front facade in the Federal style. The house was in the Dewey family until 1856 and then had a number of other owners over the years until 1972, when a developer sold it to the Western Hampden Historical Society. It was then moved 200 feet west, restored as much as possible to its colonial-era appearance and opened as a historic house museum.

Elizabeth Avery Talmadge House (1858)

by Dan//Houses, Italianate, Westfield

In 2007, the former residence at 85 Broad Street in Westfield began conversion into a branch of the Easthampton Savings Bank, earning an Historical Preservation Award for Adaptive Reuse in 2009. The Historical Commission website and a newspaper article from that year call the building the Elizabeth Avery Talmadge House and date it to the early twentieth century (c.1910). The house, though, is in the Italianate style, which was popular decades earlier and also has the dates 1858 and 1859 prominently displayed on the roof cornice. Additionally, Elizabeth Avery Talmadge, for whom the house was named, had died in 1904. Elisha Talmadge, her husband, however died in 1858, which further supports a construction date for a house named for his widow in 1858-1859.