The home of the Marlborough Historical Society is the Peter Rice Homestead at 337 Elm Street. The Homestead was built in 1688, on the half of his father’s original house lot which Peter Rice inherited. That year, he had married Rebecca Howe and their descendants would occupy the house into the mid-nineteenth century. The house was added to over the years and subdivided in the 1940s. It was donated to the Historical Society in 1967 and is now a museum.
The Golden Ball Tavern was constructed by Captain Isaac Jones in 1768 on the Boston Post Road in Weston. Jones was a Tory and, during the agitation leading up to the Revolution, he continued to serve Dutch tea, in spite of local protest. In March 1774, Patriots raided the Tavern in what is known as the “Weston Tea Party.” Jones was prominent in the community, so the Tavern remained open, but in 1775, he is known to have entertained two British spies! Later becoming a supporter of the Revolutionary army, Jones continued as a prosperous citizen after the war and his descendants continued to live in his house until 1963. The following year, the house was established as a Trust and opened as the Golden Ball Tavern Museum.
The Salem house of Elias Hasket Derby was built in 1762 and is the oldest surviving brick house in Salem. It was built by Richard Derby for his son on the occasion of Elias Hasket’s marriage to Elizabeth Crowninshield. Richard Derby had made his money through fishing and trade enterprises. During the Revolutionary War, Hasket converted many of the family’s cargo ships into privateers which preyed on British shipping. Wealth amassed from these activities later funded Derby’s involvement with the East India trade, which would make him America’s first millionaire. The house was sold in 1796 to another successful merchant, Captain Henry Prince, Sr., who built the West India Goods Store next to the house around 1800. After the Prince family left the home in 1827, it had other owners and was used as a tenement house for a time. In the early twentieth century, it was purchased and restored by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and in 1937 was transferred to become part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.
The curiosities collection of the Springfield Museums, which goes back to 1859, was at first housed in City Hall and then in the City Library. It was later displayed in the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum‘s Hall of Ethnology. This collection soon grew so large that a seperate building was constructed in 1899. Originally established as the Springfield Ethnological and Natural History Museum, it is now the Springfield Science Museum.
The George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum is one of the four (soon to be five) Springfield Museums. The Springfield Museums Association traces its origins to the varied collections of the Springfield City Library Association, gathered in the nineteenth century. Money was raised to construct a seperate art museum building after the association was promised, in 1886, the vast collection of George Walter Vincent Smith and his Springfield-born wife, Belle Townsley Smith. A wealthy carriage manufacturer, Smith had settled in Springfield in 1871 and focused on collecting Asian decorative arts, American and Italian paintings, rugs and textiles. The museum, completed in 1895, was designed to resemble an Italian villa. The ashes of the Smiths are interred inside a wall on the second floor of the museum.
Opened in 1934, the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts is one of the museums on the Springfield Museum Quadrangle. The Art Deco style building was built in response to the bequest of Dr. & Mrs. James Philip Gray, who left their estate for the “selection, purchase, preservation, and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic, and high class oil paintings obtainable,” the construction of a building to house them. The museum collections include art by American and European artists. The museum was recently named after Michele & Donald D’Amour. Donald D’Amour, who has donated a significant sum to the museum, is chairman and CEO of Big Y supermarkets.
The Connecticut Valley Historical Society, based in Springfield, was incorporated in 1876. The Society originally held its meetings and housed its collections in the Springfield City Library, until a museum building, known as the William Pynchon Memorial Building, was constructed, next to the Springfield Science Museum, in 1927. The Connecticut Valley Historical Museum, designed by the Springfield architect Max Westoff, is a Colonial Revival structure, based on a the Colonial homes of the Connecticut River Valley. The main entrance of the museum, with its broken scroll pediment, is modeled on such homes as the Samuel Porter House in Hadley and the Josiah Dwight House, originally built in Springfield and later moved to Deerfield. The Historical Museum formally joined the Springfield Museums Association in 1948. UPDATE: The museum closed and its collections are now part of the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. The former Connecticut Valley Historical Museum is now home to Dr. Seuss Museum.
