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58 Bridge Street Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. FORM B − BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph Topographic or Assessor's Map Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Date (month / year): March, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 32A-260 Easthampton NTH.2125 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 58 Bridge Street Historic Name: Nathaniel Parsons House Uses: Present: museum Original: single-family r esidence Date of Construction: 1719 • Source: Dendrochronology - the science or technique of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks. Style/Form: Georgian Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: stone and brick Wall/Trim: clapboards Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): Wings added on west and east. Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.49 acres Setting: Set behind a wood fence, this house faces south and is shaded by large maple trees. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [58 BRIDGE STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NTH.2125 __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. The Parsons House as it appears today on the exterior is a modest Georgian style house. It is two-and-a-half stories in height under a low-pitched, side-gable roof with a large center chimney in front of its ridge. The roof has clipped eaves in the gable ends, typical of the Georgian style. The house is set on stone foundations so low as to be almost invisible and is sided in wide clapboards or weatherboards. It is five bays wide and two bays deep and windows on the first floor are more elongated that those of the second floor, which are placed close to the eaves. Sash on both floors of the façade is 12/12. The center door surround has a splayed lintel. Window surrounds are flat and without drip moldings. The door is six-panel. The east elevation is three bays deep and on it is a hipped roof portico on Italianate chamfered posts. To it is attached a wing of two stories. It is only one bay wide but has a chimney and a single 6/6 window. An ell extends from the north elevation of the house and is one- and-a-half stories in height. To the west elevation is attached a one-story wing under a side-gable roof. Structural analysis of the house reveals that a 1719 First Period house remains within the current Georgian structure. In 1719 the house was two-and-a-half stories in height and only one room deep. It is believed to have had diamond pane casement windows and there is evidence of a pentice or hood above the main entrance on the south façade. The first addition was ca. 1750: a lean-to on the north side of the house, adding a second kitchen to the house. Between ca. 1795 and 1815 a second floor was added to the lean-to, which raised the rear roof and made the house two rooms deep on both stories, or a double-pile house. This alteration brought the house to its current Georgian style with double-hung windows replacing casements and weatherboards added over the original siding materials. The second addition was that of the ell and east wing, which occurred ca. 1815-1830. The ell contained a summer kitchen and the east wing provided a room – perhaps a dining room - at the end of the lean-to on the first floor and a second room – possibly an office or bedroom - on its second floor. The west wing was added to the house between 1815 and 1830 as well, but there is no evidence that it was added simultaneously. It contains a single room that may have served as an office or parlor. 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. From Form B of 1970, “To view Northampton architecture is to view the Northampton Historical Society’s Parsons House. The house reflects the architecture of three centuries of American development. The social, economic and political changes of three centuries of national growth are manifested in the house’s history – from the early witchcraft trial of Mary Parsons in 1674 to the saga of the Bliss family during the Victorian age of development. Thus, the Cornet Joseph Parsons House is truly ‘a house for the town’. This is the oldest house in Northampton. It contains portraits, furniture and weapons, gun smithing and blacksmithing tools of General Seth Pomeroy, first General named by George Washington. The first child in the settlement was born in this house. It was in the Parsons family for 4 generations. In 1807 owned by the Wright family. In 300 years it was owned by only 2 families. Miss Anna Bliss willed it to the Historical Society in 1941. Original kitchen and stairway. “ Subsequent research by Historic Northampton has firmly dated the house as beginning construction in 1719 and lasting for several years thereafter. Research documents that the house stands on its original site on the eastern section of the homelot granted to Joseph and Mary Bliss Parsons ca. 1654. Nathaniel Parsons (1686-1738) owned the property from 1709 to 1738, which changes its first attribution to Joseph and Mary Bliss Parsons to that of their grandson Nathaniel. Following Nathaniel’s death, his second wife and widow Abigail Bunce Parsons and their children Nathaniel, Experience and Elisha inherited the INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [58 BRIDGE STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NTH.2125 house. Experience in 1768 sold her share in the house to her brother Nathaniel and the two brothers Nathaniel and Elisha lived in the house along with Nathaniel’s wife Sarah Rust Parsons. Elisha left in 1777. It is thought that the house may have been divided during this period into a two-family as there were two kitchens at that time. From 1785 Nathaniel began selling off the homelot and then his sons Nathaniel and Luther bought what remained of the homelot and included the house from their father. Nathaniel Sr. died in1807 and the two halves of the house were sold. Luther sold his half to Seth Rust and in a series of sales it came to Chloe Wright that year. Nathaniel, Jr. sold his half in 1808 to Chloe Wright’s stepson Ferdinand Hunt Wright. So in 1808 the house passed out of the Parsons family and into that of the Wright family. It remained in the Wright family through four generations until it was willed to the Northampton Historical Society in 1941. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire Massachusetts, New York, 1873. Bliss, Anna C. The Oldest House in Northampton: The Home of Cornet Joseph Parsons, NHS Publication, n.d.. Daily Hampshire Gazette, October 19, 1953. Hales, John G. Plan of the Town or Northampton in the County of Hampshire, 1831. Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895. Northampton Tercentenary Committee. The Northampton Book, 1954. Trumbull, James. History of Northampton, 2 v, 1898. Walker, George H. and Company. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Walling, Henry F. Map of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New York, 1860. Will of Anna Catherine Bliss, Hampshire County Case 23971, File 13, February 18, 1941. www.historic-northampton.org Clancey, Gregory and John Leeke. Report on the architectural examination of the Parsons House, 1992.