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101 King 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 31B-159 Easthampton NTH.642 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 101 King Street Historic Name: John Hopkins House Uses: Present: Rectory Original: Single-family residence Date of Construction: pre-1831 Source: 1831 map Style/Form: Greek Revival Architect/Builder: Isaac Damon or Thomas Pratt, architect Exterior Material: Foundation: not fully visible Wall/Trim: brick, vinyl Roof: asphalt Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Garage Major Alterations (with dates): House resided in brick, ca. 1920; windows replaced, artificial material covers corner pilasters; ca. 1950? Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 3.37 acres Setting: This is a property that faces west on a busy Northampton Center thoroughfare. It is set back from the street. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [101 KING STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NTH.642 __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 a two-and-a-half story building with a front-gabled roof whose eaves make full returns to form a pediment. There are two, tall, rear wall chimneys on the east elevation. A rondel window is centered in the tympanum of the pediment, which is vinyl- sided. The house is five bays wide with a center entry sheltered by a pedimented portico on fluted posts. It is the equivalent of six bays long and in the fourth bay is a secondary pedimented entry, a vinyl-enclosed, pedimented portico on concrete foundations. The house that originally was clapboard sided has been altered by the application of a brick veneer probably aimed to link it to the brick Sacred Heart Church next door. Windows have all been replaced with vinyl 1/1 sash and the corner pilasters have been covered with either aluminum or vinyl. With these alterations, the building has lost its stylistic integrity with one exception and that is the center entry on the west that is a recessed, Greek Revival style entry with paneled intrados. It has an architrave surround with cornerblocks framing the door, a transom light and sidelights that are filled with leaded glass in a late Greek Revival style fashion. 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 1976: “The design is claimed by both Thomas Pratt and Issac Damon, two local architects who practiced in the 1810’s to 1830’s. The obituary of each man records the John Hopkins House. It is possible that Damon was the actual designer and Pratt merely the builder. Hopkins was a retired banker from Boston. Later in the nineteenth century, Erastus Hopkins and a Professor Bridgeman owned the property. It was acquired in the 1890’s by the French Catholics who used it as a parochial residence and built a church alongside it. Until that time the French had worshipped with the Irish at Saint Mary’s.” Additional research has revealed the significance of Erastus Hopkins to Northampton and of this house to the Underground Railroad. “Erastus Hopkins was born on April 7, 1810, in South Hadley, MA, the son of John and Lydia Hopkins. He was the great nephew of Samuel Hopkins, preacher in Newport, RI and the grandson of Esther Edwards, sister of Jonathan Edwards. He went to Phillips Andover, Dartmouth College, and Andover Theological School and to Princeton Theological School in 1834. At twenty-three he was the Secretary of the Colonization Society of America and about the same time he fell in love with Sarah Bennett, a southern beauty he met in Northampton. She was visiting her uncle, Thomas Napier, escaping the malaria of Charleston summers. They married and he became the ordained pastor of the Presbyterian church in Beech Island, near Augusta, Georgia. She remained in Charleston, SC with her family while he was in the hinterland. In 1836 their son, William Swinton Bennett Hopkins was born. In 1838 Hopkins became minister in the Presbyterian church in Troy NY and shortly afterward his wife, Sarah Bennett, died of pleurisy. Their newborn baby girl died two days later. He became quite ill and returned with his young son to Northampton where he lived in the house at 101 King Street which his father had built in 1824. His father died the next year, but his mother survived until 1847. He raised his large family in this busy, spacious house, which they called The White House. In 1841 he married Charlotte Freylingheusen Allen, daughter of Judge William Allen, a longtime neighbor on King Street and former president of Bowdoin College. They went to Rome on their honeymoon and when he returned a year later he had left the ministry. In 1844 he was elected President of the Connecticut River Railroad and also served as the representative to the State Legislature from 1844 to 1852 and in 1857 and 1864. There is clear evidence that he was an agent of the Underground Railroad in Northampton and worked with his nephew in Vermont on at least one documented occasion to aid a fugitive in travelling to INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [101 KING STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NTH.642 Canada. Local stories include a tale of a fugitive hiding in the attic in his house on King Street. His deep familiarity with the Appalachian Mountains and all the routes into Canada (and which border crossings were most heavily patrolled) suggests an active role in the Underground Railroad. Hopkins Mountain is named for him in Appalachian Range. As a the representative for Northampton in the Legislature he served on the committee that established compulsory public education in Massachusetts (and ultimately the nation); he secured the funding to build the State Hospital for the mentally ill in Northampton; and he challenged the right of a sectarian institution to have a charter as an educational institution if they were not open freely to all citizens of the Commonwealth. In 1852 he invited the Hungarian Freedom Fighter, Lazlo Kossuth to visit Massachusetts (and hosted his visit at his home in Northampton and at the Edwards Church). He was thought by some to be on a track to become Governor of Massachusetts, but he chose instead an active role in the development of the Free Soil Party which sought to keep slavery out of the new states of the Union. He was a representative to the 1860 Republican Convention that nominated Lincoln to the presidency. He was a friend to Salmon P. Chase, another founder of the Free Soil Party, who became Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln’s cabinet. In all he had nine children, six of whom predeceased him. They are all buried together in the Bridge Street cemetery, except for his son William Swinton Bennett Hopkins. He wrote throughout his life to his children and many of his extraordinary letters survive in various archives throughout the country. He is the author of The Family a Religious Institution (Troy, 1840) The Hopkins Genealogy lists the following children of his second marriage: Sarah Anna, b. September 1842; d. 11 February 1930 at the age of 87. Residence Northampton; unm. (Sally) Maria Malleville, b. 23 August, 1843; d 1 September 1843. William Allen, b. 2 January 1845; d 9 April 1848. (Willie) Caroline Dwight, b 24 June 1846; d 21 July 1864. (Caro) Mary Annette, b. 2 April 1848; d 31 August 1897. (Nettie) Charlotte Freylinghuysen, b. 1 October, 1849; d. 28 May 1856. (Lottie) John b. 29 September 1850; d. 18 May, 1856. (Johnnie) By Anne Emerson for the David Ruggles Center April 4, 2011” 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. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [101 KING STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 NTH.642 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. The John Hopkins House would contribute to a multiple resource listing on the National Register of Historic Places of properties associated with Abolition and the Underground Railroad in Northampton. In these Northampton locations, documented activities in support of the Underground Railroad transporting fugitive slaves to Canada took place. The Hopkins House is one such location and would contribute to the multiple resource listing despite its current alterations, which are largely reversible.