Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 25

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 25

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207

Chelsea

Paradoxically, the steam ferry made and then ruined Chelsea as a summer resort. The efficient operation of the Winnisimet Company made commuting to Boston possible. In a phenomenally short period, Chelsea's population passed the ten thousand mark. After a while, man- ufacturing and shipping usurped the waterfront; the residential section was pushed back from the sea, and congestion of population followed. Its rustic appeal gone, many of the older inhabitants packed up and went elsewhere. Many remaining commuters departed after the great Chelsea fire burned their homes to the ground.

A century's upbuilding vanished in smoke on Palm Sunday morning, April 12, 1908. Because of a heavy gale, the flames spread with remark- able rapidity and within ten hours all buildings burned were in ruins. By nightfall the city was a devastated waste of smoldering embers: seven- teen thousand four hundred and fifty people were homeless. It is said that in the entire burned area there was not enough combustible material left to start a kitchen fire.

In the reconstruction of the city, the business section was considerably enlarged and the population took on a decidedly cosmopolitan cast. To- day Irish Catholics, Jews, Italians, Poles, and Armenians represent over fifty per cent of the total population.

POINTS OF INTEREST

I. City Hall, Broadway, in Bellingham Square, is in the Georgian Colonial style, its design having been based on that of Independence Hall at Philadelphia.

2. The Thomas Pratt House (about 1662) (occasional visitors welcome), 481 Washington Ave., occupied by a descendant of the original owner, sets back from the road, its steep sloping roof and huge chimneys distinguish- ing it from the modern dwellings which surround it on every side. The shingled exterior is in need of repair, but the interior has been well pre- served and retains the spirit of the original design. The hand-hewn ceiling beams in the living-room and the warped floor boards are of special interest.

3. The Bellingham-Cary House (open Thurs. 2-5, at other times through courtesy of the resident caretaker; adm. free), 34 Parker St., is a square hip-roofed frame house with interior chimneys. The original portion was built in 1629 and was at one time the home of Governor Bellingham. It was remodeled by Samuel Cary in 1791-92, and was purchased by the Cary House Association in 1912. In it Washington quartered the last outpost of the left wing of the Continental Army besieging Boston.

4. Powder Horn Hill, Hillside Ave., is so named because it was believed sold by the Indians to the early settlers for a horn of gunpowder. On its

208

Main Street and Village Green

summit, 200 feet above sea level, is Soldiers' Home, a haven for 2500 veterans.

5. The Forbes Lithograph Co. (permission at office), Forbes St., off Crescent Ave., has a national reputation for unique color processes.

6. The U.S. Lighthouse Service (permission from officer in charge) has a depot at 37 Marginal St. where gaudy-colored buoys line the quays and bright-hued lightships arrive from and depart to their lonely vigils along the Atlantic coast.

7. The Samuel Cabot Co. (open), 229 Marginal St., a pioneer in the field of chemical experimentation, manufactures the commercial product known as Sylpho-Nathol. This firm is also nationally famous for its research in the field of shingle stains.

8. The Pulaski Monument, Chelsea Square, a medallion head on a granite shaft, was erected by the Poles of Chelsea, and dedicated in 193I in honor of the great Polish patriot of the Revolutionary War.

9. The Chelsea Clock Co. (permission at office), 284 Everett Ave., is internationally known for its marine clocks.

CHICOPEE . The Future-Minded

City: Alt. 92, pop. 41,952, sett. 1652, incorp. town 1848, city 1890.

Railroad Stations: Chicopee Station, Exchange St., and Willimansett Station, near Prospect St., for B. & M. R.R.

Bus Station: 276 Exchange St. for Blue Way Line.

Accommodations: Hotels and tourist houses.

Swimming: Municipal pools in Nash Field (Willimansett), and on Front St.

CHICOPEE, a manufacturing city just above Springfield on the Con- necticut River and across the river from Holyoke, consists of three separate units, Chicopee, Chicopee Falls, and Willimansett. These are all manufacturing centers, but the outlying districts have a rural char- acter. Of its 41,952 inhabitants, over half are of foreign-born parentage, with French-Canadian predominating. It has sixteen large industrial plants, those outstanding being A. G. Spalding Company, specialists in sporting goods, and the Fisk Rubber Company, the second largest rubber factory in the world.

The residential parts of the manufacturing sections are crowded with the homes of the workers, individual frame or brick dwellings with little tree-shaded yards, or solid blocks of tenements. Springfield Street, in

209

Chicopee

the better residential quarter, has a look of considerable prosperity and Victorian charm.

The Chicopee River, bisecting the city from east to west, is so banked with factories as to be hidden from sight, but where it joins the Con- necticut River there are broad, elm-shaded meadows. These meadows and the river attracted the first settlers.

On April 20, 1641, the Indian Nippumsuit deeded land now included in Chicopee to William Pynchon in return for 'fifteen fathom of wampum by tale accounted and one yard and three quarters of double shagg bags, one bow, seaven knifes, seaven payer of sessars and seaven owles with certaine fish hooks and other small things given at their request.' The region remained a part of Springfield until its incorporation as a town in 1848.

Down to the last days of the eighteenth century Chicopee continued a quiet farming community. Then certain industrial-minded men of the town perceived possibilities in the water-power of the Chicopee River, which cut through the main section of the town into the Connecticut River. Others set about mining bog iron (iron ore) and erecting blast furnaces. In 1805, Benjamin Belcher bought out from his two partners an iron foundry on the Chicopee River and prospered.

In 1822, Edmund Dwight, of the Boston and Springfield Manufacturing Company, decided upon Chicopee for the site of a textile factory. He located at a natural waterfall, now called Chicopee Falls, and the corpo- ration he founded is today the Chicopee Manufacturing Company.

Later, in 1829, Nathan Ames and his father and brother were settled in Chicopee, busily manufacturing edged tools and cutlery, electro-plated silverware, and swords. Heretofore, Army and Navy swords had been imported from abroad, but the Ames brothers began filling government contracts, their products rivaling the illustrious blades of Toledo and Damascus. By 1853 the Ames Manufacturing Company had expanded to include a department of bronze statuary, the first of its kind in America.

The first friction matches in the country are claimed to have been made in Chicopee in 1835; some of them are still in the possession of old Chico- pee families.

By 1845 the town of Chicopee, with a population of 8000, had set up its own government. The citizens, feeling that they had interests foreign to those of Springfield, broke away from that city. Chicopee was then known as Cabotville, not taking its present name until a later period.

Prior to the Civil War, Chicopee was one of the stations in the Under- ground Railroad to Canada. A. G. Parker, a shoe manufacturer, har- bored numerous fugitive slaves in his home on Chicopee Street. Not infrequently funds were raised to buy freedom for runaway Negroes.

One illustrious son of Chicopee, Edward Bellamy, became internationally famous. Within ten years of publication, almost a million copies had been sold of his 'Looking Backward,' best known of American Utopias.

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Main Street and Village Green

Translations into German, French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Bulgarian, and several other languages and dialects brought this Chicopee man's name into many parts of the world.

POINTS OF INTEREST

I. City Hall, Front and Springfield Sts., is an Italian Gothic building in red brick designed by Charles Edward Parker and erected in 1871. It is arresting because of its very high, slender, square tower, capped by a pointed roof, and its second-story stained-glass windows and beautiful rose window.

2. The white Victorian Stebbins Mansion (private), Springfield St., now a part of the College of Our Lady of the Elms, is a typical American Victorian dwelling of the best type, complete with a little tower, narrow projecting ells, offering bay windows, and a little porch with fretwork pillars. It is reminiscent of the Swiss chalet.

3. The Ames Mansion (at present still occupied by an Ames descendant, but open free as a museum at suitable daylight hours), Front St., corner of Grape St., is a square two-story brick residence of 1844, with an almost flat hip roof, and is set in a gardened lawn behind a picket fence. It con- tains some delightfully personal mementoes of sorts: a bronze wall can- delabrum taken from the White House when gas was installed, an in- vitation to dinner with President Lincoln, a punchbowl brought from Japan by Commodore Perry in 1851, a landscape by Albert Bierstadt painted surreptitiously by him as a present to his host, a presentation autographed photograph of Mary Garden.

4. Edward Bellamy's Birthplace (private), 93 Church St., Chicopee Falls, is a small two-and-a-half-story plain white clapboarded house with a small ell and two porches. Here the son of a Baptist minister mused on the theme of social equality later to be treated by him in 'Looking Back- ward' and 'Equality.'

CONCORD . Golden-Age Haven

Town: Alt. 135, pop. 7723, sett. about 1635, incorp. 1635.

Railroad Station: B. & M. R.R. (Fitchburg Division), Thoreau St.

Bus Stations: B. & M. Transportation Co., Colonial Inn, Monument Square, and R.R. Station; Grey Line sightseeing tour from Hotel Brunswick, Boston.

LITERARY LANDMARKS

ONE might suppose that the authors of Massachusetts had been influenced by the dignity and spare simplicity of the houses which sheltered them. Elmwood, the Cambridge home of James Russell Lowell, and the Craigie-Longfellow House are graceful Georgian mansions. The two views of the rooms in the Antiquarian House in Concord reflect Emerson's love of ingenuous, homely order. The rambling country house where Longfellow set the scene of the 'Tales' is still the Wayside Inn, Sudbury; Fruitlands, in Harvard, is where Alcott and his 'English Mystics' struggled with farming for their ideal of a consociate family. And the Orchard House, on the main Con- cord road, is today very much as it was when Bronson and Louisa May Alcott lived in it, with sister May's sketches still preserved on the walls and doors of the girls' rooms.

It was in the Salem Custom House that Hawthorne spent un- happy years as a clerk. After he had left Salem, he wrote 'The House of the Seven Gables,' a story which is vividly re- called by the tinkle of the bell above the door through which visitors enter. The tale of Moby Dick, the white whale, was written at Arrowhead, in Pittsfield, where Melville worked, and on the same page is pictured the house (austere as his writings) where Thoreau lived.

The stately, shadowed house in Amherst is the Emily Dickin- son home. On the right, in the second story, is the 'window facing west.' The Dickinson memorabilia may be seen in The Evergreens, the house across the lawn, built by Emily's bro- ther in 1856.

ELMWOOD (JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HOUSE), CAMBRIDGE

CRAIGIE-LONGFELLOW HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE

CUSTOM HOUSE.

--.

CUSTOM HOUSE, SALEM

EMERSON ROOM, ANTIQUARIAN HOUSE, CONCORD

WAYSIDE INN, SUDBURY

FRUITLANDS, HARVARD

ORCHARD HOUSE, CONCORD

HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, SALEM

---

ARROWHEAD (BUSH-MELVILLE HOUSE), PITTSFIELD

THOREAU'S HOUSE, CONCORD

EMILY DICKINSON HOUSE, AMHERST

21I

Concord

Accommodations: Several inns and rooms in private houses. Information: Independent Information Bureau, 26 School St.

CONCORD, situated where the Sudbury and Assabet join to form the Concord River, is rich in historical and literary associations. It shares with Lexington the honor of being the birthplace of the American Revo- lution; later, in the 'Golden Age' of American literature, it was a haven for poets, authors, naturalists, and philosophers.

The Concord River has not attracted great industries, so that the village is predominantly residential, retaining much of its quiet Colonial atmosphere. Around the Green are grouped the trim red-brick and clap- boarded shops of the business district. Along the river, so slow-moving that Hawthorne said he lived beside it for weeks before discovering which way it flowed, stand fine white houses on broad lawns that slope down to the water's edge. Tall elms shade other homes distinguished by the beautifully proportioned doorways and panelled interiors that are a heritage of eighteenth-century craftsmanship. Outlying fields are given over to farms.

In 1635, scarcely five years after Boston had been settled, Simon Willard, a fur trader, and the Reverend Peter Bulkeley led about a dozen families to this spot, then the Indian village of Musketaquid. It was the furthermost inland point in the wilderness. With garments, hatchets, knives, and cloth the settlers purchased from the Massachusetts tribe a plantation described as 'six myles of land square,' then clinched the bar- gain by smoking the pipe of peace with the Indian chieftains. The name 'Concord' commemorates this friendship, a friendship that was never broken.

It went hard with the settlers during the first winters, but the settle- ment slowly grew, in the latter half of the century becoming a county seat. The first county convention to protest against the Acts of Parlia- ment met here in August of 1774; the First Provincial Congress in October of the same year. From March 22 until four days before the Battle at the Bridge, the Second Provincial Congress held sessions in the town. Throughout this period Concord was a depot for military stores and consequently a focal point for British attack. On April 19, 1775, after Dr. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes had carried Paul Revere's mes- sage to Concord, the British redcoats appeared and, as the Concord Min- utemen advanced across the Concord Bridge, fired the 'shot heard round the world.'

During the siege of Boston that followed, so many patriots took refuge in Concord that a Boston town meeting was called here. Again, while Harvard served as a barracks for American forces, the university classes were conducted in Concord. The town was the seat of the Middlesex field of Shays's Rebellion.

Following a post-war period of readjustment, Concord entered upon its second phase - this time as an important center of American culture.

Sudbury

Middle

Academy 9 Lane

Devens St

Rd ®

Main

Concord

Hubbard

Lowell

River

GROUND

BATTLE

Stow

Lang St

Bedford St

Court Lane

Monument

Walden

Cambridge Turnpike

Revolutionary

Ridge

Bedford

Hawthorne Rd

Old'Road to Bedford

CONCORD TOUR

Ripley HillRd

Lexington

Everett

Bow St

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Concord

Here Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his greatest essays, poems, and jour- nals, and revived the philosophy of Transcendentalism. Closely associ- ated with the Transcendentalist movement were Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist; Franklin B. Sanborn, journalist, philanthropist, and biographer; and William Ellery Channing the poet. While not residents in Concord, Margaret Fuller, editor of the School of Philosophy's organ the Dial, and Elizabeth Fuller, Boston educator who established the first American kindergarten, were of this literary group.

By the shores of Walden Pond, Emerson's intimate friend, Henry David Thoreau, the naturalist, fled from society, built his hut and studied the trees and birds he was to write about in 'Walden, or Life in the Woods.'

In the building known as Hillside Chapel, Amos Bronson Alcott opened his School of Philosophy, while his more practical wife and daughters wrestled with the humdrum problem of making ends meet. As a result of their struggles, Mr. Alcott's daughter Louisa May wrote her series of books, the most autobiographical of which, 'Little Women,' has taken its place among children's classics. Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop) was another Concord author, and Jane Austin wrote here the 'Nameless Nobleman.' Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) of Concord has won fame for his sculptures. These are represented in his home town by the Minuteman, the Melvin Memorial, and a statue of Emerson.

Concord men have made contributions outside the field of the arts. Harrison Gray Dyer erected the first telegraph line in this country and William Monroe made the first lead pencils in America. In 1853 Ephraim Bull bred the Concord grape, a development which began the commercial production of table grapes in America.

Though Concord, with its many memories, seems so much a part of an older New England, it is nevertheless a flourishing modern village. Today ten small factories and a busy tourist trade supplement the revenue that comes to Concord from its position as trading center for farm and garden products. Many Boston families have in recent years established their homes here, since Concord is within commuting distance.

CONCORD MAP INDEX

I. Monument Square

2. Emerson Elm

3. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

4. Bullet-Hole House

5. Old Manse

15. Antiquarian House

16. School of Philosophy

7. Colonial Inn

8. Public Library

9. Thoreau-Alcott House

IO. Wright Tavern

II. First Parish Church

12. Concord Art Association

13. Reuben Brown House

14. Emerson House

6. Battle Ground

17. Orchard House

18. Wayside

19. Grapevine Cottage

20. Site of the Attack by Minute Men

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Main Street and Village Green

TOUR - 7.0 m.

NW. from Lexington Rd. through Monument Square.

I. Monument Square has three war memorials on its Green. In the center is the huge granite shaft of the Civil War Memorial; the Boulder at the north end of the Green commemorates the heroes of the Spanish War; the World War Memorial, a boulder now almost covered with ivy, bears Emerson's words:

'So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to Man, When duty whispers low, "Thou must," The youth replies, "I can."'

2. In front of the Town Hall, NE. of the square is the Emerson Elm. Under this tree for the past three generations Concord men on their way to battle have been addressed by a member of the Emerson family.

R. from Monument Square into Monument St .; R. from Monument St. into Court Lane; straight ahead into Bedford Rd.

3. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, lying in an oval basin surrounded by high ridges and tall trees, holds the graves of many of Concord's notable dead - Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, Elizabeth Peabody, William Ellery Channing, Frank Sanborn. Here lie Colonel Prescott and members of the Hoar family, prominent in national politics during the last century. The tombstone of Ephraim Bull, who lacked the shrewdness to profit by his development of the Concord grape, bears the significant epitaph: 'He sowed, others reaped.'

Retrace Bedford Rd. into Court Lane; R. from Court Lane into Monument St.

4. Bullet-Hole House (private), 36 Monument St., the original portion of which was built in 1644, is probably the oldest house in Concord. It is a two-and-a-half-story white, yellow-trimmed structure with a plain board front, a clapboarded ell, and a mansard roof. During the battles of Con- cord and Lexington, Elisha Jones, a Minuteman, guarded Colonial military supplies stored in this house. When the British began their re- treat, Elisha rashly appeared at the door and was fired upon. The bullet- hole is still to be seen, enclosed in a glass case at the left of the door in the ell.

5. Old Manse, adjacent to the Battleground (open weekdays 10-6; Sun. 12-6), a dark gray, clapboarded, three-story structure with a gambrel roof, was built in 1765 by the Rev. William Emerson, the militant min- ister, grandfather of the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hawthorne lived here for a time and made it the setting for 'Mosses from an Old Manse.'

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Concord

L. from Monument St. into footpath.

6. Battleground, made famous in 1775. The Minuteman, the first statue by Daniel Chester French, guards this site. Too poor to afford a model, the sculptor is said to have used as model a statue of Apollo Belvedere arrayed in the dress of the Minutemen. Near-by is a concrete reproduction of the original wooden Concord Bridge over which the Americans crossed in pursuit of the British attacking force. A tablet marks the graves of two British soldiers.

Retrace to Monument St .; R. from Monument St. into Monument Square.

7. Colonial Inn, II Monument Square (open the year round), faces the Concord Green at its northern end. The inn, a long rambling yellow structure formed by joining together three adjacent houses, is in an ex- cellent state of preservation. The original unit was built in 1770. The taproom holds its original fittings besides Revolutionary relics.

R. from Monument Square on Main St.

8. Public Library, corner of Sudbury Rd., a red-brick structure lately modernized, has French's statue of Emerson, cabinets of Indian relics, volumes by Concord authors, paintings, and other objects of historic and artistic interest.

9. Thoreau-Alcott House (private), 75 Main St., a buff-colored dwelling, is the house in which Thoreau died.

Retrace Main St .; R. from Main St. into Lexington Rd.

IO. Wright Tavern (open as a hotel), 2 Lexington Rd., built in 1747, is the oldest existing tavern in Concord. The exterior, hip-roofed, with two large chimneys, retains much architectural charm. Here Major Pitcairn had his headquarters on April 19, 1775, and here he made his boast that before night he would 'stir the blood of the damned Yankee rebels.'

II. First Parish Church (Unitarian) is on the site of the building in which sat the First and Second Provincial Congresses, with John Hancock presiding and William Emerson as chaplain.

12. Concord Art Association (open April-Oct. 15), 15 Lexington Rd., housed in a white clapboarded building with a central chimney, has permanent exhibits of unusual historical interest. During the summer months resident artists hold exhibitions.

12a. The Concord Summer School of Music, 21 Lexington Rd., founded in 1914, and directed by Thomas Whitney Surette, gives a series of three public chamber music concerts each summer. Public classes (free) in folk dancing are also conducted.

13. Reuben Brown House (open as tearoom), 27 Lexington Rd., a red clapboarded structure with white trim and with a central chimney, was the home of Reuben Brown, a saddler by trade, who brought back from Lexington the news of the outbreak of hostilities. The British fired his house, but it was saved.

-.....

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Main Street and Village Green

14. Emerson House (open weekdays 9.30-11.30, 1.30-3.30 and by appoint- ment), Lexington Rd. and Cambridge Turnpike, is a square white dwell- ing in a setting of pines. In 1820 Emerson himself built the house, and here he lived from 1835 until his death in 1882, except for the period of his European tour, when Thoreau occupied the house. The Victorian interior shows furnishings, portraits, hangings of Emerson's day as well as the philosopher's fine library of classics and first editions.

15. Antiquarian House (open weekdays April 19-Nov. 11, 10-5.30, Sun. 2-5; after Nov. 11, 10-5; adm. 25¢), Lexington Rd. at Cambridge Turn- pike, is one of the most important museums in Concord. The two-and- one-half-story brick structure with green blinds, has a pitched roof and two wings. The museum contains several authentic New England period rooms, in which are admirably displayed furniture, glass, and china dat- ing from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The Emerson Room reproduces the philosopher's study with its furnishings kept just as they were when he died. Thoreau's books, flute, and surveyor's chain, as well as articles from the Walden hut, are exhibited in the room bearing his name.

16. School of Philosophy, Lexington Rd., once known as the Hillside Chapel, is a small, unpainted building with Gothic doors and windows. Here for nearly a decade Bronson Alcott gathered together leaders of American thought.

17. Orchard House (open weekdays April 19-Oct. 31, 10-6, Sun. 2-6; adm. 25g), a tan two-and-a-half-story house with central chimney and small paned windows, was the second home of the Alcotts. The old house, considered unlivable, was shaded by great elms in front. In the rear was an apple orchard. The members of the Bronson family repaired, painted, and papered the house. The interior and the Alcott furnishings, books, and pictures are all preserved. Drawings by 'Amy' are still on the doors and walls of her room. It was here at 'Apple Slump,' as she called it, that Louisa May Alcott wrote the first part of 'Little Women.'

18. Wayside (open daily May 3-Nov. II, 9-6; adm. 25g), near Haw- thorne Rd., was known as Hillside during the residence of Bronson Alcott in 1845-48. Here Louisa and her sisters spent part of their girl- hood, and here in the barn they staged their early plays. Hawthorne, upon purchasing the property in 1852, named it Wayside, and lived here until his death in 1864. In the tower that he built as a refuge from visitors, Hawthorne wrote 'Tanglewood Tales' and the 'Marble Faun.' Margaret Sidney, while a resident at Wayside, wrote several volumes of her children's series, 'The Five Little Peppers.' On display are photo- stats of pages of Hawthorne manuscript and letters, as well as furniture belonging to Hawthorne and Margaret Sidney.

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 25

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802