USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > King's handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts : a series of monographs, historical and descriptive > Part 7
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The present bridge was constructed in 1816; the builder being Capt. Isaac Damon of Northampton, a man of great capacity for construction and superior workmanship, his work having stood the test of 67 years of strain as a bridge, and is now likely to stand 40 or 50 years longer. It was partially carried off by the spring freshet of 1818, and the lost portions supplied in 1820; but never since has it suffered by ice or water. At the last fracture in 1818 Gen. Bliss, one of the directors, thought to save the east end of the bridge, by securing an immense cable or rope to the main timbers, and fastening the rope to a large tree on the bank of the river above the bridge ; but the next large sheet of ice that struck the bridge hardly straightened the sag of the cable before it parted, and away went the eastern span of Capt. Damon's superstructure.
The present is the second bridge, and was covered at the time of building. The travel is on an even plane at the bottom of the chord. The heavy pine timber of the arches was cut far up the river, rafted down, and hewed out by hand. Tolls were taken until July 1, 1872, when it was made free by Act of the Legislature.
The next bridge was that of the Western Railroad, completed July I, 1841, made of wood, on' the " Howe " plan, and uncovered. This was taken
THE BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD IRON BRIDGE. FROM THE WEST-SPRINGFIELD SIDE. Entrance just west of Union Depot.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
down in 1855, and replaced by another; the trains all the while continuing their usual trips. The second bridge was covered, and continued in use until the erection of the present iron bridge in 1873.
The North-End iron bridge was completed Sept. 1, 1877, and dedicated by a large concourse of people on the West-Springfield side. Dinner-tables were placed in the goodly shade of a row of maple-trees, refreshments offered to the crowd, and speeches made by the friends of the enterprise ; William Chapman of West Springfield leading off with much enthusiasm. It affords the centre of that town an additional and more convenient privi- lege of access to the Union Railway Station. It is one of the handsomest highway bridges in the United States.
The South-End iron bridge, connecting the city with Agawam, was built in 1878, and completed and opened for travel Feb. 1, 1879. It takes the place of the old steam-ferry, and is a great advantage to the towns of Aga- wam, Suffield, Southwick, and Granby. From the above it will be seen that there are now four bridges across the Connecticut within the space of two miles and a half.
The Springfield Street-Railway Company was organized in 1869, with a capital of $50,000. The first board of directors included G. M. Atwater, Homer Foot, C. L. Covell, Gurdon Bill, and Willis Phelps. The first officers were : G. M. Atwater, president and treasurer ; J. E. Smith, superintendent ; and Gideon Wells, clerk of the corporation. The station and stables were built at the corner of Main and Hooker Streets ; and the first trip was made on March 10, 1870. Since then the company has made a gradual develop- ment. It carried during the first year, 257,280 passengers; and now it carries about 1,100,000. At its opening, the total length of track was 2.7 miles ; now it is 72 miles. Then the track extended from Hooker Street to Oak Street; in 1873 it was extended from the corner of Main and State Streets to Mill River, and also from Oak Street to the Boston Road; and in 1874 it was again extended from Hooker Street to Wason Avenue. In 1879 the capital stock was increased to $100,000, and the track again extended from the corner of State and Maple Streets to the United-States Water- Shops. It was then found necessary to enlarge the old buildings, and to erect a new stable and station at the corner of Main and Carew Streets. In 1882 the capital stock was increased to $125,000, and a second track was laid, making a double track on Main Street, from State Street to Carew Street, and also on parts of State Street. The equipment consisted, in 1870, of 4 cars and 25 horses; in 1883, of 22 cars and 96 horses. The president is John Olmsted; the treasurer, A. E. Smith; the superin- tendent, F. E. King; and the clerk of the corporation, Gideon Wells.
- HEMAN SMITH.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
Traffic and Transportation.
EARLY BOATS, STAGE-COACHES, AND CANALS, AND THE LATER STEAM-RAILROADS.
T "HE advantageous location of Springfield gave it, from the start, a pioneer place in the development of inland commerce and transporta- tion. The Connecticut River became the first great north-and-south highway of the country. Palfrey, in his " History of New England," shows how it became the singular fortune of Springfield, as the first town upon a river in a jurisdiction foreign to that which controlled its mouth, to assert the princi- ples of free trade, and of the free navigation of rivers by all the communities upon their banks, - principles which finally reached their perfection in the complete freedom of the internal commerce of the United States. Spring- field had been established less than ten years (1645) when the Connecticut Colony attempted to collect an export-duty upon goods descending the river from Springfield, for the purpose, as was alleged, of paying for a fort at Say- brook. Springfield resisted this imposition upon her commerce, and carried her grievances to the General Court of Massachusetts, which appealed to the commissioners of all the New-England Colonies, then constituting the germ of the American Union. The case was decided against Springfield ; but the infant town refused to submit, and effectually maintained the free- dom of the river through a long controversy.
For the first two centuries the river-navigation by primitive flatboats - poled up the stream, and floating down - bore the burden of freight to the interior. The river, however, was of inferior navigability, and made a place for roads rather than a substitute. Early in this century the valley-roads were in comparatively good order. President Dwight of Yale College, speaking of the Connecticut Valley in 1803, praises its roads and inns, and says, "The time has not been long passed since the roads on the hills were almost universally too rough to be travelled for pleasure. At that time the roads in this valley were generally good throughout a great extent. Hence the inhabitants were allured to a much more extensive intercourse with each other than those in any other part of New England, except along the eastern coast. For the same reasons a multitude of strangers have at all times been induced to make this valley the scene of their pleasurable trav- elling. The effect of this intercourse on the minds and manners of the inhabitants needs no explanation."
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Professor Silliman, who made his trip to Quebec, coming home through this valley, in 1819, says, " We found the inns, almost without exception, so comfortable, quiet, and agreeable, that we had neither desire nor inclination to find fault. Almost everywhere, when we wished it, we found a private parlor and a separate table ; and rarely did we hear any profane or coarse language, or observe any rude and boisterous deportment."
The era of river-men and stage-coaches was picturesque. The ancient mariners of the Connecticut had all the refinement of topography, of phil- osophy, and of profanity, which Mark Twain has ascribed to the pilots of the Mississippi. From Saybrook to the mouth of Wells River, Vt., they wrestled with the shifty bottom and the numerous rapids of the Connecticut. Their picturesque designations of every mile of its length have mostly passed into oblivion, and it would be vain to attempt to reproduce the life which the Connecticut river-men led. The advent of steam-navigation gave a great impetus to their commerce, inspired the formation of rival lines, and gave a tremendous fever of activity to the little world of fifty years ago, which seemed to the people of those times just as big as ours does to us. Steam- ers were built in Springfield ; and competition for steamboat business became so hot between Springfield and Hartford, that passengers were carried either way for 12} cents, and sent home in a carriage at their journey's end. The stage-coach, meantime, had reached a great development. Coaches ran be- tween the same cities both ways each day, and upon both sides of the river. The Albany coach-and-six came smoking in at high speed, blowing a warn- ing blast upon the horn before it reached the Connecticut-river bridge; and similarly, from Massachusetts Bay, more than once a day, great coaches rolled across the sandy plain at the eastward of the city, and halted their panting teams at the Rockingham House first, and then at Warriner's, or the other taverns. There were six lines and 18 coaches running between Boston and Albany at the close of the coaching-period. The freighting- business of those days, by heavy wagons, was immense ; and it has left a relic in Gunn's Block, at the corner of State and Walnut Streets, which was built in 1836 to accommodate a large West-India-goods business with towns east as far as Charlton. These goods came around from Boston by water, and were then distributed by teaming. The movement of freight between Springfield and Boston, when the Western Railroad was first discussed, was found to be 12,000 tons, moved by horse-power at a cost of $17.50 or $18 a ton ; and it was calculated that the way-freight between Boston and Albany, by railroad, might reach 84,000 tons a year. The present rate of way-freight between the same points, by rail, is from $2.80 per ton upward.
The railroads reached Springfield, or started from there, in speedy suc- cession, from 1839 to 1845, largely by Springfield capital, and under the control of men like Justice Willard, George Bliss, Chester W. Chapin, and
THE MASSASOIT HOUSE
IS KNOWN
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD,
AND IS
SITUATED CLOSE BY THE UNION PASSENGER STATION.
B
THE UNION STATION OF THE
B. & A. R.R., N.Y., N.H., & HARTFORD R.R., AND CONNECTICUT RIVER R.R., AND THE
GENERAL OFFICES OF
THE BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD.
MASSASOIT HOUSE
Massasoit House.
Union Depot. B. & A Offices.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
their associates. Springfield had received a considerable impetus to its growth from the development of manufacturing at Chicopee, from 1830 to 1840, increasing from 6,784 to 10,985 inhabitants. Now it received a new impetus from the railroads ; and although Chicopee was set off in 1848, the census of 1850 gave Springfield 11,766, and Chicopee 8,291 inhabitants. The railroads have been of a certain value in the development of the city; but it had a substantial start before they came, owing to its natural advan- tage of situation upon the Connecticut, as a north-and-south line at the point most favorable for the intersection of a great east-and-west line. It was a town of 10,000 inhabitants before it was entered by the locomotive ; because it was the natural commercial centre of a rich valley, and commanded the most practicable route over the mountains to Albany and the Great West.
The railroad-routes converging at Springfield were built amid great dis- couragements, through a wild and rugged country, and at a time when the prostration preceding and following the financial panic of 1837 made it diffi- cult to raise the necessary capital. William Savage, one of the committee of forty-six appointed by the Western corporation, endeavored to give the matter of construction a high religious aspect, by preparing a circular " directed to the ministers of the gospel," requesting them to preach to their people on the morality of railroads.
The Union Passenger Depot is on Main Street, at the corner of Rail- road Street. It is a huge brick-and-iron structure, with its elliptical roof trussed and braced with iron. The depot is double in its arrangements, each side having all the appurtenances of a complete depot. The northern side, or right hand as you come from Boston, is used for the westward business of the Boston and Albany Railroad, and also by the Connecticut-river Railroad, the cars of which approach on the outside of the building, as well as by a side-track in the building; the southern side of the depot is used for the eastward business of the Boston and Albany Railroad, and also by the New- York, New-Haven, and Hartford Railroad, the cars of which enter the build- ing by a side-track. The depot is about 401 feet in length, and 113 feet in width. It has two arcade extensions, each 225 feet long. The depot is lighted by electric lamps; and on one side is a chronometer clock in con- nection with the Cambridge Observatory, as well as with the large and ele. gant granite building containing the offices of the Boston and Albany Railroad. A new union depot has been much talked of, and is evidently to be built within a few years.
The Boston and Albany Railroad, the main route traversing Springfield, is a noble monument to the foresight and enterprise of its citizens of half a century ago. In the happy and conservative old times of the Adams and Jefferson administration, Massachusetts found her only routes of internal transportation on the highways which wound through her picturesque valleys
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
and glens, and across her highland passes. Stages lumbered away over the old Bay Road, between Springfield and Boston, at the rate of 100 miles in 18 hours; and baggage-wagons made the trip of 100 miles and return in a leisurely two weeks.
When Gen. Henry Knox was Secretary of War, he caused surveys to be made for a route for a canal from Boston to the Connecticut Valley, and westward ; and New-England capitalists laid plans for a canal from Boston to Worcester, and thence to the valley, and onward to the Hudson. This was in 1791 ; but " the proprietors of the Massachusetts Canal," incorporated by the Legislature, were content with filing away their maps and estimates. In 1825 Gov. Eustis appointed commissioners to locate a canal-route from Boston to Albany. It was estimated to cost (with a tunnel through Hoosac Mountain) $6,024,072.
But the construction and profitable operation of railways and steam- carriages in England had been carefully watched by the men of New Eng- land, and the newspapers began to advocate similar public works here. In 1827 a commission established by the Legislature made surveys for a railroad route from Boston to the Hudson River, near Albany; and two years later the board recommended that this line should be built by the State, with a horse-path between the rails, and paths for the attendant railroad-men along- side. The flat iron rails were to be laid on granite slabs. In 1831 the Boston and Worcester Railroad Company was organized, with 10,000 shares of $100 each, by business-men who saw the need of such a route to the Hudson Valley; the subscribers reserving the right to withdraw if the more definite surveys and estimates should be unsatisfactory in their results. The engineers of that day planned the construction of a gravity road, where- the cars should be hauled over the upward grades by means of stationary engines. In a pamphlet published about fifty years ago, they demonstrated that the power for these upward hauls could be procured by hydraulic machinery, moved by the clear and abundant waters of the Massachusetts. hill-streams.
In 1827 Joseph T. Buckingham wrote, in " The Boston Courier," that the scheme of a railroad from Boston to Albany was "a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable but at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts ; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon." Capt. Marryatt, the celebrated English novelist, while riding by stage through Western Massachusetts, denounced " certain crazy spirits who have conceived the idea of building a railroad through this savage region."
In the springtime of 1834 trains began to run between Boston and Newton; in November, they reached Westborough ; and on July 4, 1835,
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they ran into Worcester. The directors reported that a "locomotive-engine has been run three times daily, to Newton and back, with from two to eight passengers to a trip." The first engine was the "Meteor," imported from England for the Lowell Railroad, which, not being then in running-order, sold it to the Worcester line for $4,500. It was soon followed by the Mas- sachusetts-built engines, " Yankee," " Comet," and " Rocket," and by two or three dozen cars, named for the counties in the State, and accommodating 24 persons each, who paid their fares to the "train-master." This official (the "conductor " of later days) carried a whip to keep the boys off the cars. The Western Railroad was incorporated in 1833. Its first grading was begun in the town of Charlton, in the winter of 1836-37; and in October, 1839, the entire line from Worcester to Springfield was opened for travel. Soon afterward the Western was continued to the State line, where it met the Hudson and Berkshire Railroad, which had been built in 1837-38, and the Albany and West-Stockbridge Railroad, built in 1840. Among the chief promoters of this system of routes were Messrs. P. P. F. Degrand, N. Appleton, David Henshaw, T. B. Wales, Josiah Quincy, jun., and E. H. Derby, of Boston; Harmanus Bleecker of Albany; Charles Allen, Emory Washburn, and William Lincoln, of Worcester; George Bliss, Justice Wil- lard, William B. Calhoun, and Charles Stearns, of Springfield.
In 1845 George Bliss was elected president of the Western road; and in 1848 Ansel Phelps, jun., of Springfield, became solicitor.
In 1854 the company bought for $273,131.78 the road, franchises, and property of the Hudson and Berkshire line, from Hudson to Chatham Four Corners and the State line. The means for this purchase, and for new equipments, came from a loan of £100,000, negotiated in London. In 1857 the cost of moving each passenger one mile was I.171 cents, and each ton of freight 2.342 cents. In 1858 began the laying-down of a second track, which was completed throughout the entire route about five years later.
In 1849 the stockholders were as follows : in Boston, 1,095; Roxbury, 43 ; Charlestown, 42; New York, II; Springfield, 209; and in 75 other places, 549.
The chief source of trouble with the lines between Boston and Worces- ter, and Worcester and Springfield, was in the division of receipts from through passengers and freight. The early railroad-laws of the State con- templated the use of horse-power only, and provided that the lines should be used by the public with their own conveyances, on payment of toll at established toll-gates. This primitive principle worked badly with swift locomotives, and various compromises were attempted by the Worcester and Western lines. Contested depot expenses, equated distances, decisions of referees, appeals to the Legislature, followed in dire succession. In 1845 the Springfield road endeavored to unite with the Worcester, but was re-
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pulsed. In 1862 the matter was referred for arbitration to a committee of the Boston Board of Trade, which strongly recommended a consolidation. The Western road was not averse to such an arrangement; but many influ- ential men of Worcester fought sturdily and successfully against it, main- taining that such a union would take away from their city her eligible position as a railroad-terminus, and leave her a mere way-station on a grand through route.
At last, however, the Western company, in effect, compelled the Worces- ter line to unite with it, by securing the passage of an act of the Legislature enabling them to survey and construct a parallel route to Boston, unless the same end could be achieved by the union of the existing road with their own.
In the year 1867, therefore, occurred the consolidation of the Boston and Worcester and Western Railroads, and their leased lines and branches; forming a noble avenue of travel from the Hudson River, through the hill- country of Berkshire, and across the Connecticut Valley to Boston.
The Hon. Chester W. Chapin, who had for many years owned the great stage-lines centring at Springfield, and run a steamboat on the Connecticut River between Springfield and Hartford, was the most prominent leader in all enterprises connected with the development of the interior counties. Holding the presidency of the Western Railroad from 1854 to 1868, he assumed the control of the united line at the time of the consolidation, and directed it, with great sagacity and enterprise, for eleven years. The man- agement of this great route has had its centre in Springfield, to which belong the present president, William Bliss, and vice-president James A. Rumrill (both of these gentlemen married daughters of the Hon. Chester W. Chapin), besides assistant general-superintendent Edward Gallup, general ticket-agent Joseph M. Griggs, chief engineer William H. Russell, paymaster Albert Holt, auditor Myron E. Barber, cashier Andrew S. Bryant, and Arthur B. Underhill, superintendent of the motive power. C. O. Russell, for so many years the general superintendent of the line, also has his home at Spring- field. Under a recent re-arrangement of the departments of the company, president William Bliss and general-superintendent Walter H. Barnes have their offices in Boston. There, also, is the post of division-superintendent Harry B. Chesley; while division-superintendent Charles E. Grover is sta- tioned at Springfield, and division-superintendent William H. Russell, jun., is at Albany.
The presidents of the Western Railroad were as follows : -
Thomas B. Wales
1836 to 1842 | George Bliss .
IS44 to 1846
George Bliss ..
1842 to 1843 Addison Gilmore 1846 to 1851
Edmund Dwight
1843 to 1844 William H. Swift . IS51 to IS54
Chester W. Chapin 1854 to 1867
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
The superintendents were : -
1848 to 1866 James Barnes 1839 to 1848 | Henry Gray . C. O. Russell . 1866 to 1882
The presidents of the Boston and Worcester Railroad were : -
Nathan Hale .
1831 to 1849 | George Morey , (II weeks) 1856 to 1857
T. Hopkinson
1849 to 1856 - Daniel Denny . Feb. 2-5, 1857
Ginery Twichell 1857 to 1867
The superintendents were : -
Amos Binney
1833 William Parker . 1839 to 1849
Nathan Hale .
1833 to 1834
Ginery Twichell
1849 to 1858
J. F. Curtis
1835 to 1839
E. B. Phillips
1858 to 1865
Nathan Hale . April 13 to July 10, 1839
Abraham Firth
1865 to 1867
The presidents of the Boston and Albany Railroad were : -
Chester W. Chapin 1867 to 1878 | John Cummings, pro tem. . July 1-22, 1880
D. Waldo Lincoln . 1878 to 1880 | William Bliss 1880 until now.
In 1836 the company built a terminal station on Beach Street, Boston, which was burned out in 1865, but rebuilt and occupied until 1881, when the present magnificent station on Kneeland Street was finished and occupied,
The station of the Boston and Albany Railroad at Springfield is an ancient structure, hardly adequate to its uses. Seven or eight years ago the company made extensive preparations for the construction of a new and elegant station on the other side of Main Street, with such alterations in the grades of the street and the tracks, that the latter should be carried over the carriage-way, thus obviating the present inconvenient and dangerous crossing of Main Street at grade. But the project was defeated, before the board of railroad-commissioners, by the active opposition of some citizens of Springfield, and the lukewarmness of the other contributing railroads. It is but a question of time, however, when, with proper co-operation, the Boston and Albany Railroad shall provide for Springfield a commodious and worthy station-building.
The Springfield, Athol, and North-eastern Railroad, 30 miles long, was built through the agency of the Hon. Willis Phelps of Springfield, the city contributing $300,000 towards its construction, and taking stock therefor. In 1880 the line passed, under foreclosure, into the possession of the Boston and Albany Company, for the consideration of $438,000, or about the price of the bonds, the original shareholders losing all their investments. The purchase was made through the agency of the Hon. Chester W. Chapin, who sought by this acquisition to secure new connections for the Albany road, and to insure to Springfield the beneficial operation of a route for whose construction she had paid out so much.
MAIN ST
BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD CO.'S OFFICES. North Main Street.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
The importance of Boston, as one of the great American seaports of modern times, is largely due to Springfield energy and tact, moving at a time when the freighting-business of the Bay town had fallen off so greatly that the Cunard Line found itself obliged to cease running steamships there. As soon as the Boston and Albany Railroad had acquired the Grand Junc- tion Railroad (nine miles long, from Cottage Farm on the main line to the wharves at East Boston), the Hon. Chester W. Chapin had an interview with Sir Samuel Cunard, and requested him to renew the steamship service to Boston. Cunard objected, that he could find no freight there; and Chapin thereupon guaranteed to load one of his vessels if she were sent to Boston. Unable to secure co-operation from merchants or shippers, Mr. Chapin and Commodore Vanderbilt went West, and obtained grain enough for a full cargo, which they brought through over the New-York Central and Boston and Albany lines, and successfully placed upon the Cunard boat at East Boston. Having shown the high feasibility of transporting goods between the Far West and Europe by way of his road and its eastern port, Mr. Chapin withdrew, leaving others to follow in the route where he had been the pioneer, until the annual clearances of ocean-steamships from Bos- ton for the European ports averaged one for each secular day.
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