17 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: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission
Date (month / year): March, 2010
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
31D-103 Easthampton NTH.765
Town: Northampton
Place: (neighborhood or village) Northampton Center
Address: 17 Elm Street
Historic Name: St. Mary of the Assumption
Uses: Present: Catholic Church
Original: Catholic Church
Date of Construction: 1881
Source: Daily Hampshire Gazette
Style/Form: High Victorian Gothic
Architect/Builder: P.W. Ford, architect, Boston
Exterior Material:
Foundation: granite
Wall/Trim: brick, limestone
Roof: slate
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Major Alterations (with dates):
Condition: good
Moved: no | x | yes | | Date
Acreage: 1.08 acres shared with adjacent
parsonage
Setting: Building is set on a corner lot that slopes down to
the east on a street of college and residential buildings.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [17 ELM STREET ]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
NTH.765
___ 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 Boston architect P. W. Ford designed St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church in the High Victorian Gothic style
making reference to the similarly-styled College Hall that had gone up previously on the other side of Elm Street. Whereas
College Hall looked to the Italian Gothic for its inspiration, St. Mary of the Assumption took its inspiration more specifically from
Venetian Gothic architecture. The front-gabled church has side aisles on east and west and two corner towers of unequal
height at each side of its south façade. Four entries into the church are through the towers and shallow center narthex.
Separated by engaged buttresses, the openings are pointed arches with alternating voussoirs of brownstone and limestone for
highly polychromatic Venetian effect. The tympana of the arches are filled with trefoils in a tracery. At second story level above
the narthex is a large pointed arch window of stained glass that occupies the entire width of the nave. The window has quatrefoil
tracery above an arcaded pattern. The window surround alternates brick and brownstone voussoirs and a second pointed arch
of brick and brownstone rises outside it. Along the nave above the side aisles is a clerestory row that is copper-sided. The aisle
windows, separated by engaged buttresses, are eight in number and repeat the pointed arches with patterned voussoirs. The
exposed basement windows on the east elevation have three-pointed arches with granite keystones and granite springing
blocks. There is a transverse gable bay half way down the aisle on the east elevation and a shallow wing at the northeast
corner. The two towers are three stages under spires of different heights. They are ornamented with corner pinnacles and the
smaller of the two had aediculae at its upper level.
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 1975: “The Roman Catholics in Northampton—at first chiefly French men and women—first worshipped on King
Street. The “Catholic Society” built there a church and a parsonage in 1866. By the 1870’s the Catholic population was large
enough that a separate parish was organized for Florence, Haydenville, and Leeds. In 1880 the Florence church was completed
and in 1881 Saint Mary’s was under construction on the Hill above the Edwards Church, on the sire of the old Mansion House. It
is worth noting that in 1866 landowners on upper Elm Street—Protestant pillars of the community—purchased a lot on the corner
of Elm and Prospect Streets to prevent the Roman Catholics from locating there.”
P. W. Ford designed St. Philip’s Roman Catholic Church in Boston, St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Manchester, N.H.,
Church of the New Jerusalem in Cambridge, and worked mainly in the greater Boston area, but also in Connecticut. His work
appears primarily to have been ecclesiastical, but not exclusively so.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire Massachusetts, New York, 1873.
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.
Walker, George H. and Company. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884.
Walling, Henry F. Map of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New York, 1860.