The First Congregational Church of Adams, at 42 Park Street in Adams, is a wood-frame church built in 1868. At some point, the church lost its original tall steeple, which was replaced with the current shortened one. Just to the south are the parish house and parsonage, built in 1895.
Established in 1895, the Berkshire Loan & Trust Company was for a time located in the Berkshire County Savings Bank Building until constructing its own Classical Revival building, at 54 North Street in Pittsfield, circa 1923.
The Columbus Building, at 91-99 Elm Street in Westfield, was built in 1912 by John J. Hearn for his furniture store, Hearn & Company. There is a large c. 1950s slab on the lower right of the building’s front facade where the name “Hearn’s” was once displayed. Some years ago, the building’s upper floors were converted to apartments. Continue reading “Columbus Building (1912)”
The F. L. Brigham House is located at 73 Washington Road in the Springfield neighborhood of Forest Park Heights. It is a Colonial and English Revival house built in 1902. F. L. Brigham M.D. was associated with the Worcester Sanitarium in 1905.
Holyoke‘s most striking old factory building was constructed by the Albion Paper Company at what is now 15 Water Street. An earlier mill building on the site, belonging to the Hampton Company, was acquired by the Albion Company after the latter was formed in 1869. The Albion Company was sold to D.H. & J.C. Newton in 1877, who rebuilt the mill complex with substantial additions in 1878. The building features two mansard-roofed towers (the second one added post-1887), whose bells summoned workers for their shifts. The company manufactured book paper and engine sized flat paper. After experiencing accumulating large debts in the 1890s, the company was incorporated into the American Writing Paper Company in 1899. Another adjacent mill building, which was built circa 1880 by the Nonotuck Paper Company and later became the Mt. Tom Division of American Writing Paper Company, was destroyed by a fire earlier this year.
The E. N. Childs House is a French Second Empire-style house at 54 West Street in Worcester. It was constructed circa 1868. Childs was a boot manufacturer. As related in Charles G. Washburn’s Industrial Worcester (1917):
In 1853 E. N. Childs came to Worcester from Millbury, and engaged in business with Albert Gould for one year. In 1854 Albert S. Brown became a partner. They did business as Childs & Brown until 1857, when Mr. Brown retired, and A. G. Walker was admitted under the firm of E. N. Childs & Co. In 1862 Mr. Walker retired and Mr. Childs continued under the same firm name until 1881. During the preceding few years his sons were interested with him in the business.
The house is now owned by Becker College. In the past it was a dormitory, but now it houses the Maintenance offices.
The Isaac S. Parsons House is an Italianate residence, built in 1860 at 4 Park Street in the village of Florence in Northampton. The house was designed by E.C. Gardner, who was an architect and author. Originally from Florence, he later settled in Springfield. Isaac S. Parsons ran a store, I. S. Parsons & Co., on Nonotuck Street and became Florence’s first postmaster in 1852, a position he held for 16 years. He was an organizer of the Florence Manufacturing Company. The house was sold in 1889 to Henry F. Cutler, one of the owners of Cutler, Plympton and Co., a grocery and dry goods business. Cutler was also post master. The house has lost its original Italianate cupola.
