Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Pittsfield’s population was 43,927 at the 2020 census. Although its population has declined in recent decades, Pittsfield remains the third-largest municipality in Western Massachusetts, behind only Springfield and Chicopee.
The Boston Athenaeum is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. It is also one of a number of membership libraries, for which patrons pay a yearly subscription fee to use Athenaeum services. The institution was founded in 1807 by the Anthology Club of Boston, Massachusetts. It is located at 10½ Beacon Street on Beacon Hill.
Edward Clarke Cabot was an American architect and artist.
Thomas Allen was an American railroad builder and a member of the United States House of Representatives from Missouri.
The Joseph Scelsi Intermodal Transportation Center is a transit facility located in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The $11 million facility is named after Joseph Scelsi, a longtime State Representative who represented Pittsfield. Owned by the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority (BRTA), it is serviced by local BRTA bus services, Amtrak intercity rail service, and Peter Pan intercity bus service. The second floor of the building houses two classrooms used by Berkshire Community College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
The Morewood School is a historic one-room schoolhouse at 30 South Mountain Road in Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Built in 1843, it was converted to a vacation cottage in the 1980s after serving for 130 years as a schoolhouse. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Originally located on 4 acres (1.6 ha) around 1825, the lot has been reduced to 1 acre (0.40 ha).
William Appleton Potter was an American architect who designed numerous buildings for Princeton University, as well as municipal offices and churches. He served as a Supervising Architect of the Treasury from 1874 to 1877.
The Lenox Library is the principal public library of Lenox, Massachusetts. It is managed by the non-profit Lenox Library Association, founded in 1856, and is located at 18 Main Street, in a former county courthouse that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Allen Hotel is an historic hotel building in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Built in 1915 and first operated as the Park Hotel, it is a significant local example of Renaissance Revival architecture, designed by the prominent local architect Joseph McArthur Vance. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and included in an expansion of Pittsfield's Park Square Historic District in 1991. It no longer houses a hotel, and has been repurposed for other uses.
The Wollison–Shipton Building is a historic commercial block located at 142-156 North Street in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Designed by architect H. Neil Wilson, it was built in 1888 when the area north of Park Square developed as a commercial and retail part of downtown Pittsfield.
H. (Henry) Neill Wilson was an architect with his father James Keys Wilson in Cincinnati, Ohio; on his own in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and for most of his career in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The buildings he designed include the Rookwood Pottery building in Ohio and several massive summer cottages in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Harding and Seaver was an architectural firm based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, active from 1902 to 1947. It was the partnership of architects George C. Harding (1867–1921) and Henry M. Seaver (1873–1947).
Daniel Pinckney Parker (1781–1850) was a prominent merchant, shipbuilder, and businessman in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts.
James Madison Barker was a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1891 to 1905. He was appointed by Governor William E. Russell.
Sarah Morewood (1823–1863) was a poet and literary figure who developed a close relationship in the 1850s with her nearest neighbor in the Berkshires, the novelist Herman Melville. In 1983 Professor Michael Rogin of the University of California, Berkeley, was the first to suggest that Morewood was a model for the character of Isabel in Melville's dark novel of romance and ambition Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852). Thirty-three years later biographer Michael Shelden argued in Melville in Love (2016) that Morewood influenced Melville's work not only in Pierre, but also in Moby-Dick (1851), and that for much of the 1850s the two were lovers.
Joseph McArthur Vance was a prominent architect in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His portfolio comprised residential, commercial, industrial and recreational buildings. Much of his work was centered in Pittsfield, then a thriving commercial, industrial and resort city, but he was also commissioned by clients elsewhere in Berkshire County. He also pursued projects in neighboring states. Among the buildings he designed are the Colonial Theatre, the Allen Hotel – originally the Park Hotel – (1915), and the Frank Howard Building (1916) – all in Pittsfield; Bascom Lodge (1932-1937) atop Mount Greylock, the state's highest peak; and the Hotel Aspinwall in Lenox, Massachusetts (1902), which burned to the ground in 1931. Several buildings he designed are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Harlan Hoge Ballard was an American author. He was founder of the Agassiz Association and served as librarian of the Berkshire Athenaeum for 46 years.
Louis Weissbein (1831-1913) was a German-born American architect practicing in Boston, Massachusetts.
