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49 Middle 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 Please see attached continuation sheet. Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Date (month / year): March, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 23A-269 Easthampton NTH.2530 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Florence Address: 49 Middle Street Historic Name: Florence Sewing Machine Company Workers’s Housing Uses: Present: Original: Date of Construction: 1861-1870 Source: maps and censuses Style/Form: Italianate gable-and-wing Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete Wall/Trim: concrete, clapboards Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): Wing added ca. 1880 Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.323 acres Setting: House faces south on a quiet residential street. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [49 Middle StREET] ADDRESS] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NTH.2530 _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 one of three once-identical workers’s houses on Middle Street. All three are of concrete construction, have front-gabled roofs, are one-and-a-half stories in height and have transverse gables on their west elevations. Further, they are two bays wide: a side door with narrow sidelights and a large fixed light window. This house has an added wing five bays long sided in clapboard. Rather than a wrap-around porch as is found at 45 Middle Street, this house has a portico on Italianate posts with brackets at its eaves. The porch is repeated across the wing. Windows in the wing have 2/2 sash. 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. This house was constructed by the Florence Sewing Machine Company between 1861 when the company was founded and 1870 when occupants appear in the census. The company was founded by three progressive men, D. G. Littlefield, Samuel L. Hill and Leander Langdon. Samuel Hill was a founding member of the utopian community the Northampton Association of Education and Industry which had closed in 1846, but he had continued to develop housing for its former members and had held a mortgage for at least one individual, Sojourner Truth, in his on-going work as an Abolitionist. With his progressive nature, it is not surprising that these houses were built so commodiously for families at the Sewing Machine Company. In 1870 William and Helen Phillips were living here and William was working in a machine shop, presumably that of the Florence Sewing Machine Company. William and Helen were still in the house in 1873 but by 1884 Mrs. B. W. Stratton appears. Mrs. Stratton appears in the 1880 census as Delia Stratton, 72 years old living with her 52 year old daughter Margaret. Neither was working. After the Strattons, a second family of Phillips in 1895 occupied the house and it does not appear that they were related to the first family. There were three widows with the last name of Phillips on Center Street in 1893. The numbers at that time differ from today’s addresses now that the street has been re-named Middle Street. In 1895 the street directory lists Mrs. Betsey Phillips widow of Henry Phillips and her daughter Belle living at 2 Center Street, with Mary widow of Edward at 24 Center Street. By 1915 John Bray who was a foreman dyer at the Nonotuck Silk Company and John Bray, Jr. who was an assistant shipping clerk at the Northampton Engineering Company, along with Robert Bray, clerk at the Arthur M. Ware meat market all lived here. The family had thinned out by 1926 when John Bray’s widow Hannah and her son John and daughter-in-law Catherine lived here. John and Catherine ran a restaurant at 135 Main Street in Florence at the time. Hannah Bray continued to live here through 1940 but by 1950 the house had gone to E. R. and Mary Cassidy. E. R. was a teacher in Hatfield. The house had changed hands again by 1960 when it was owned by Bladas and Lena Senuta. Bladas worked in the laundry at the Veterans Administration Hospital. 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. Strimer, Steve. The Ruggles Center, oral history of Florence. 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 ] [49 Middle StREET] ADDRESS] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NTH.2530 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [49 Middle StREET] ADDRESS] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 NTH.2530 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 Florence Center Historic District. The potential historic district of Florence Center is significant as the commercial, residential, institutional center of the village that developed from 1657 when it was set off as Northampton’s “Inner Commons” as agricultural land and 1681 when the first sawmill was erected at a falls on the Mill River. The agricultural and industrial village developed through the 18th and 19th centuries around industry on the Mill River, agriculture on the alluvial flood plain and the Strong Tavern and later Cottage Hotel at the intersection of Main and Maple Streets. It is significant for the silk industry that flourished through the Civil war as an alternative to slave-picked cotton and for the establishment of the Northampton Association for Education and Industry, a utopian community that existed 1843-1847. Association members after its close continued in Florence their principles of equality by running the Underground Railroad through the village and harboring fugitive slaves. It is significant as the home of Sojourner Truth. 19th century industry in the Center included the Florence Sewing Machine Company, which built its own housing. Architecturally the Center is significant for the range of Gothic Revival, Italianate, Stick Style, French Second Empire, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival style homes, for its commercial blocks and library in the Revival styles of the late 19th century. Gothic Revival and Italianate style churches are architect-designed in high style versions. On Middle Street many of the houses are further distinguished as being among the earliest workers’ housing made of concrete in Northampton. The potential district has integrity of workmanship, design, feeling, association, and materials.