169 Elm Street
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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: PVPC
Date (month / year): January, 2010
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
31B-161-001 Easthampton NTH.2445
Town: Northampton
Place: (neighborhood or village)
Address: 169 Elm Street
Historic Name: Lucille and Mitchell Labuda House
Uses: Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1960
Source: assessors records and directories
Style/Form: Colonial Revival half-Cape
Architect/Builder:
Exterior Material:
Foundation: concrete
Wall/Trim: aluminum
Roof: asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Major Alterations (with dates):
-
Condition: good
Moved: no | x | yes | | Date
Acreage: 0.455 acres
Setting: This house is set back from the street uniformly
with its neighbors. It occupies a tree-shaded lot.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [169 ELM STREET]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
NTH.2445
___ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. This property is within a local historic district.
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 a one-story house under a side-gable roof. It is three bays wide and two bays deep and has a side entry. Set back on its
east elevation is a one-story wing one bay wide. The house had a breezeway on its east elevation that connects to a single-bay
garage. This house follows a plan and elevation that in the late 1950s and 60s were known as a “half-Cape” and plans were
available from publishers who printed them for sale for builders. Now sided, the house displays the lack of ornament favored by
the Modern Movement ranch houses, but its more traditional Cape Cod form makes it a popular Colonial Revival house style.
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.
The Labuda House was built in 1960 by Mitchell and Lucille Labuda. Lucille was the chief operator of the telephone company in
Northampton and Mitchell by that time was not working. The property on which the house was built had a long and important
history in Northampton. The Labuda House was built on land that had been part of the first allotment of homelots by the
Northampton Proprietors in 1654 along the broad Elm Street. It was part of Lot number 2 assigned to settler Thomas Dewey.
The north side of Elm Street in this area continued to be further divided, settled, and farmed until by the time the map of 1831
was drawn Lots 1-3 that had taken up the north side of Elm Street west of Round Hill Road had been developed into seven
properties. By 1860 the lots that later were to become 169 and 179 Elm Street were part of the W. Clark, Jr. farm property.
Clark’s land had passed into the ownership of J. Howe Demond in 1872 and had become a gentleman’s estate. Demond had a
large house set back from Elm Street which became the corner of Elm and Crescent Streets when Crescent was laid out in the
1880s. Demond lived until 1909 and was in Northampton after retirement as a Springfield dairy farmer, tobacco and vegetable
grower. Elm Street west of Round Hill Road had by the 1870s become a semi-rural area, a mixture of large estates of the well-
to-do with large homes and of farms with large pastures.
By the 1950s the Demond house was gone and the land divided into these two lots, allowing this house and that at 179 Elm
Street to be constructed as 20th century infill.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Hampshire Gazette, June 28, 1909.
Trumbull, J. R. “Map of Original 17th c. Homelots”, compiled 1898 for History of Northampton, Massachusetts from its Settlement
in 1654, vol. I, Northampton, 1898.
Hales, John G. surveyor. Plan of Town of Northampton, 1831, Boston.
Walling, Henry F. Atlas of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New York 1860.
Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, 1873.
Walker, George H. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884.
Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895.