Deerfield – Page 4 – Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

Allen House (1734)

by Dan/December 21, 2008September 17, 2016/Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

The colonial saltbox known as the Allen House was renovated in 1945 to become the Deerfield home of Henry and Helen Flynt, the founders of Historic Deerfield. They believed the house had been built around 1705, just after the Deerfield Raid of 1704. Current research indicates it was built around 1734. The land was originally owned by Simon and Hannah Beaman, who had been captured during the raid. The house was occupied by the Bardwell family and then by the Allen family, after the 1842 marriage of Catherine Elizabeth Bardwell and Caleb Allen. In 1896, Caleb Bardwell’s nieces, Frances and Mary Allen, with their mother took possession of the house. The Allen sisters were photographers, famous for their Deerfield scenes. They sold their work out of a shop in the house. During the nineteenth century, the interior of the house had been completely changed, leading the Flynts to gut it and recreate an eighteenth century plan. Open to visitors, the antiques-filled interior decoration of the house remains as it was when the Flynts were in residence.

Jonathan Hoyt House (1755)

by Dan/November 25, 2008September 17, 2016/Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

Built around 1755, in the Cheapside section of Deerfield, the Jonathan Hoyt House was once the home of Rev. Henry Colman, a prominent agriculturalist. Colman had become an ordained minister, but ill health forced him to retire as a pastor. He devoted himself to agriculture, in the 1830s purchasing the Hoyt Farm and the White Horse Inn, as the Hoyt House had come to be called. Later, the house was moved to Greenfield, but in 1965-1966, at the urging of John Radovich, who had grown up in the house, the building was moved to the Street in Old Deerfield and restored in the Colonial Revival style to serve as a parsonage for the First Church of Deerfield.

The Manse [Deerfield Academy] (1768)

by Dan/November 23, 2008January 24, 2011/Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

The building in Old Deerfield known as the Manse, or the Willard House, is a 1768 Georgian mansion that was at one time the home of Rev. Samuel Willard. An earlier house, constructed in 1694, was already on the lot when the land was sold by Samuel Allen, the grandfather of Ethan Allen, to Samuel Barnard of Salem. Barnard bequeathed the land to his nephew, Joseph Barnard, who built the Manse in 1768, spending thirteen years selecting wood without knots. The earlier gambrel roofed building became the current ell. The Barnards continued to live in the house until 1795 when, facing financial difficulties, Samuel Barnard moved his family to Vermont. In 1807, the house was rented to Hosea Hildreth, preceptor at Deerfield Academy, whose son Richard Hildreth, later author of a well-known History of the United States, was born in the house. In 1811, the house was bought by Rev. Samuel Willard, who had already been living there since 1807 and would own the house until his death in 1859. Dr. Willard was the first Unitarian minister in Western Massachusetts and entertained such visitors as Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the house. Willard’s heirs sold the home in 1885 and it had other owners. Today it serves as the residence of the Head of School of Deerfield Academy.
Edit (01/24/2011): A book about the house was published in 1887, Story of the Old Willard House of Deerfield, Mass., by Catharine B. Yale.

Rev. Jonathan Ashley House (1734)

by Dan/November 22, 2008September 17, 2016/Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

Rev. Jonathan Ashley was the second minister in Deerfield, serving from 1712 to 1780. He married Dorothy Williams, the daughter of the Rev. William Williams of Hatfield. Given a home lot in town, he constructed his house around 1734. Originally having a center chimney, the house was modified by Ashley in the 1750s into a center hallway home with a distinctive Connecticut River Valley doorway. As one of the elite Valley citizens known as “River Gods,” Ashley installed fine paneling in his home and furnished it with high style furniture. By the twentieth century, the house had been moved back on the lot and replaced with a nineteenth century Italianate style house. The former “mansion house” was now used as a tobacco barn. It was restored (the current doorway is a reproduction) and moved back to a position in the Street by the founders of Historic Deerfield, Henry and Helen Flynt. In 1948, the house became their first restoration opened to the public. It currently houses an extensive collection of Connecticut River Valley antiques.

Wilson Printing Office (1816)

by Dan/November 21, 2008/Commercial, Deerfield, Federal

The Wilson Printing Office, in Old Deerfield, was originally built in 1816 by Col. John Wilson (1782-1869) on the lot of his father-in-law, Horatio Hoyt. In the building, he printed broadsides and reprints of popular works. Wilson also printed works by his brother-in-law, Rudolphus Dickinson, a minister and his partner at the press before 1820. In later years, the building would be moved five times within Deerfield until 1951, when Henry Flynt restored the building to its original site to become part of Historic Deerfield. In restoring the structure, Flynt referred to an 1820 sketch by Wilson’s daughter, Mary Hoyt Wilson (1809-1841).

John Nims House (1744)

by Dan/November 21, 2008September 17, 2016/Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

The ancestor of the Nims family in America, Godfrey Nims, a cordwainer, arrived in Deerfield around 1670. The current Nims House in Old Deerfield is the third to be built on the site. The first was constructed by Godfrey Nims around 1685. This house burned in the 1704 French and Indian raid and was rebuilt by John Nims in 1710. This second structure may have been added as an ell to the third and current house, built around 1744 (1740-1750) (this ell was significantly altered around 1808). The house served as a Post Office from 1816 to 1831. The property went out of the family in the 1890s, but was bought by two Nims descendants in 1936, who deeded it to Deerfield Academy in 1938. The house has since been used as a dormitory and faculty residence. There is HABS documentation on this house.

Deerfield Inn (1884)

by Dan/October 14, 2008September 17, 2016/Colonial Revival, Deerfield, Hotels

Built in 1884 by Edward and Frederick Everett, to replace an earlier inn on the village common, the Deerfield Inn was enlarged for the first time the following year and, adjacent to the buildings of Historic Deerfield, continues to serve visitors today.