Although today hidden down a side street, Amherst’s small brick train station was once surrounded by a hub of activity, including factories, a hotel and a bank. Built in 1853 by Robert Cutler, the Amherst Depot originally served the Amherst & Belchertown Railroad and later the New London Northern Railroad and the Central Vermont Railroad. Restored in 1976, it continues as a passenger station today.
Born in Ellington, Connecticut in 1803, Leonard Mariner Hills moved to Amherst in 1827. He ran a tavern and a dry goods store and eventually became very successful manufacturing palm leaf hats. He also became the first president of the First National Bank of Amherst in 1864. In the 1840s to 1860s, Hills built a complex of factories in Amherst. His son, Henry F. Hills, built a house off Main Street in 1863. Leonard decided to hire the same architect, William Fenno Pratt, to design his own Italian Villa home, built in 1863-1864 on the adjoining lot (35 Triangle Street). It is said that he ordered the house, which was called the Hedges, to be one foot larger than his son’s in every dimension. The Hills family owned the house until 1923, when a bequest of Mrs. Alice M. Hills left it to the Amherst Woman’s Club. It is now known as the Hills Memorial Club House.
Built around 1850-1853, the Rectory of Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst was originally the home of bookseller Mark H. Newman. The rectory was later attached to the church by an extension. This extension was recently replaced by an entirely new link between the rectory and church. For many years, in front of the rectory and Grace Church, stood a large Japanese katsura tree, which became an Amherst landmark. It was brought as a seed or seedling from Japan by William S. Clark, founder of the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst), and planted in 1877. Dr. Frederick Tuckerman once said that if the rectory ever caught on fire, the tree should be saved even if the building had to be sacrificed. The tree suffered from dangerous rot and was taken down several years ago.
The Evergreens is a house in Amherst built in 1856 by Edward Dickinson for his his son, William Austin Dickinson, who had just married Susan Huntington Gilbert. Austin Dickinson was a lawyer and succeeded his father as treasurer of Amherst College, serving from 1874 until his death in 1895. He is also known for his longtime affair with Mabel Loomis Todd, who would edit early collections of poetry written by Austin’s sister, Emily Dickinson. The Italianate-style Evergreens, designed by Northampton architect William Fenno Pratt, was built next to the Dickinson Homestead, where Emily resided with her sister, Lavinia. The Evergreens became a social and cultural center in the town. After Austin and Sarah Dickinson died (the latter in 1913), the house was lived in and preserved by their daughter, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (died 1943), who left the house to her secretary, Alfred Leete Hampson, stipulating in her will that if Hampson and his family chose not to live in the house, it should be torn down. Hampson’s widow, Mary Landis Hampson, made arrangements in her own will to preserve the house under a trust for public use. Since 2003, it has been owned by Amherst College and, along with the Emily Dickinson Homestead, forms part of the Emily Dickinson Museum.
The first great fire in Amherst swept through the center of town in February 1838. Out of the ashes was built a new commercial block with the appropriate name: Phoenix Row. The building, located at 4-16 Main Street, survived another fire in 1872, which started in the outbuildings to its rear. It soon underwent renovations that significantly altered its appearance, most notably with the addition of a new flat Italianate style roof with decorative brackets and gable. Phoenix Row has survived other fires in 1883 and 1989 and continues as a business block today.
The building at 85 Amity Street in Amherst was built in 1855 as a two-story residence. In 1898, Egbert Perry began taking in boarders and in 1912 the building, by then known as the Hotel Perry, was expanded two more stories. In 1938, it was acquired by William Richters, who had owned Drake’s Restaurant in Times Square. He renamed the hotel the Drake, after the famous New York hotel of the same name. It continued to be known locally as the Drake, even after later owners changed its name to the Village Inn in 1959. The Drake was home to a legendary basement bar called the Rathskeller, a popular student hangout whose infamous reputation eventually led to the sale of the building in 1985 and its conversion into apartments under the name the Perry. Student reaction at the time can be judged by the still visible graffiti on the nearby Amherst Cinema Building, which declares “Save the Drake” and “For Willy [the Drake’s bartender] For Humanity!”
The Henry F. Hills House (pdf) is a striking mansion at 360 Main Street, recently renumbered as 38 Gray Street, in Amherst. It was designed by William Fenno Pratt of Northampton and was built in 1862-1863 for Henry Francis Hills, next to the lot where his father, Leonard M. Hills would soon also build a house by the same architect. Father and son owned a factory complex near the railroad depot that made palm leaf hats. Henry Hills succeeded his father as president of the company in 1877. After Hills’ death in 1924, the house, which had been built as a wedding gift for his bride Adelaide Spenser of South Manchester, Connecticut, was next occupied by his daughter, Susan C. Hills Skillings, who lived there until her death 1968. From 1976 to 2007, the property was owned by the Amherst Boys and Girls Club. It was then sold to a developer, who has restored (pdf) the house and three other historic houses that had been moved to new lots on the former Hills property: the Chapin-Ward House, the Potwine House and the Tuttle Farmhouse.
