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.
Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick, is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick, the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
The Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) oversees and coordinates public transportation in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, offering fixed-route bus service, paratransit service, and senior van service. PVTA was created by Chapter 161B of the Massachusetts General Laws in 1974. Based in Springfield, Massachusetts, PVTA serves Hampden and Hampshire counties, and provides connecting service to CTtransit in Hartford County, Connecticut, to FRTA in Franklin County, and to WRTA in Worcester County. It is the largest regional transit authority, and second largest public transit system in Massachusetts after the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, providing service to over 11 million riders annually across 24 municipalities in the region, with about 70% of all riders using the system as their primary mode of transit.
WFCR is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Amherst, Massachusetts. It serves as the National Public Radio (NPR) member station for Western Massachusetts, including Springfield. The station operates at 13,000 watts ERP from a transmitter on Mount Lincoln in Pelham, Massachusetts, 968 feet above average terrain. The University of Massachusetts Amherst holds the license. The station airs NPR news programs during the morning and afternoon drive times and in the early evening. Middays and overnights are devoted to classical music and jazz is heard during the later evening hours.
Maurice A. Donahue was an American politician who served as President of the Massachusetts Senate from 1964 to 1971.
Saint Patrick's Day, although a legal holiday only in Savannah, Georgia, and Suffolk County, Massachusetts, is nonetheless widely recognized and celebrated throughout the United States. It is primarily celebrated as a recognition of Irish and Irish American culture; celebrations include prominent displays of the color green, eating and drinking, religious observances, and numerous parades. The holiday has been celebrated in what is now the U.S. since 1601.
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.
The Valley Arena Gardens, most commonly referred to as the Valley Arena, was a sporting and entertainment venue in Holyoke, Massachusetts, best known for hosting weekly boxing matches which included Rocky Marciano's debut professional fight. Though best known for its history as a boxing venue, the Valley Arena also hosted wrestling, basketball, roller hockey, miniature golf and featured its own restaurant. As a nightclub and theatre in the round venue it also hosted an array of vaudeville acts such as The Three Stooges and Bela Lugosi, as well as renowned musicians including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, The Ink Spots, The Dorsey Brothers, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Sarah Vaughan, and The Temptations. In an interview with Woody Herman and band alumni, Jack Dulong, saxophonist and member of Herman's "Third Herd", described it as "an 'institution' for big bands."
The Holyoke Caledonian Pipe Band is a pipe band based out of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Founded in 1910, it is the oldest pipe band in continuous existence in the United States. A regular feature in the Holyoke Saint Patrick's Day Parade since the first in 1952, the band also performs at Smith College's annual commencement, as well as charity and private events.
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.
This is a bibliography of Holyoke, a city in Massachusetts, with books about the area's history, culture, geography, and people. Due to the area's proximity to a number of industrial developments and the numerous cultures of different waves of immigrant workers, a wide number of books, dissertations, and comprehensive articles have been written about Holyoke throughout its history in several languages. This list is not intended to be complete, authoritative, or exhaustive and does not include promotional material, travel guides, recipe books, directories, or the catalogs of industrial companies that have resided therein.
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.
The Holyoke Street Railway (HSR) was an interurban streetcar and bus system operating in Holyoke, Massachusetts as well as surrounding communities with connections in Amherst, Belchertown, Chicopee, Easthampton, Granby, Northampton, Pelham, South Hadley, Sunderland, Westfield, and West Springfield. Throughout its history the railway system shaped the cultural institutions of Mount Tom, being operator of the mountain's famous summit houses, one of which hosted President McKinley, the Mount Tom Railroad, and the trolley park at the opposite end of this funicular line, Mountain Park.
The Union Saint-Jean-Baptiste d'Amérique (USJB), also referred to by its member organizations as the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste d'Amérique, was a Franco-American benefit society first organized in 1899 when the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Holyoke invited several other so-named independent organizations to form a national committee, by 1929 the Boston Globe described it as the largest French Catholic fraternal organization in the United States.
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.
Holyoke Gas & Electric (HG&E), formally known as the City of Holyoke Gas & Electric Department (HGED), is a municipal electric, gas, and telecommunications utility primarily serving Holyoke and Southampton, Massachusetts, one of two in Massachusetts which provide all three services. Founded in 1902 with the purchase of gas and electric plants from the Holyoke Water Power Company, the municipal corporation launched its first fiber optics communications services in 1997. On December 14, 2001 the City of Holyoke purchased the majority of the remaining assets and operations of the Holyoke Water Power Company from Northeast Utilities and as a result the municipal utility assumed control of the Holyoke Dam and Canal System and an electric distribution system serving industrial electric customers in the flats neighborhood. The utility discontinued district steam service to conserve energy used in aging infrastructure in September 2010. Using hydroelectric power generation in tandem with a series of solar panel facilities, the utility has among the lowest rates in the Commonwealth, and as of 2016 between 85% and 90% of the city's energy output was carbon neutral, with administrative goals in place to reach 100% in the next decade.
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).
March 17, 2024
