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29 Henshaw Avenue 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: PVPC Date (month / year): January, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31B-178-001 Easthampton NTH.2452 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 29 Henshaw Avenue Historic Name: Henry M. Burt House Uses: Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1860-1873 Source: maps of 1860, 1873 Style/Form: Italianate Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: vinyl Roof: asphalt Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): siding added, ca. 2000 Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.305 acres Setting: This house is on a mixed residential/institutional street that is tree-shaded and slopes up to the north in a gentle rise. The house has a wooden picket fence across the west side of its lot, which is street-side. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [29 Henshaw Avenue] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NTH.2452 __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 an Italianate style cottage – the only one of its kind on Henshaw Avenue - that took advantage of its position on a hillside to face south, rather than west and the street, in order to gain sunlight. Now one of the only examples of the small, south-facing houses on the slopes of Round Hill, the house was one of a number during most of the 19th century. Photographs taken by the Howes Brothers during the last decades of the 19th and first decade of the 20th century recorded this common orientation and house scale. It is a modest one-and-a-half story house, three bays wide and two bays deep for a rectangular plan made slightly longer by a shallow, one-story wing on the east. Now vinyl-sided, the house has brick foundations and an asphalt shingled roof from which two interior chimneys rise. The roof eaves are thinly boxed, have a broad overhang in Italianate fashion, and make returns. On the south façade are two through-eaves, front-gabled dormers; there is one of these dormers also on the north elevation. The center bay of the south façade at the first story is occupied by a hipped roof porch supported by Italianate style chamfered posts. Sash in the house is 6/1. 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. Henshaw Avenue had not been laid out when the Northampton map of 1860 was drawn. By 1873, however, the street was partially in and there were a few houses on it. One of the first was the Henry M. Burt House at 29 Henshaw Avenue. Burt came to Northampton when he was 15 years old in 1846 to work in the offices of the Hampshire Gazette. He learned the newspaper trade then left Northampton for Nebraska where he founded the territory’s first newspaper. When he returned in 1859 from Nebraska he worked in Springfield for the Springfield Republican but also founded several weekly papers that he ran for many years. He founded the Northampton Free Press, the Holyoke Transcript, and the New England Homestead. Burt appears in this house in 1873 before he moved to Springfield permanently. Although his residency was short-lived in Northampton he was important for taking skills learned at the Hampshire Gazette rather far afield. One of the most important books that he edited was “The First Century of the History of Springfield” a transcript of early town records. Henry had become a newspaper editor by 1880 and was living in Springfield with his wife Frances and two children. The house changed hands several times after Burt’s residence, until by 1893 it was owned by Elizabeth and Ezbon Knight. Elizabeth worked as a dressmaker from the house and Ezbon ran a livery business in a large barn with an office east of the house. In 1895 he was one of twelve livery operators in business in Northampton. The Knights had left by 1900 and the next known occupant was a widow Julia Strong who was in the house in 1908. Following Mrs. Strong, the occupants were Thomas and Bridie Kiely who ran a horse/taxi service from the house. Bridie was listed in the 1895 Hampshire Gazette supplement among the illustrious women of Northampton who was active in church, charity and social circles. Thomas, who listed himself as a hackman in the census of 1919, died between 1929 and 1930 and Bridie remained in the house through 1950. After her death their son Thomas Kiely and his wife Mary moved into it along with Thomas’ brother James. James was a clerk at the Northampton Post Office and Thomas was a policeman in the Northampton Police Department. The Kielys continued to live in the house through 1960, one of the severak two-generation households in the center. The long family occupancy during a period when large houses were being constructed in this section of Northampton is at least partially responsible for the survival of an example of 19th century working class housing on Round Hill. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, 1873. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [29 Henshaw Avenue] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NTH.2452 Massachusetts Historical Commission. Reconnaissance Reports, “Northampton”, 1982. Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895. Northampton Directories 1900-1960. 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 29 Henshaw Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02125 Area(s) Form No. NTH.2452 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.