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Dryads Green 47.pdf Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. FORM B − BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph Topographic or Assessor's Map Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: PVPC Date (month /year): January, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31A-268-001 Easthampton NHT.573 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 47 Dryads Green Historic Name: Timothy and Mary Collins House Uses: Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1910 Source: Northampton Street Directories Style/Form: Colonial Revival Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: asbestos shingles Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): siding applied, ca. 1950. Condition: fair Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.19 Setting: This house is located on a short street with mature street trees and a wooded area to the south. INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [47 DRYADS GREEN] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NHT.573 __x_ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. This is one of three Colonial Revival style houses in a row of four houses on Dryads Green. In design it closely resembles its neighbor at 49 Dryads Green as a two-and-a-half story house under a hipped roof, three bays wide and three bays deep. Unlike that house, however, it is sided in asbestos. The house has hipped roof dormers on north, east and west sides of the roof, and there there is a one-story portico on the north façade whose hipped roof is supported on paired, Colonial Revival style Doric columns. There is a row of fine dentils at the porch roof cornice and at the cornice of the main block of the house as well. Above the dentil rows, the eaves at both the main roof and the porch roof have exposed, carved rafters suggesting the influence of the Craftsman style that was being incorporated here in the late Colonial Revival. Window sash in the house is 8/1 and window surrounds on the first floor have lintels of frieze and cornices with a dentil row. There is a Colonial Revival oval window on the west elevation of the house. The entry to the house is flanked by half-length sidelights with leaded glass. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. Elm Street was a rural section of Northampton to the last decades of the 19th century. It was occupied by farmers and gentlemen’s estates until two brothers-in-law, John Sullivan and J. C. Hammond, bought farmland on the south side of Elm Street owned by Daniel Clark and laid out Forbes Avenue. In 1890 the land that had been Clark’s cow pasture was then laid out by Sullivan and Hammond as Dryads Green, while a third developer Charles Crouch laid out Kensington Avenue. Sullivan and Hammond put in sewers, built the streets with curbing and concrete sidewalks, lined the streets with trees and divided up the land into house lots. Development of Harrison Avenue followed and turned the north and east side of Elm Street into the most expensive area in Northampton. Homes on Kensington Avenue and Dryads Green in 1895 ranged between $5,000 and $20,000. Dryads Green, which in large part, ran parallel to the Mill River became a sought-after street for the green that was located there, planted and maintained by one of the street’s first residents, George Cable, a writer, Abolitionist, and philanthropist. Dryads Green became known for the important writers, politicians and intellectuals that Cable entertained at his home “Tarryawhile” on Dryads Green. Between 1900 and 1910 Dryads Green was built up with houses owned by doctors, teachers, businessmen and scholars. Among the businessmen in 1920 was Timothy Collins. Timothy and Mary Collins lived here with their children Timothy, Jr., John, Mary and William. Timothy was a salesman in the F. W. Webb Manufacturing Company, a plumbing company, and the family had a servant Mary Bukowski, a Hungarian immigrant, who also lived with them. They had moved here from Holyoke where Timothy had been president and manager of a wholesale plumbing company but boarded elsewhere in the City. From its construction until about 1925, then, the house was in private ownership. Smith College began buying houses near the campus in the 1920s when its student population and faculty were both growing. The Kensington Avenue-Dryads Green area became especially important to Smith College when the college built the Quad of ten dormitories stretching between Kensington and Paradise Road. This house became a Smith College house by 1929 with Richard and Jean Rice its occupants. Richard was a professor of English at Smith and the couple was in the house through 1950 when Richard had become a professor emeritus at Smith. His widow in 1960 was Frona Rice, rather than Jean. Frona, however, was also attached to Smith College working in the library department. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, 1873. Massachusetts Historical Commission. Reconnaissance Reports, “Northampton”, 1982. INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [47 DRYADS GREEN] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NHT.573 Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895. Northampton Directories 1910-1960. Sanborn Insurance Maps, Northampton, 1915. U. S. Federal censuses 1890-1930. Walker, George H. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Massachusetts Historical Commission Community Property Address State Archives Facility 220 Morrissey Boulevard Northampton 47 Dryads Green Boston, Massachusetts 02125 Area(s) Form No. NTH.573 National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in an historic district Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by ___Bonnie Parsons__________________________ The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. This property would contribute to a potential historic district that would encompass the residential/institutional side streets laid out from Elm Street in Northampton Center between Main Street on the east and the west boundary of Childs Park on the west. This potential historic district is significant according to criteria A and C and would have local significance. These residential streets are significant according to criterion A for their reflection of the development of Northampton from the mid-19th century as a relatively affluent community that supported several private schools for young women, which prepared them after 1875 for attendance at Smith College, and the Clarke School where deaf students were given an education that thoroughly prepared them for the hearing world. The residences in this area made a shift from gentlemen’s estates to accommodation of the growing middle class in Northampton during the 19th century with businessmen, scholars, teachers, doctors, and retired farmers. According to criterion C this district would be significant for the range of historical styles that it includes. Gothic Revival, Italianate, French Second Empire, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles are all well-represented within a landscape of individual large lots, and streetscapes that were laid out and developed at one time.