USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34
Gc 974.402 P67b 1128688
M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
E
3 1833 01100 1994
0
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historyofpittsfi1876bolt
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD MASSACHUSETTS
FROM THE YEAR 1876 TO THE YEAR 1916
BY EDWARD BOLTWOOD
*
TOWN 17
Y 1891
SSACHUS
PUBLISHED BY THE CITY OF PITTSFIELD
CONTENTS
PAGE
I
PITTSFIELD IN 1876 .
1
II FIFTEEN YEARS OF TOWN LIFE 16
III TOWN GOVERNMENT, 1876-1891 32
IV A GROUP OF TOWNSMEN
46
V THE CHANGE FROM TOWN TO CITY 64
VI PHASES OF THE CITY'S GROWTH 78
VII A MISCELLANY OF CITY LIFE 93
VIII THE CONDUCT OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS, 1891-1916 108
IX SCHOOLS 130
X CHURCHES-I 148
XI CHURCHES-II 162
XII THE BERKSHIRE ATHENAEUM AND MUSEUM 175
XIII
YOUNG PEOPLE'S ASSOCIATIONS
190
XIV THE HOUSE OF MERCY
205
XV CHARITIES AND BENEFACTIONS
221
XVI MILITARY AND PATRIOTIC ORGANIZATIONS 233
XVII INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL 245
XVIII ELECTRICAL MANUFACTURING
265
XIX LAW AND ORDER 277
XX FIRE DEPARTMENT 290
XXI NEWSPAPERS 303
XXII
CLUBS, THEATERS AND HOTELS
318
XXIII PROMINENT CITIZENS 331
XXIV
THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION IN
1911
351
XXV PITTSFIELD IN 1915
365
INDEX
381
PECK'S ROAD
WAR
HLYON
ONOTA
VE
ON
D
TYLER
++
BOSTON & ALBANY R. R.
-
Residential and Business District of PITTSFIELD IN 1915 Red Showing Development Since 1876
NE.
10
WEST ST
EAST ST
PARK
ELM
ST.
SOUTH
H
DAWES
WILLIAM
CROFUT
N.Y. N. H. & H. R. R.
HOUSATONIC
R. R.
SOUTH
HOUSATONIC
RIVER
BEAV
17/S
LAKE
FENN
J. P. Barnes, Del.
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
CHAPTER I
PITTSFIELD IN 1876
T HE subject of this narrative is the history of Pittsfield, in Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916. Another hand has written of the town's settlement and earlier growth; and the two treasured volumes by Joseph E. A. Smith, dealing with Pittsfield from 1734 to 1876, testify no less to the studious labor of the antiquarian, and to the clear insight of the historical critic, than to the love of a poet for the romance and the beauty of the hills. The task imposed upon this book is to carry forward to our own day the annals of the town from the point at which they were left by Mr. Smith's diligent, graceful, and affectionate pen.
The story to be told is one of peace. It can recount of the community no strange or dramatic vicissitude, no stormy broil of faction, no struggle in great wars. During the forty years which it embraces, Pittsfield changed much, but changed placid- ly; and the New England town became a New England city in New England fashion, with the outward calmness of Yankee self- restraint.
In the centennial year of the Republic, Pittsfield was a town of twelve thousand inhabitants, occupying the same rectangular area of about forty square miles of pleasant Berkshire valley and highland that is enclosed by the present city limits. Over this territory, the population in 1876 was more evenly distributed than are the thirty-nine thousand people of Pittsfield in 1915, for outlying farms and factory villages, especially in the south- western part of the township, then claimed a larger proportion of its inhabitants. The central village, around Park Square, was thus described in 1872 by a professional writer, sent by the
Q
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
Springfield Republican to report the dedication of the Soldiers' Monument:
"Pittsfield is no longer the quiet, dullish, somewhat dingy village that some of us remember it, standing with Yankee rc- serve in the midst of fine scenery, where it scemed a little out of place. It has become of late years a bustling, ambitious, archi- tectural town, almost a city and quite ready for the title, with fine public buildings that do not shrink behind trees for fear of being seen, lawns and parks, and gardens and fountains, and an abundance of 'carriage people', and stately horses parading the streets and avenues. Everywhere 'improvements' are going up; there are public works of various kinds; the streets and squares look less like a New England village than the fast-growing cities of the West".
It shall be the endeavor of our first chapter to place the reader in the position of such a visitor to Pittsfield in 1876, who might have alighted at the triangular, brick railroad station, planted, with somewhat aggressive utility, nearly in the middle of West Street.
His attention first would have been engaged by the Burbank Hotel, which occupied part of the sitc of the present station. Opened in 1871, it was a white, wooden structure of four floors, surmounted by a mansard roof, and graced by double-decked piazzas. A wing on the east was devoted to a public hall, with a stage and scenery; and in the basement was a row of shops, which extended nearly to Center Street. As far as Clapp Avenue, the north side of West Street, with its low, unsightly, wooden buildings, was called "The Bowery" by the local humorists of 1876. The south side, east of the swamp and open meadow traversed by Center Street, was bordered mostly by dwelling houses.
On the corner of North and West Streets, the four stories of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company's building, with its mansard roof, overtopped every structure in town, except the Academy of Music. This was the town's most important edifice forty years ago, because it harbored, in addition to the life in- surance offices, a singularly large share of local activities-all the banks, the post and telegraph offices, the Masonic organiza- tions, and the offices of the town government. A few years later this building contained also the telephone exchange, the
3
PITTSFIELD IN 1876
express offices, and the offices of the gas company and of the water commissioners; and its sudden destruction would have paralyzed Pittsfield almost completely.
Where the Hotel Wendell now stands, on the corner of South and West Streets, there was in 1876 a brick structure with an angular roof, sloping north and south, which had been known as the United States Hotel and as the European House. The functions of a hotel therein had been abandoned, and the three stories were devoted to miscellaneous tenants. Immediately to the south, on what was then still called Exchange Row, a res- taurant and a few stores faced Park Square.
The building on the corner of Bank Row and South Street had then a sloping roof, and bore on its west side an inscription concerning which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that "when I drive up West Street, and see the Backus sign, I feel for the first time that Pittsfield is still Pittsfield". The court house had been completed in 1871, and the Athenaeum was dedicated in 1876. Shaded by the trees on the north side of Park Square, on land now occupied by the head of Allen Street, was St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, of gray stone, with a tower eighty feet high. The lower floor of the closely adjacent town hall was rented for lawyers' offices. A lane east of the church connected Park Square with the premises of a grammar school building facing south, the two engine houses, and the wooden lockup. West of the First Congregational Church, on the North Street corner, was West's block, a brick building of three stories.
West's block had been, since its erection in 1850, a center of the town's public and social life. The "general store" on the corner had been practically the executive office of the town gov- ernment, owing to the conspicuous service of one of its pro- prietors, John C. West, as selectman; while the hall on the third floor had served the village for public meetings and dinners, balls and concerts, lectures and theatrical entertainments, and as the armory of the local militia company. In 1876, wooden parapets surrounding the flat roof of West's block proclaimed, in gaudily painted letters, that beneath them were the head- quarters of the Colby Guard.
4
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
Business on North Strect had extended barely beyond the railroad bridge, and between Fenn Street and the bridge dwelling houses still remained, although some were partly converted to commercial purposes .* No business blocks had been built on the side streets running east and west from North Street, except on Depot and Fenn Streets. The latter was ornamented by a little park, upon which faced the Methodist Church. Opposite the Baptist Church, on North Street, a wooden building of two low stories disfigured the otherwise well-equipped center of trade. This building had been contrived by joining two double tene- ments, and its aggregate rental every three years was said to repay its entire purchase price. Upon the whole, however, the appearance of Pittsfield's main thoroughfare in 1876, with more than a dozen business blocks of brick and stone, was indicative of thrift and public spirit.
On the east side of North Street, south of the railroad, the Academy of Music was a theater far above the average then of playhouses in New England, outside of Boston. Beyond the theater, where now is Eagle Square, was a dwelling house, which was used as a restaurant. There was no public way from Cot- tage Row to North Street. Whelden's block, on the north side of the bridge, had been built in 1875; and the proprietor was satirically accused of aiming at the trade of Lanesborough.
*In 1876, some of the more prominent places of business on the west side of North Street, beginning at its southern extremity, were those of L. L. At- wood (drugs), E. Spiegel (dry goods), Laforest Logan (tobacco), L. A. Stevens (grocerics), William H. Cooley (groceries), Gerst and Smith (harness), Peir- son and Son (hardware), Rice and Mills (furniture), C. C. Childs (jewelry), W. H. Sloan (hats and furs), John Feeley (plumbing and stoves), Burbank and Enright (shoes), Manning and Son (drugs), Thomas Behan (harness), Davis and Taylor (men's clothing), A. S. Waite (drugs), Casey and Bacon (groceries), and James M. Burns (furniture).
A corresponding list of retail establishments on the east side of North Street would include John C. West and Brother (general store), Brewster and Rice (drugs), Prince and Walker (carpets), S. E. Nichols (books), Kennedy and MacInnes (dry goods), Moses England (dry goods), O. Root and Sons (shoes), Morey and Harrison (groceries), Pingree and Brother (dry goods). Martin and Ritchie (dry goods), J. R. Newman and Son (men's clothing), H. T. Morgan and Company (men's clothing), A. D. Gale (harness), and S. T. Whipple (furniture).
5
PITTSFIELD IN 1876
The American House stood, as its successor stands now, on the corner of North Street and Columbus Avenue, then called Railroad Street. The hotel was in those days a structure of wood, with three piazzas and a broad, uncovered platform on the level of the sidewalk. Here our visitor might smoke his cigar al fresco, admire the gyrations of the rubber ball in the hotel fountain, and watch the idlers sitting on the railings of the North Street bridge, which was then unprovided with a fence of boards. If he turned his eyes across the street, he saw a lumber- yard and a manufactory of melodeons. He was nearly at the limit of the region of stores. There were no business blocks north of Summer Street.
Our visitor of 1876 would have found that the more preten- tious residences, with one or two exceptions, lay south and east of the Park, and within a short radius of it. The wave of indus- trial prosperity in New England, which followed the Civil War, had made several Pittsfield men rich, but they had built, during this period, very few new houses for their own occupancy. It seems rather to have been the custom to remodel, to add a wing or a story, a cupola or a mansard roof. The result was often not architecturally happy, but nevertheless the town in 1876 contained an unusual number of handsome residences, which, set off by sweeping lawns and regal trees, seldom failed to impress the observer with a sense of quiet and dignified luxury.
Excepting a part of South Street, fences were still the univer- sal fashion; and it was a fashion not so common to adorn one's front yard with a fountain, or with a more or less decorative piece of metal statuary. The flower beds, which at the beginning of the century were customarily maintained between house and street, had unfortunately retreated to the vicinity of the back yard; but floriculture was no less a favorite avocation; and in
On the north side of West Street, in 1876, H. P. Lucas dealt in farmers' supplies, John W. Power in "mill findings", Robbins, Gamwell and Company in steam heating appliances, Tuttle and Branch in stoves, and John F. Heming in flour and grain.
The business places on South Street and Bank Row, facing the Park, were Cloyes' millinery store, Cogswell's restaurant, E. G. Judd's hat store, Lowden's fish market, Fenn and Carter's carpet store, the plumbers' shop of W. G. Backus and Sons, the "notion store" of J. Haight and Co., the Berkshire Valley Paper Company's establishment, and I. C. Weller's flour and grain store.
6
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
the floral months allowed by the Berkshire climate, the many gardens in Pittsfield, large and small, were a glory and a delight. Ornamental shrubbery was more in vogue than it is now, and many dooryards and house-fences were nearly hidden by it.
Several noticeable dwellings have since disappeared. On East Strect, between St. Stephen's Church and First Street, was the large and costly mansion of blue limestone which had been completed in 1858 by Thomas Allen. Surrounded later by a wall of dressed stone, with heavy bronze gates, this was for many years the most conspicuous residence in the central village. Mr. Allen, whose home was in St. Louis, occupied his Pittsfield house during the summers until he died in 1882; and after the death of his widow, in 1897, the house was untenanted. In 1913 it was razed, and the spacious grounds, part of the "home-lot" of Parson Allen of the Revolution, were divided by Federal Street, and an extension of Wendell Avenue.
Robert Pomeroy's house, long and affectionately known as "The Homestead", stood on the south side of East Street, op- posite the head of First Street. In 1876, the land now occupied by the dwellings on both sides of Bartlett Avenue was Mr. Pom- eroy's orchard and pasture. He lived until 1884 in "The Homestead" which was demolished in 1889, and was replaced by the house now standing on the same site, built by Mr. Pomeroy's son-in-law, Henry W. Bishop. "The Homestead" had been a tavern in Revolutionary days; and later, as the home of Lemuel Pomeroy and of his son, it was famous for a baronial hospitality, of which the reputation was by no means confined to Pittsfield, or even to the United States.
On the north side of East Street, opposite the head of Apple- ton Avenue, a quaint, gambrel-roofed cottage stood on the site of the residence erected by W. Russell Allen. Built prior to 1790 by Col. Simon Larned, whose farm extended to the line of the railroad, this house, with its orchard, barns, and out- buildings, remained unaltered for nearly a century, a picturesque memorial of the early days of the town.
Farther afield, beyond the Elm Street bridge, the family of William Pollock maintained on a lavish scale the noble estate called "Greytower", which included nearly the entire square
7
PITTSFIELD IN 1876
now bounded by Elm Street, Holmes Road, Dawes Avenue, and High Street. The gate-lodge stood where is now the Baptist chapel on Elm Street; and about two hundred yards to the south of it was the stone mansion, surrounded by stately elms, luxuriant gardens, and English-looking lawns. The house was dismantled in 1913, and the estate was divided into building lots.
If we return to Park Square and glance at South Street, we shall find that the changes since 1876 are mainly on the east side. The present site of the Museum was then occupied by two dwell- ing houses. The one nearer the Park had been built before 1800, perhaps by Stalham Williams, and was rented by a variety of tenants; the other, a modest but graceful example of the pilaster period of New England architecture, had been the home of Calvin Martin, until his death in 1867. It may be seen today on Broad Street. An odd little wooden building, used by Mr. Martin as a law-office, stood in front of his residence, close to the sidewalk.
Next to the Martin place on the south was a brick house of three stories, which had been erected in 1826 by the trustees of the Pittsfield Female Academy. Until about 1870, it continued to serve the purposes of a girls' school; and in 1876 it had com- menced its long and popular career as Mrs. Viner's boarding house. It was demolished in 1888, when the Berkshire Home for Aged Women was built on the same site.
A pleasant cottage occupied the plot of land now covered by the Colonial Theater; and across the street the parsonage of the First Church stood where is now the Masonic Temple. At the south corner of South and Broad Streets, an old and capa- cious tavern building, removed many years before from Park Square, did duty as a place of entertainment for summer visitors, under the auspices of Mrs. Backus. Facing north, opposite the west end of Colt Road, stood the former medical college, a brick structure owned by the town and used as a schoolhouse, which was burned to the ground in 1876, when the seventy pupils of the high school became for a time academically homeless. Be- yond the fringe of houses on the south side of Broad Street was open pasture land.
Nearby, occupying the entire square bounded by Broad and Taconic Streets, and Wendell and Pomeroy Avenues, was "Elm-
8
1
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
wood", the home of Edward Learned, then the finest residential estate in Pittsfield, with the exception, perhaps, of "Grey- tower". The house still survives, but the beautiful grounds have been divided. Mr. Learned's neighbor, John L. Colby, lived in a low, Italian-looking villa, on the southeast corner of East Housatonic Street and Pomeroy Avenue, with broad, shaded lawns, and a wired enclosure wherein deer were kept for the admiration of the juvenile populace.
In 1876, the river bridge at Appleton Avenue had not been built, and East Housatonic Street and Appleton Avenue may be said to have marked the limit on the southeast of the residen- tial district of the central village. On the northeast, a like limit was established by Burbank and Third Streets, for imme- diately north of Tyler Street was open country, and in that vi- cinity there were only a few dwelling houses east of the county jail. Rural meadows bordered Silver Lake to the north and northeast. The central village on the northwest was bounded in 1876 by Kent Avenue, Alder Street, and Onota Street; and on the southwest by the west branch of the Housatonic River and Henry Avenue.
Within this area, the newer dwellings exhibited the hooded windows, the roofs of many gables, and the ornamental wood- work of a fashion of architecture, which, as was remarked by a congratulatory writer in the Pittsfield Sun, was beginning to supersede "the square and box-like style of the houses of our forefathers".
No street in the town was artificially surfaced, and cross- walks were not provided, except on North and West Streets, and on Park Square. When the almanac denied a moon, the streets were lighted by gas lamps, of which there were about one hun- dred. In the business district the sidewalks, thickly fringed by hitching-posts, were of irregular stone flagging, diversified by intervals of gravel. Upon the residential streets, the sidewalks wcre of gravel; and they were often narrow and uneven, and in wet weather very muddy.
The era of the modern "summer place" had hardly dawned in Berkshire, forty years ago. Col. Richard Lathers had built a summer residence, called "Abby Lodge", on the crest of the
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PITTSFIELD IN 1876
hill south of the railroad on Holmes Road; and west of the vil- lage, on the southern shore of Onota Lake, stood the picturesque summer homes of Pickering Clark and W. C. Allen. All of these have disappeared. Still standing, near the present intersection of Perrine Avenue and Roland Street, is the villa built by Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, which in 1876 was the solitary center of a broad and romantic estate, covered partly by forest trees. The Davol farm, on the hill northwest of Springside, was another conspicuous outlying country place, and a little to the south of it the Springside boarding house could safely guarantee rural se- clusion to its guests. The shores of Pontoosuc Lake had been adorned neither by cottage nor by bungalow, although Jerry Swan, and two or three fellow mariners, kept boathouses there.
In the northern and northwestern parts of the town, the four factory villages were then more distinctly separated than they are now; but their general appearance has not otherwise radically been altered, except by the erection of schoolhouses and of the St. Charles and the Pilgrim Memorial Churches. Toward the southwest, however, a loss of industrial activity is to be noted. The two Barkervilles were, in 1876, prosperous factory communities; the Shaker village flourished comfortably; and, nearer at hand on the west branch of the Housatonic, the busy looms of L. Pomeroy's Sons gave employment to about three hundred people. Lacking such ready intercommunication as is afforded at present by the trolley and the telephone, each of these manufacturing villages, as well as Coltsville on the east, developed a more or less individual and somewhat jealous com- munity spirit of its own.
The business depression and political unrest, which began to trouble the country in 1873, had not seriously distressed Pitts- field's manufacturing interests; but nevertheless the prevalent spirit of the town as to its future was not a spirit of optimism. Both domestic life and the conduct of public affairs were affected by a lack of confidence. It was argued that neither the popula- tion nor the valuation of the town ever could greatly increase; that farm land in the township was exhausted, and that the water power for textile manufacturing, the town's chief indus- trial reliance, was already completely utilized. Of course, it was
10
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
possible to equip new factories with stcam power, and such a venture, indecd, had been tried at Morningside, but not with signal success.
Even more disturbing was the question of the possible effect of new railroads upon the town. A main trunk line, connecting Boston with the West, had been opened through the Hoosac tunnel and North Adams so recently that its effect upon the trade, manufactories, and growth of Pittsfield was still problemat- ical. Another main line to pass east and west through the county at Lee, having been within a few years actively projectcd, had received the temporary quietus of a governor's veto; but the plan was at any time susceptible of revival, and its execution might endanger the continuance of Pittsfield's material welfarc.
Thus confronted by the possibility that their town might soon cease to grow in wealth and population, the people of Pittsfield seem to have evinced a disposition to make the best of the present, rather than to busy themselves with plans for the future. From 1873 until 1880, the enterprise of the community was almost at a standstill; and there was a general subsidence, or at least suspension, of that pushing spirit, public and private, which had made Pittsfield in 1872 resemble "one of the fast- growing cities of the West", according to the newspaper observer already quoted.
The social life of the village, however, was none the less wholesome and enjoyable. Pittsfield was still a Yankee town wherein friendships were made readily and widely. Few people were so fastidious socially as to irritate themselves or their neighbors; a newcomer was impressed by the habit of even the leading men of calling one another by their youthful nicknames; and such democratic institutions as the town meeting and the large volunteer fire companies were vigorous foes to the develop- ment of distinctions of caste and class.
The typical man of standing in the Pittsfield of 1876 had seen the village develop from a semi-agricultural to a manufac- turing town; he had acquired his influence, as he had his proper- ty, patiently and carefully at home; and he preserved a whole- some regard for the village way of living, which, while it did not preclude substantial comfort, was opposed to fashionable dis-
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PITTSFIELD IN 1876
play. He would drive the best of horses, for instance; but the jingle of an ornamental harness offended his ears. He would indulge himself with the possession of a farm, which he did not need; but it was neither an experiment nor a plaything, and it was conducted on the same scale as the farm on which he had spent his boyhood. His wife would invite her guests to a "kettle-drum" or a "small-and-early" in her tasteful drawing- room, or to a five-o'clock dinner at her lavishly supplied table; but, with equal contentment, she would entertain the same guests by a "candy-pull" or an "oyster-roast" in her hospitable kitchen.
The intellectual and esthetic interests of the community had been freshly stimulated, at the period which we are considering. The enlargement of the public library and the completion of the building for the Athenaeum, the establishment of an excellent seminary of music, the erection of a theater, and the dawn of an improvement in the system of public schools had recently em- phasized anew, each of them in its own way, the value of art and education.
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