USA > Massachusetts > The story of western Massachusetts, Volume IV > Part 30
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Republican in political affiliations, and worshipped at Mt. Carmel Roman Catholic Church. His wife, Ann Cupolo, was born in New York City, and is currently a resident of Springfield. She is the daugh- ter of Anthony and Mrs. Cupolo. Her father, a native of New York State, died in Springfield, having been associated with the Albert Steiger Company in their shipping department. Mrs. Cupolo, whose maiden name was Marino, was a native of New York State, died in Worcester and was buried in Springfield.
After attending the schools of his birth city and being graduated from the Worcester High School, J. Elliott DeFalco studied for two years with the American International School. In 1935 he went into business for himself in Chicopee. His concern, which he called Paramount Motors, was moved to No. 419 Walnut Street, Springfield, after two years. Of this company he is proprietor and engages in the pur- chase, sale and distribution of used cars, and repre- sents the English Austin automobile on this district. During World War II he served with the Westing- house Electric and Manufacturing Company, of Springfield, making war material. Politically he is an independent . Democrat. His church is Mt. Carinel Roman Catholic. His favorite form of recreation is motor boating, and he is the owner of an exceptionally good speed boat.
On August 24, 1936, J. Elliott DeFalco married Gladys Forbes, who was born in Scotland. Her father, who died in Canada, was a shipbuilder; her mother resides in Scotland. Mrs. DeFalco, a graduate of high school and a business college in Chicago, Illinois, is a member of Mt. Carmel Church. Mr. and Mrs. De- Falco are the parents of four children: I. Ruth May, born June 22, 1939. 2. Joyce Louise, born December 31, 1941. 3. Victoria Joan, born September 9, 1945. 4. Michael, born September 19, 1946.
MILES CARLTON HOLDEN-In carrying on the traditions- of a distinguished firm established by his father, Miles C. Holden gives generously of him- self to Springfield's civic betterment.
Mr. Holden was born in Dayton, Ohio, November 20, 1875, the son of George W. and Anna C. (Hulbert) Holden. His father was born in Rutland, Massachu- setts, and died in Springfield. He was president and founder of the Holden Patent Book Cover Company of Springfield, which was established in 1869. A Re- publican and a member of the Presbyterian Church, he served only three days in the Civil War, being honorably discharged because of deafness. His wife was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, and died in Spring- field. George W. Holden was the son of Joel and Persia Louise (Easterbrook) Holden. Both were na- tives of Massachusetts. Joel Holden was a retired farmer and a selectman in Rutland. He died in Day- ton, Ohio. His wife died in Rutland.
Educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachu- setts, Miles C. Holden became associated with his father in the book-cover manufacturing business, fill- ing various positions until he succeeded his father, in 1910, as president of the organization. Mr. Holden is a Republican, a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, and is a member of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. He lives in Barre, Massachu- setts, where he has a large dairy farm.
Mr. Holden was married in 1925 to Mrs. Faith
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Leonard Bryden, native of New Bedford, Massachu- setts, and the daughter of John and Mrs. Ashley Leon- ard. She was educated at Andover and is a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist.
PAUL COOKSON FARREN spent a quarter of a century preparing himself for the part he now is playing as a leading industrialist in Springfield, and there is outside demand for his expert service in metallurgical engineering.
Mr. Farren was born in Cleveland, Ohio, August 16, 1898, the son of Robert and Mary Jane (Cookson) Farren. His father was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, September 12, 1855, and died in Cleveland, October 21, 1945. A printer, he for many years was associ- ated with "The Plain Dealer," the "Cleveland News," and the Williams Publishing Company before es- tablishing his own printing business. He was a Republican, a member of the Baptist Church, Knights of Pythias, and the Knights of St. George. Mrs. Robert Farren was born in England, near the Scottish border, October 14, 1859, and died in Cleveland March 23, 1923. Robert Farren was the son of Rob- ert and Hannah (Stewart) Farren. His father was born in Northern Ireland and his mother in Glasgow, Scotland. They both died in Cleveland in about 1906. Mary Jane Cookson was the daughter of Thomas and Mary (Battersby) Cookson, both born in England. Her father died in Cleveland and her mother in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her mother taught school in England and Indiana.
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Paul C. Farren worked for several firms in Cleve- land after he was graduated from a Cleveland High School in 1915. He left the auditing department of the Otis Steel Company to volunteer for service in World War I, enlisting May 15, 1918. After pre- liminary training in Cleveland he was sent to Fort Monroe, Virginia for officer's training, arriving there the day the Armistice was signed. Honorably dis- charged in Cleveland in January, 1919, he reentered the employ of the Otis Steel Company as chemist at the Lakeside Works. He left that company in Sep- tember, 1921, to enter the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, where he won his Bachelor of Science degree in metallurgical engineering May 28, 1924. He was metallurgical inspector for the Bourne- Fuller Steel Company in Cleveland until January, 1925, when he went to Akron, Ohio, as assistant metallurgist of the Whitman and Barnes Tool Com- pany. In April, 1929, he joined the Ingersoll-Rand Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, as assistant metallurgist. Two years later he entered upon a special research undertaking for the Lebanon Steel Foundry at Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and in 1931 he became plant metallurgist with the West Philadelphia plant of the General Electric Company. In 1937 he joined the Greenfield Tap and Die Company, Green- field, Massachusetts, as chief metallurgist, later be- coming research director. He left that organization in February, 1944, to assume his present post as president of the Springfield Heat Treating Corpora- tion. He also does consulting work. Mr. Farren is a Republican and a member of the American Society for Metals, the American Society of Tool Engineers, the American Society for Testing Materials, the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, the Longmeadow Men's Club and the Sigma Chi fraternity. His fa-
vorite forms of recreation are fishing, bowling, golf and baseball.
Mr. Farren was married July 26, 1930, to Mrs. Abbie Hulsman Kilkelly of Easton, Pennsylvania, daughter of the late Frank and Mrs. Hulsman of Mahonoy City, Pennsylvania. Her father was a coal mine operator. Mrs. Farren was the widow of the late John F. Kilkelly of Easton, Pennsylvania, who was associated with the Bell Telephone Company in that city. She has a son, John A. Kilkelly, born July 17, 1912. He is associated with the production department of the Baldwin-Duckworth Chain Com- pany of Springfield.
BISSELL ALDERMAN-If there be one human activity that combines to the fullest the distinctions of art and science, it is the practice of architecture. The art lies in the design, that must please the client and yet possess an harmonious relation to environ- ment, purpose, and period. The science consists of the estimating of loads, stresses, and strains and the detailing of structural elements and materials that will make the design a functional entity. The complete architect must be a creative artist and a mathema- tician; a skilled draftsman and a master of all the multiplicity of building trades and crafts; in other words, he must know chiaroscuro as well as fenes- tration and all the differences between a hand-saw and a hat-rack. The certified architect has all this knowl- edge in various degree, depending upon his inclina- tions and talents. It is the latter human limitations that make most of the world's successful architects part of a team, a partnership, with one's interests and abili- ties complemented and supplemented by another's. The firm of Alderman and Alderman, architects, of Holyoke, is such a partnership formed in August, 1946. Bissell Alderman, the senior partner, has been an instructor in the field as well as a successful archi- tectural draftsman, designer and consultant over a period of more than a decade. His services as a con- sultant were requisitioned for demolition planning by the Eighth Air Force during World War II; a reversal of the construction lore of the architect, logical under wartime conditions.
Alderman and Alderman are carrying on the pro- fessional endeavors of the late George Perkins Bissell Alderman and his able associate and brother, the late Henry Holcomb Alderman, and in the person of the present partners, represents three generations of family activity in architecture. The firm has been exceedingly active in its relatively brief existence. It has served as architects for the expansion alterations of J. Russell & Company, Inc .; as site planners and architects for the Holyoke veterans' housing develop- ment of sixty-two private homes; as architects for five dormitory buildings at the University of Massachu- setts; as architects for numerous modern houses at Holyoke and South Hadley; and as designers of various industrial and mercantile buildings.
Bissell Alderman was born September 17, 1912, at Holyoke, the son of George Perkins Bissell Alderman, born in 1865 and died in 1944, and of Hortense (Gos- lee) Alderman, born in 1880 and died in 1945. The elder Mr. Alderman was an architect in Holyoke for half a century; designing the high school, the post office, several churches, and office and commercial buildings. Bissell Alderman attended the grade and
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Bincel alderman
Altat D. Allewane
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high schools of his native city and prepared for college at the Williston Academy. He then entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts in architec- ture in 1935. He pursued postgraduate studies at the Institute and received his Master's degree in 1937. He also was elected to an institute traveling fellowship in architecture and spent the year 1937-1938 in travel and study in Europe. Upon his return he served for a year as an instructor in architecture at the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology. From 1939 to 1941, he was an instructor in architecture and city planning at the University of Washington in Seattle. He re- turned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941, as assistant professor in architecture, a post he held until 1943, when his services were requisitioned for the Army Air Forces assault on Fortress Europa. For two years, from February, 1943, to August, 1945, he was operations analyst, in the assimilated rank of colonel, attached to Eighth Air Force Headquarters in England. His specific task was the structural analysis of enemy targets and the selection of the appropriate bombing weapon for their destruction. It was a work well done, as the war record of the Eighth Air Force will attest, and for which Mr. Alder- man was awarded the Medal of Freedom.
Mr. Alderman's professional practice developed con- currently with his architectural training. During the summers from 1930 to 1934, he was a draftsman in the office of his father, George P. B. Alderman and Com- pany, at Holyoke, working on the plans for the local post office building. From September, 1935 to August, 1936, in the interval before beginning postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was architectural consultant for the Metropolitan Edison Company, of Reading, Pennsylvania. In the summer of 1938, following his return from Europe, he worked as designer of the Massachusetts General Hospital building for Coolidge, Shepley, Bullfinch and Abbott, architects, of Boston, Massachusetts. While teaching at the Institute and the University of Wash- ington in the period 1938 to 1942, he was active in private practice. It was in these years that, in asso- ciation with W. E. Hartman, he received honorable mention in the competition for the design of the Smithsonian Art Gallery, Washington, D. C. and fifth prize in a competition for a school of fine arts and theater for the College of William and Mary. Both these awards came in 1938. In 1940, he became a registered architect in the State of Washington and in 1942, he became registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The summer of 1942, he spent at Portland, Maine, as draftsman for the defense housing project of Wadsworth and Boston, architects, and as structural designer for the power plant project of Alonzo J. Harriman, architects and engineers, of South Portland. In 1943, before his overseas war assignment he was a member of the committee on co- ordination of building materials of the American Standards Association. From October, 1945 to Au- gust, 1946, immediately preceding the formation of Alderman and Alderman, he was designer-in-charge for the twelve-million-dollar Du Pont research la- boratory project of Voorhees, Walker, Foley and Smith, architects, of New York City.
Mr. Alderman is a member of the American Insti- tute of Architects; Washington State chapter in
1940, Boston Society in 1942, New York chapter in 1945, and Massachusetts Chapter, of which he is vice president. He is vice president of the Massachusetts State Association of Architects, and a member of the Engineering Society of Massachusetts, of the fraterni- ties Kappa Sigma and Tau Sigma Delta, and is a director (1949) of the Holyoke Rotary Club. He is also vice president of the Connecticut Valley Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology Alumni Association, a member of the executive board, Mt. Tom Council, Boy Scouts of America, and is an incorporator of the Holyoke Savings Bank. Politically, he is an independ- ent and he is a communicant of the Second Baptist Church of South Hadley, where he maintains his residence.
Bissell Alderman married, November 16, 1935, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mary Evelyn Compton, daughter of Dr. Karl Taylor Compton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and of Margaret (Hutchinson) Compton. Mr. and Mrs. Alderman are the parents of two daughters: I. Jean Compton, born April 10, 1937, a student at the South Hadley School. 2. Mary Evelyn, born September 29, 1948.
ALBERT DRAKE ALDERMAN, JR .- Perhaps the most important phase of an architectural firm's practice is the supervision of the construction work, for the client judges worth not by the design but by the completed structure. It is essential, therefore, that steps be taken to insure that plans are strictly adhered to and that specifications, as to materials, structural elements, and methods, are carried through. For this and other practical considerations concerning estimates of cost and labor, the firm is fortunate in- deed that possesses an associate with a composite ex- perience as an architectural draftsman and estimator, as a contractor's representative, and as a practicing construction engineer. Albert Drake Alderman, Jr. brings such talent and experience to the partnership of Alderman and Alderman, architects, of Holyoke. He represents the third generation of the Alderman family tenure of architectural service to the citizens of Holyoke and South Hadley, being a grandson of George Perkins Bissell Alderman, the founder of the tradition.
Albert Drake Alderman, Jr., was born June I. 1918, at West Springfield, the son of Albert Drake, Sr., and Madeline (Harrigan) Alderman. The elder Mr. Alderman was an investment banker long associated with the Peoples' Savings Bank of Holyoke and the house of Hayden-Stone in Springfield. He was born in 1888 and died in 1941. Madeline (Harrigan) Alder- man who was born in 1895, survived her husband and now resides in Holyoke. Albert Drake Alderman, Jr., received his formal education in the primary and sec- ondary schools in his native city and in 1934 became a draftsman with the firm of George P. B. Alderman & Company. In September. 1935, after his father's transfer of activity to Springfield, he joined Albert J. Carson, architect of that city, as a draftsman on com- mercial buildings. Then for almost three and one-half years, from September, 1936, to January, 1940, he was associated with the Hampden Ely Lumber Company, of Holyoke, as a designer and estimator in millwork. Becoming an estimator and engineer with the general contracting enterprises of A. L. Phelps Company, of
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Springfield in 1940, he was employed on the erection of the Brimfield School, the Springfield Grade School, and several industrial and commercial buildings. In the following year he transferred to the firm of Ernest F. Carlson, architects, engineers and general contrac- tors, of Springfield, wherein he served as contractor's representative on the three million dollar building pro- ject of the American Bosch Company. This work carried him over to the fall of 1943, when he became construction engineer for the eight million dollar ex- pansion and the three million dollar reconversion pro- grams of the Fisk Tire Division of the United States Rubber Company. This contract ended in April, 1946, whereupon he entered into private architectural prac- tice in Springfield and Holyoke. In the several months before the founding of Alderman and Alderman, which event took place in August, 1946, he was active in the designing of the Fogarty Trucking Company garage and of the Springfield Public Market building and also in extensive alterations to the Commercial build- ing. Since the forming of the partnership with Bissell Alderman (q. v.), Albert Drake Alderman, Jr., has continued his practice of construction supervision for Alderman and Alderman, in the varied fields of private housing and school, industrial, and commercial build- ing.
Mr. Alderman is a member of the Holyoke Cham- ber of Commerce and the William Whitney Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons and Lions Club. He is affiliated with the Second Baptist Church. Politically, he is a Republican.
Albert Drake Alderman, Jr., married December 8, 1945, at Holyoke, Patricia Curtis, a native of Holyoke, the daughter of Don and Rachel (Johnson) Curtis.
ROBERT EDWARD BARRETT-"Future annals of the Holyoke Water Power Company and the City of Holyoke will tell of the engineering genius of Ro- bert E. Barrett and his great power for putting his dreams into reality and making them work for those who will follow." Thus declares a memoir of the late Robert Edward Barrett published by the Ameri- can Society of Civil Engineers in honor of their fellow member. Until his death on October 13, 1945, Holy- oke knew him as the able president and treasurer of the Holyoke Water Power Company.
He was born on June 28, 1881, in Framingham, the son of Frederick and Laura Maria (Nutting) Barrett. He was educated in the elementary schools of Fram- ingham and Framingham High School, from which he graduated in 1898. Later, after four years' expe- rience in the engineering department of the Metropoli- tan Water Board of Boston, he entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University and there completed the civil engineering course in 1905. His position with the Metropolitan Water Board had al- ready given him practical experience in connection with the construction of the Wachusett Dam at Clin- ton and the aqueduct and tunnels that carry the water from that reservoir to Boston, for distribution through the municipal water system. After two years as an engineer in the designing division of the Charles River Basin Commission of Massachusetts, he turned next to the great project then under way in New York, to bring water from the Catskills to supplement the water supply of Greater New York City. For seven years, from 1907 to 1914, he was occupied with this
project: in his work as civil engineer designer he su- pervised the rock tunnel work in the Bronx, designed the gate houses and regulating works for the Ashokan Dam and the regulating works for the Kensico Dam above White Plains.
In 1913 Mr. Barrett was appointed to the post of designing engineer by the Directors of the Port of Boston. In course of time he became acting Chief Engineer of the design and construction of Common- wealth Pier and the South Boston Dry Dock as well as the dredging of ship channels in Boston Harbor. His plan for the revision of the lines of Boston Harbor, making possible the future development of Common- wealth lands in both South and East Boston, was adopted in Chapter 334 of the Special Acts of the Legislature of 1915.
In 1916, while associated with the consulting en- gineering firm of Fay, Spofford and Thorndike of Boston, he designed the foundations of the Memorial Bridge across the Connecticut River at Springfield. The following year he was made construction en- gineer for the Turners Falls Power and Electric Com- pany, which later became an important unit of the Western Massachusetts Electric Company. This concern was then constructing a forty thousand horse- power steam electric station at Chicopee, on the Con- necticut River. Later Mr. Barrett was engaged in hydraulic engineering for the firm at Turners Falls, and in construction and maintenance supervision in connection with dams and reservoirs built by the Con- necticut River Conservation Company in New Hamp- shire and Vermont.
It was in February, 1920, that Mr. Barrett came to Holyoke to manage the Holyoke Water Power Com- pany, in the capacity of treasurer. Three years later he was elected president also. It was a happy move, the right man in the right job. The Holyoke concern was an old and important one, dating from 1792 when the "Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on the Connecticut River" had first been incorporated. Three years later, in 1794 the first dam on the Connecticut River was completed under its auspices, and since then the company has prided itself on keeping pace with developments in hydraulic engineering. Mr. Barrett came to the company at a period when tremendous change and expansion was taking place in the field of public utilities as well as in hydraulic engineering practices. He had the sound background and varied engineering experience that would enable him to see the problems of this enterprise in the large. He thus was able to conceive and execute a long-range plan of development that made it possible at the same time to conserve assets and to serve new customers and new territories in unprecedented ways. The steam and electric departments of the company, particularly, were stressed in this new plan. Under Mr. Barrett's administration the company's electrical energy sales were stepped up from 4,380,000 kilowatt hours in 1920 to 121,357,000 kilowatt hours in 1945. Hydro-electric and turbo-electric generators installed under Mr. Bar- rett's plan of expansion now supply energy to Chico- pee and South Hadley and Westover Field as well as to most of Holyoke's large industries. Steam for heating and process work, distributed to much of in- dustrial Holyoke by means of an elaborate district steam system, is also one of the innovations put through by Mr. Barrett.
Theodor& Bacon.
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Writing of Mr. Barrett's work for the company in the afore-mentioned memoir published by the Ameri- can Society of Civil Engineers, Alexander B. Ferguson and Allin W. Ladd, assistant treasurer and hydraulic engineer respectively for the Holyoke Water Power Company have this to say :
"As president and treasurer of the company, Mr. Barrett, through his engineering experience, was able to lay a firm foundation for future engineering expan- sion, and through his skill as a financier promoted the conservation of the company's assets and made possi- ble the sound financial structure of the company as it exists to day. . .. With great energy, courage, and aggressiveness, he advanced the interests of his con- pany and no opportunity was lost to build up its re- sources and extend its usefulness. However, at all times and in all places, his integrity, his attractive personality, his courteous, kindly, and friendly nature won over even his rivals so that at the last the company stands at a peak of physical and financial de- velopment and of good will in the community.
"February 1, 1945 marked the twenty-fifth anni- versary of Mr. Barrett's service in the Holyoke Water Power Company, and in March, 1945, his fellow di- rectors-aware that the growth of the company through these twenty-five years, the extension of its business and the remarkable increase in its physical assets and facilities were in the very largest measure due to his foresight, wise business judgment, distin- guished professional attainments, and unremitting at- tention to the advancement of the welfare of the com- pany-declared a special commemorative dividend. . . It is always the purpose of the engineer to build the bridges for those coming behind to cross over."
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