179 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
31A-063-001
Easthampton NTH.2446
Town: Northampton
Place: (neighborhood or village)
Address: 179 Elm Street
Historic Name: John and Mildred Goar House
Uses: Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1954
Source: Northampton Directory
Style/Form: half-Cape Cod form
Architect/Builder:
Exterior Material:
Foundation: concrete
Wall/Trim: clapboards
Roof: asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Major Alterations (with dates): Vinyl replacement
windows added ca. 2000.
Condition: good
Moved: no | x | yes | | Date
Acreage: 0.347
Setting: This house occupies a large corner lot that is
tree-shaded and bounded by a wood rail fence.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [179 ELM STREET]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
NTH.2446
___ 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-and-a-half story half-Cape Cod form house under a steeply pitched, side-gable roof. It is one-and-a-half stories in
height, has a center chimney and is three bays wide and three bays deep for a square plan. The house has a wing on the west
elevation that is two bays wide and to which is attached a connector between the house and its two-bay garage. The house and
garage are clapboard sided, the connector is board and batten sided. The house has an asphalt shingle roof and concrete
foundations. Windows are vinyl replacements. In comparison to its neighbor at #169, this house – with the exception of vinyl
replacement windows - is a much more accurately designed Colonial Revival style Cape, while the house at #169 has been
modified more closely to approximate a ranch.
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.
Mildred and John Goar, Jr. built this house in 1954 as land was divided off into lots in this area of Elm Street after 1950. They
had previously lived in Pittsfield in the 1940s and moved to Northampton from North Adams where John had worked for Ralston
Purina in the early 1950s. While in Northampton Goar was a division sales manager for a company that had its headquarters in
Saint Louis, Missouri.
The property on which their house was built had a long and important history in Northampton. The Goar 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 passed into the ownership of J. Howe Demond in 1872 and
became a retired gentleman’s estate. Demond had sold his dairy, tobacco and vegetable farm in Springfield the previous year
for $60,000, which he invested in this property. The Demond house was set back from Elm Street and in the 1880s Crescent
Street was laid out making the Demond property a corner lot. Elm Street west of Round Hill Road had by this time had become
a semi-rural mixed area of farms and large estates of the well-to-do where large homes on deep lots dominated. J. Howe
Demond died in 1909.
By the 1950s the Demond house was gone and the land divided into these two lots, allowing this house and that at 169 Elm
Street 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.
Northampton Street Directories, 1950-1960.