Springfield is the most populous city in and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern Mill River. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 155,929, making it the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the fourth most populous city in New England after Boston, Worcester, and Providence. Metropolitan Springfield, as one of two metropolitan areas in Massachusetts, had a population of 699,162 in 2020.
Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, that lies between the western bank of the Connecticut River and the Mount Tom Range. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,247. Located 8 miles (13 km) north of Springfield, Holyoke is part of the Springfield Metropolitan Area, one of the two distinct metropolitan areas in Massachusetts.
The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes six campuses, a satellite campus in Springfield and also 25 campuses throughout California and Washington with the University of Massachusetts Global.
Springfield Technical Community College is a public technical college in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is the only technical community college in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Located on the site of the Springfield Armory National Park, which was founded by Henry Knox and George Washington during the Revolutionary War, Springfield Technical Community College now occupies many of the buildings used by the U.S. Armory at Springfield prior to the Armory's closure in 1969. While 20 acres (81,000 m2) of the 55-acre (220,000 m2) site remain in the hands of the U.S. National Park Service for historic preservation, 35 acres (140,000 m2) comprise the college campus. Numerous historic buildings have been repurposed as classrooms, in addition to newer facilities built on-site.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a private university between Manchester and Hooksett, New Hampshire, United States. The university is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education, along with national accreditation for some hospitality, health, education and business degrees. SNHU is one of the fastest-growing universities nationwide with 135,000 online students and 3,000 on campus.
Holyoke Catholic High School was a private, Roman Catholic high school in Holyoke, Massachusetts, United States. It was located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts.
David Michael Bartley was an American politician and educator who served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1963 to 1975, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1969 to 1975, Secretary of Administration and Finance from 1982 to 1983, and President of Holyoke Community College from 1975 to 2004. In 1974, along with J. John Fox, he co-sponsored the Bartley-Fox law, which passed that year and took effect on April 1, 1975. The law forces judges to sentence people convicted of carrying a gun without a firearm identification card to at least one year in jail.
Linda J. Melconian is a former American state legislator who served as the first woman Majority Leader in the history of the Massachusetts Senate. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented the greater Springfield area as its State Senator from 1983-2005. In 2017 Melconian was invited by the U. S. House of Representatives Historian’s Office to participate in an oral interview and transcript as part of the Oral History Project commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first woman elected to Congress.
Holyoke High School is a public high school in Holyoke, Massachusetts, United States. Since 2015, the school, along with the district, has been in state receivership and through a series of changes in practices, such as innovative restorative justice disciplinary programs, has seen marked improvement in student retention and graduation rates. In the 2017-2018 school year Holyoke High received higher combined SAT scores than the average for schools in Boston, Worcester, and Springfield.
Alex Benjamin Morse is an American politician who served as the 44th mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts from 2012 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected the youngest mayor of Holyoke at age 22. He was reelected three times, with his final term expiring in January 2022. Morse resigned on March 26, 2021, to accept a position as the town manager of Provincetown, beginning on April 5, 2021.
La Justice was a weekly New England French newspaper published by the LaJustice Publishing Company of Holyoke, Massachusetts from 1904 until 1964, with issues printed biweekly during its final 6 years. Throughout its history the newspaper reported local as well as syndicated international news in French, along with regular columns by its editorship discussing Franco-American identity.
El Sol Latino is a monthly bilingual newspaper published by El Coquí Media Group of Amherst, Massachusetts, primarily in English and Spanish. Though published in Amherst, the newspaper's content additionally covers news in Holyoke, Springfield, and Hartford extensively as the paper's primary focus is news and advocacy in the greater Puerto Rican community. Founded in 2004, the paper was started by Manuel Frau Ramos, a former professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as the University of Puerto Rico.
Holyoke Medical Center, formerly known as Holyoke City Hospital, is a full-service, community and regional non-profit medical center located in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Holyoke Medical has 198 beds in the main hospital and runs a comprehensive healthcare system that includes the VNA, River Valley Counseling Center and Western Mass Physician Associates, a physician practice group. The service area for hospital covers Greater Holyoke area, with towns in both Hampshire and Hampden County including Holyoke, Chicopee, South Hadley, Granby, Easthampton, Southampton, West Springfield, and Belchertown.
As of the 2010 census, Holyoke, Massachusetts had the largest Puerto Rican population, per capita, of any city in the United States outside Puerto Rico proper, with 47.7% or 44,826 residents being of Puerto Rican heritage, comprising 92.4% of all Latinos in the community. From a combination of farming programs instituted by the US Department of Labor after World War II, and the housing and mills that characterized Holyoke prior to deindustrialization, Puerto Ricans began settling in the city in the mid-1950s, with many arriving during the wave of Puerto Rican migration to the Northeastern United States in the 1980s. A combination of white flight as former generations of mill workers left the city, and a sustained influx of migrants in subsequent generations transformed the demographic from a minority of about 13% of the population in 1980, to the largest single demographic by ancestry in a span of three decades.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Holyoke saw an influx of Franco-Americans, predominantly French-Canadians, who immigrated to Massachusetts to work in the city's growing textile and paper mills. By 1900, 1 in 3 people in Holyoke were of French-Canadian descent, and a 1913 survey of French Americans in the United States found Holyoke, along with other Massachusetts cities, to have a larger community of French or French-Canadian born residents than those of New Orleans or Chicago at that time. Initially faced with discrimination for the use of their labor by mill owners to undermine unionization, as well as for their creation of separate French institutions as part of the La Survivance movement, this demographic quickly gained representation in the city's development and civic institutions. Holyoke was at one time a cultural hub for French-Canadian Americans; the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of America was first organized in the city in 1899, along with a number of other institutions, including theater and drama societies from which famed vaudevillian Eva Tanguay was first discovered, and regular publications, with its largest French weekly newspaper, La Justice, published from 1904 to 1964. The city was also home to author Jacques Ducharme, whose 1943 book The Shadows of the Trees, published by Harper, was one of the first non-fiction English accounts of New England's French and French-Canadian diaspora.
This is a timeline of the history of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA.
From the beginning of the city's history as the western bank of Springfield, Irish families have resided in and contributed to the development of the civics and culture of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Among the first appellations given to the city were the handles "Ireland", "Ireland Parish", or "Ireland Depot", after the village was designated the 3rd Parish of West Springfield in 1786. Initially occupied by a mixture of Yankee English and Irish Protestant families, many of whom belonged to the Baptist community of Elmwood, from 1840 through 1870 the area saw a large influx of Irish Catholic workers, immigrants to the United States, initially from the exodus of the Great Famine. During that period Irish immigrants and their descendants comprised the largest demographic in Holyoke and built much of the early city's infrastructure, including the dams, canals, and factories. Facing early hardships from Anti-Irish sentiment, Holyoke's Irish would largely build the early labor movement of the city's textile and paper mills, and remained active in the national Irish nationalist and Gaelic revival movements of the United States, with the Holyoke Philo-Celtic Society being one of 13 signatory organizations creating the Gaelic League of America, an early 20th century American counterpart of Conradh na Gaeilge.
As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 39,880 people, 15,361 households, and 9,329 families residing in the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The population density was 723.6/km2 (1,874/mi²). There were 16,384 housing units at an average density of 277.2/km2 (718.6/mi²).
Elaine Nicpon Marieb was a human anatomist and the author of many textbooks, most notably Human Anatomy & Physiology, Essentials of Human Anatomy And Physiology, and Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology Lab Manual .
The Holyoke Civic Symphony is an American orchestra based in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It performs at Leslie Philips Theater on the Holyoke Community College campus. Originally established as the Holyoke Community College Civic Orchestra in 1967, it is still closely tied to the community college, but changed its name in the 1980s, becoming a separate non-profit entity by the 1991–1992 season. The orchestra, primarily composed of amateur musicians, has a stated mission to promote access to music for the residents of the region and every season, 3 of its 4 concerts are free to attend.
