USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 34
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299
Newton
Andover Theological Seminary, founded in 1808 as a training school for the Congregational ministry. The somewhat heterogeneous group of buildings is less notable than the superb view in every direction from the campus.
South is OAK HILL, the fourth village, an attractive cluster of roofs and trees half encircled by the Charles River Country Club.
Retrace on Institution Ave .; L. from Institution Ave. into Beacon St .; R. from Beacon St. into Walnut St .; L. from Walnut St. into Homer St.
7. The Newton City Hall and War Memorial (1932, Allen and Collens, architects) make a notable civic group. Apparently out in the country, actually it is very nearly in the geographical center of the city taken as a whole. A symbolic sculpture designed by Charles Collens representing History, Patriotism, and Sacrifice is executed upon the pediment of the Memorial. A popular feature in the Memorial is a group of four realistic action-groups in miniature waxwork composition containing over 200 figures and representing four important events in American military and naval history.
R. from Homer St. into Commonwealth Ave .; R. from Commonwealth Ave. into Walnut St. at front of City Hall; R. from Walnut St. into Lincoln St.
Here is the village of NEWTON HIGHLANDS, which consists of more and yet more fine residences clustered about a small business center.
R. from Lincoln St. into Woodward St .; L. from Woodward St. into Fairlee Rd.
8. The Woodward Farmhouse (private) (R), up a gravel lane, was built in 1681, and is occupied by a descendant of the builder. Its brown clap- boards, massive central chimney, and small-paned windows blend with the tree-shaded meadows of the background.
Retrace on Fairlee Rd .; R. from Fairlee Rd. into Woodward St .; R. from Woodward St. into Boylston St .; R. on marked dip for underpass; L. into Ellis St.
Here is the village of NEWTON UPPER FALLS, a small manufacturing center. It has not the crowded look, however, of a typical mill settlement. The factories have a rather casual air and the workers' houses, many of them 100 years old or more, have an appearance of space and rural leisure.
9. Here Echo Bridge spans the Charles River. It was built in 1876 not for traffic but to carry the Sudbury River conduit, which brings in part of Newton's water supply. The foundations are sunk in solid rock, and the triple stone arch is one of the largest of this construction in the world. A footpath leads along the river brink to the central arch, where a shout or a laugh will be mimicked in eery echoes.
The clear dark tide flows smoothly at this point through Hemlock Gorge, one of the very few natural hemlock groves remaining on the eastern seaboard.
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Main Street and Village Green
Retrace on Ellis St .; straight ahead from Ellis St. into Quinobequin Rd.
Farther to the left lie the wooded meadows not yet developed, land such as once comprised all Newton. On the right lie WABAN and ELIOT, adjacent villages filled with attractive homes, most of them unpretentious, well-kept, and pleasing in appearance.
L. from Quinobequin Rd. into Washington St.
Here is NEWTON LOWER FALLS, another small manufacturing center.
IO. The Baury House (private), 2349 Washington St., is a fine three-story Colonial house of the massive square type. Its recessed doorway with carved panels and ceilings, an architectural detail common in the Con- necticut Valley, is rarely found in this section. The fleur-de-lis carving on the door lends a French touch incongruous but pleasing and a reminder of an early owner of French descent, who was rector of the beautiful white church (open) which stands in the rear. The house dates from 1750, the church from 1814. Within the latter at the ends of the old-fashioned box pews are the amusing old gate-doors.
Retrace on Washington St .; L. from Washington St. into Grove St .; L. from Grove St. into Woodland Rd .; L. from Woodland Rd. into Auburn St .; R. from Auburn St. into Commonwealth Ave.
II. Norumbega Park (open, small fee) occupies an attractive woodland stretch along the banks of the Charles River (canoeing).
At RIVERSIDE, the tenth village, there are also canoes for hire.
The road traverses AUBURNDALE, a residential village of pleasant, not too pretentious homes.
L. from Commonwealth Ave. into Auburn St .; L. from Auburn St. into Washington St.
This leads to the village of WEST NEWTON, which has a much larger business center than has yet been visited, surrounded by handsome resi- dential areas.
1 12. The First Unitarian Church (1905-06), designed by Cram and Fergu- son, forms a quadrangle around a central open courtyard. The style of the building is modified English Perpendicular Gothic; the material seam-face granite, with limestone and terra-cotta trim, and some wood and plaster in the subsidiary wings. The church proper consists of a nave seating about 800 and narrow aisles. The open timber roof is supported by heavy arched masses, resting on corbels in the form of angels.
The adjacent village, NEWTONVILLE, increases the conviction that there actually is a place in Newton where its citizens can shop without journeying to Boston; but in the outlying districts, which have here and there escaped the Realty Development Company, a pond or two, a wooded slope, here and there an open field, still remind the visitor of the days not so long ago, when Newton was a scattering of villages in open country instead of a close-knit suburb.
30I
Northampton
L. from Washington St. on Walnut St .; R. from Walnut St. on Watertown St.
The fourteenth village bears the original Indian name of the settlement, NONANTUM. This is a fair-sized manufacturing and commercial center, and its drab and huddled tenements and crowded streets come as more than a slight shock after the long tour of wide boulevards and shaded avenues bordered by charming and elegant, or at least commodi- ous, homes and spacious opulent estates.
R. from Watertown St. on Adams St .; L. from Adams St. on Washington St. 13. The Jackson House (private), 527 Washington St., was said by the late Robert N. Cram to look 'like Mrs. John Hancock, making up her mind whether she would speak to the neighbors.' The ell of the present building is said to have belonged to the original structure (1640). The proportions of the house, a white, square two-story dwelling with clap- boarded front, brick ends, and four end chimneys, are quiet and refined.
NORTHAMPTON
From Jonathan Edwards to Sophia Smith
City: Alt. 133, pop. 24,525, sett. 1654, incorp. town 1656, city 1883.
Railroad Station: Union Depot, Main St. and Strong Ave., for B. & M. R.R. Bus Stations: New England Transportation Co., 171 Main St., 86 Green St .; Railroad Station.
Accommodations: Three hotels.
Information: Wiggins Old Tavern (Hotel Northampton), King St .; Draper Hotel, Main St.
NORTHAMPTON, a residential and industrial city on the Connecticut River, has the prosperous rural beauty of wide streets shaded by stately trees, and lined in almost every quarter by substantial homes of quiet distinction. The many parks, the Smith College Campus, 'Paradise,' Sunset Hill, and Round Hill offer agreeable strolls. A large part of its twenty-five thousand citizens are engaged in the manufacture of silk, hosiery, cutlery, brushes, indelible ink, and caskets.
About twoscore years after the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth, a party of Connecticut men petitioned the General Court at the Colony of Massachusetts Bay for permission to settle a second 'plantation' north of Hartford.
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Main Street and Village Green
The first crude shelters were built along a rough dirt road, now Pleasant Street. Four acres of land were presented to each householder, together with a generous portion of fair meadow. Soon the fertile soil attracted many other pioneers, and Hawley, Market, and King Streets were quickly settled.
In the beginning, Indian attacks were infrequent, for when the French and Indian Wars began, the Nonotucks had long since left the country. But other tribes began to go on the warpath and, at the beginning of King Philip's War severely harassed the settlers.
Early in the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan divine, took over the Northampton pastorate and was soon recognized as the mightiest preacher in New England. He was one of the inspired leaders of the 'Great Awakening' of 1740, America's first great revival movement. Soon in a frenzy of religious hysteria the townsfolk were falling into trances and seeing visions; even little children swooned in the streets from their 'conviction of sin.' All New England was convulsed with terror of hell-fire. Finally Edwards's Northampton career came to an abrupt end with his forced removal to Stockbridge as a missionary. It was in Stockbridge that he wrote his great philosophical treatise, 'On the Freedom of the Will.'
After the Revolution, deprived of the independence for which they had fought, the inhabitants of Northampton rose in rebellion along with many of their neighbors. Led by their preacher, Sam Ely, they stormed the courthouse, in 1782, to prevent the foreclosure of their farms. In 1786, near the tragic end of Shays's Rebellion, a crowd of angry citizens again descended on the court to keep it from holding session. On the other side of the question, in this same year, William Butler, a youth of twenty-two, founded the Hampshire Gazette (still published today) to combat the discontent.
Impetus was given to the development of the town by the establish- ment here of Smith College by Sophia Smith, a resident of Hatfield, at a period when the intellectual standards of women's colleges were very slightly superior to those of secondary schools. Her phrase, 'the intelli- gent gentlewoman,' expressed the ideal of the college body; the spirit of Christianity was to pervade the teachings and life of the college, but it was to be absolutely non-sectarian. Smith, which opened with 14 students in 1875, is among the largest resident women's colleges in the world (enrollment approximately two thousand). During the first two years at the college, a broad general foundation is laid. An opportunity is given for specialization during the remaining two years, and students in French, German, Italian, and Spanish may spend their junior year abroad in the respective countries. Honors, under special tutors, permit a student to work at her own rate of speed.
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Northampton
TOUR - 9 m.
E. from King St. (US 5) on Main St. which becomes Bridge St.
I. Calvin Coolidge's Law Office, Masonic Temple, a yellow-brick building opposite Strong Ave., is still marked with his name on a second-story window. At one time Mayor of the city, in 1920 Governor of Massachu- setts, Coolidge became Vice-President in 1921, and at President Hard- ing's death in 1923 he became President of the United States.
2. The Bliss House (private), 58 Bridge St., was erected between 1655 and 1658, and is a small two-and-a-half-story white clapboarded dwelling with small ells east and west, a central chimney, and a small, modern but harmonious plain white portico, fronting a tree-shaded lawn.
3. The Wright House (private), 96 Bridge St., is a 17th-century dwelling not readily recognizable as such, owing to its additions. It is a large two-and-a-half-story gray clapboard house with white trim, hip roof, and a long rear ell, the whole set in a pleasant lawn bordered by a lilac hedge.
Retrace Bridge and Main St .; R. from Main St. on King St .; L. from King St. on Court St.
4. The Wiggins Tavern (open as antique shop) is a three-story brick hostelry built in 1786, and famous for its Currier and Ives prints, Rogers groups, glass, pewter, brass, and kitchen and table utensils. In the courtyard is a clever reproduction of a Country Store, such as existed as late as the turn of the present century, crammed with every conceivable product.
Retrace on Court St .; R. from Court St. on King St .; R. from King St. on Main St.
5. The Northampton Historical Society (open Wed., Sat. 10.30-12 and 2-4.30) is in Memorial Hall, a two-story brick building. On the grounds is a granite bas-relief of Casimir Pulaski, Revolutionary general, given by the Polish-American citizens of Northampton.
R. from Main St. on Gothic St.
6. The People's Institute was founded half a century ago by George W. Cable, a popular author, as a reading group. Mr. E. H. R. Lyman of Northampton gave them the old Methodist Church on Center St. and a wider program was introduced which included instruction for young women in the domestic arts, and classes in Americanization. In 1905, Andrew Carnegie made it possible to erect the present building, for all practical purposes a community center.
Retrace Gothic St .; R. from Gothic St. on Main St.
7. The old Smith College campus is bounded by Elm St., West St., and Paradise Pond. The college property, however, has expanded gradually
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Main Street and Village Green
to take in both sides of Elm St. and an extensive area farther up Elm St. It covers 119 acres and is prepared to house almost the entire student body, but in order to retain the old 'cottage idea' of the founders, dormitories have been made small and homelike. Four of these are co- operatives for the use of students who wish to reduce expenses.
The Grecourt Gates (motor cars may enter), at the Main St. entrance to the campus, are of wrought iron, swung from brick and stone pillars surmounted by urns. They are a replica of the gates of the Château Robecourt, Grecourt, France, and commemorate the work of the Smith College Relief Unit during and after the World War, 1917-20.
College Hall (L), just inside the Grecourt Gates, is of brick, in Collegiate Gothic, with a square clock-tower containing the melodious Dorothea Carlile Chime. From here, right and left, is a beautiful view of landscaped, tree-shaded lawns, set with large and handsome dormitories, lecture halls, library, gymnasium, and Botanic Garden. The present trend in the architecture of the college favors Colo- nial Georgian, with buildings of red brick and white stone trim.
Paradise Pond, at the farther end of the campus, is said to have been named by Jenny Lind. It is a limpid pool bordered by oaks and pines, a part of the college property. On the near shore is a boathouse with canoes and rowboats, on the far shore playing fields. Here on a June night, as part of the Class Day exercises, is held a glee club concert, the girls singing from shadowy floats under the moon to an audience covering the high bank of the pond.
Retrace through the campus; L. from Grecourt Gates on Elm St.
Gateway House (private) is a gabled brick residence with white wood trim, known from 1875 to 1920 as 'the President's House.' The new President's House overlooks Paradise Pond.
Tryon Art Gallery (open weekdays 10-6; Sun. 2.30-4.30; adm. free), opposite Bed- ford Terrace, is a small brick, ivy-clad building, housing one of the only two con- siderable collections anywhere of the magical crepuscular landscapes of Dwight William Tryon (1849-1925), for many years visiting professor of art at Smith College. Tryon alone of American artists was considered worthy to companion Whistler in any extensive showing at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. The adjoining Hillyer Art Gallery at Smith contains less specialized examples of Ameri- can art.
John Greene Hall, opposite Prospect St., is a brick assembly hall with lofty Ionic columns on the principal façade named for John Morton Greene, Sophia Smith's - pastor and advisor, to whom is credited much of the foresight in the liberal wording of the bequest for the college foundation.
Sessions House, 109 Elm St., was built in 1700, and is now college property. It is the most beautiful early American house in Northampton, a large white clap- boarded gambrel-roofed dwelling with a simple white portico, small-paned win- dows, dormer windows, and a central chimney. Although a large and irregular ell has been added, this extension harmonizes well with the original house.
Mandell Quadrangle, between Paradise Rd. and Kensington Ave., is the seat of two of the newest, largest, and most luxurious Smith dormitories. Colonial Georgian in style and constructed of brick with white trim, they are beautifully grouped with six other similar dormitories around terraced and balustraded lawns. The loggia in Laura Scales House has photo-murals made from old prints of North- ampton, and is furnished in a modern manner with isolated units of divans and chairs, to assure some degree of privacy to individual conversational groups. Each house has its own reference library.
Retrace Elm St .; L. from Elm St. on Round Hill Rd.
8. The Clarke School for the Deaf (open by permission), at the top of the
MASSACHUSETTS: ONE OF THE WORLD'S CENTERS OF LEARNING
THE educational opportunities that Massachusetts offers are surpassed by no other State. The laboratories of the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology are ranked with the finest in the world. The administration and library building, shown on the same page with the photograph from the Institute's re- search laboratories, is situated on the Charles two miles below the Harvard buildings seen in the air view.
Contrasting these buildings, as well as Smith College and Andover Academy, with the little rural schoolhouse where Mary's lamb is said to have followed her to school, we see the extremes in the story of education in the State.
Massachusetts is rich in collections of fine art and in offerings of music, the two sometimes admirably combined. The Japanese Garden at the Museum of Fine Arts is only one of the Museum's rare exhibitions of foreign art. The court in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is kept in colorful bloom all through the year, and on certain afternoons during the week concerts are given in the Tapestry Room. Likewise, Fogg Museum in Cambridge has an attractive interior court, where chorales are sung at Christmas time.
However, the popular concerts are those held outdoors - the orchestral concerts on the Charles River Esplanade, and the week of symphonies in the Berkshires.
THE SPLASH OF A DROP OF MILK
Photograph, by Ultra-Rapid Camera, made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE
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HARVARD COLLEGE FROM THE AIR
BULFINCH HALL, ANDOVER ACADEMY
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SMITH COLLEGE QUADRANGLES, NORTHAMPTON
JAPANESE GARDEN, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
THE COURT OF THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, BOSTON
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THE COURT, FOGG ART MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE
THE ESPLANADE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA UNDER FIEDLER
THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE, SUDBURY
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Northampton
hill, is a comparatively small but well-equipped institution, 70 years old and housing 150 pupils of both sexes from kindergarten to high-school age. Massachusetts pupils are paid for by the State. President of the Trustees is Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, who once studied in the teachers' training course.
Retrace Round Hill Rd .; R. from Round Hill Rd. on Elm St .; R. from Elm St. on Massasoit St.
9. Calvin Coolidge's First Northampton Home (private), 21 Massasoit St., is a square two-family frame house with yellow clapboards, green blinds, two porches, and a small lawn, on a modest, tree-shaded residential street lined with similar houses.
Retrace Massasoit St .; R. from Massasoit St. on Elm St.
IO. Childs Park (privately owned, open; adm. free) is a wooded beauty spot into which has been introduced practically every variety of New England wild flower.
L. from Elm St. on N. Elm St .; straight ahead from N. Elm St. on N. Main St.
II. Look Park (open daily 7-10; first hour free, graduated charges after; pool 25g; luncheonette) was presented to Northampton by the widow of Frank Newhall Look, prophylactic toothbrush manufacturer, under a large endowment. The 125 acres, beautifully wooded and watered, con- tain an open-air Pompeiian swimming pool, an open-air theater, a deer park, picnic grounds, and a great variety of playing fields.
Retrace on N. Main St. and N. Elm St .; R. from N. Elm St. on Elm St .; R. from Elm St. on West St.
12. Forbes Library (open weekdays 9-9; Sun. 2-6), a low granite building with brownstone trim, set on a wide lawn, is the city library. It contains Portraits of President and Mrs. Coolidge, by Howard Chandler Christy, an autographed photograph of Marshal Foch, the Holland House Col- lection of some 40 miniatures of English celebrities from Queen Elizabeth to Cromwell, which once adorned Holland House, the home of Charles James Fox, and the priceless Judd Manuscript, the chief source for the genealogy, manners, and customs of the entire Connecticut Valley in Colonial times.
Retrace on West St .; R. from West St. on Main St .; R. from Main St. on New South St .; L. from New South St. on High St .; R. from High St. on unmarked street ending in stone gates.
13. The Beeches (private), facing the end of the street, is the home which Calvin Coolidge bought after retiring from the White House, and where he died. It is a large, many-gabled residence with gray-shingled walls and green trim, set in a fine grove of beeches with a view of the Holyoke Range.
NORTHFIELD . A Prophet with Honor
Town: Alt. 262, pop. 1950, sett. 1673, incorp. 1723.
Railroad Stations: East Northfield for Central Vermont R.R. and B. & M. R.R .; Northfield Farms for Central Vermont R.R.
Bus Stations: East Northfield, Northfield, and Mt. Hermon for Boston and Maine Transportation Co.
Accommodations: Four hotels.
Information: Northfield Inn, off Highland Ave., E. Northfield.
NORTHFIELD is one of the most charming of the older rural com- munities. Built on the Connecticut River, it is crossed by the Ashuelot Brook and watered by more than a score of woodland brooks. Tidy farms dot the broad river meadows and the rolling plains which rise to the wooded uplands. The main street of East Northfield, home of Northfield Seminary, has a double arch of elms, fringing the chaste white frame dwellings of the 'Center,' as New England farmers always call their village.
Northfield is one of the dozen Massachusetts municipalities which are internationally known, because for the past fifty years it has sent thou- sands of Protestant missionaries to remote corners of the globe.
In 1673 fourteen families moved into Northfield from Northampton and Hadley, but after two years of struggle with Indian raids they abandoned the settlement. In 1714, despite the dangers still appre- hended from the French and Indian Wars, a permanent settlement was made.
Agriculture flourished, and to this was added apple-growing. In 1771, when the 'merino craze' swept New England, Northfield developed into a sheep-raising community. The town's only venture into industry occurred between 1830 and 1855, in the manufacture of brooms from broom corn, locally grown.
In 1879 Dwight Lyman Moody established the Northfield Seminary for the daughters of farmers, and two years later, in the neighboring town of Gill, the Mount Hermon School for boys.
An equally celebrated Moody enterprise, closely allied with Mount Hermon, is the Student Volunteer Movement, established in 1886 in collaboration with the International Y.M.C.A., which results in the en- listment of many young men and women annually in foreign mission work.
The first American Youth Hostel was founded here in 1934. Separate sleeping quarters are provided for the boys and girls, with a common kitchen and recreation rooms. The young travelers carry their own sleeping sacks, but blankets are provided at the hostels. Each youth
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Northfield
must present a Membership Pass, which costs a dollar for those under twenty-five years of age, two dollars for members over twenty-five, and three dollars for a family. Northfield was the first of several hundred towns in the United States which now recognize the cultural and edu- cational benefits of youth hosteling.
TOUR -9 m.
N. on Main St. (State 10) from the junction of State 63.
I. The Old Janes House (private) (L) is still occupied by descendants of the builders. Tradition has it that an underground tunnel connected it with the Young House, a white Colonial dwelling across the street, and it is said to have served as a station in the Underground Railway.
2. The Captain Samuel Field House (open by permission), opposite a marker indicating the First Settlement, was built in 1784. The house has five enormous fireplaces and a large brick oven in the ell. The wainscoting is of virgin pine boards and the fine old doors have iron strap-hinges (H and L).
3. The Old Dollard House (open by permission) (R) is a restoration, but shows an arch under the massive chimney in the cellar. Sometimes such an arched tunnel was part of a secret chamber. The carving around the front door was taken from an old house in Factory Hollow near Greenfield.
4. The Beehive (open as Ye Old Hunt Tavern), a big three-story house with verandas on the first and second floors, was for many years the village inn.
5. The Old Pomeroy Place (private) (L), owned by Northfield Schools, was restored by Elliot Speer, late principal of Mount Hermon, and presents a fine example of Colonial architecture.
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