Chicopee is a city located on the Connecticut River in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 55,560, making it the second-largest city in western Massachusetts after Springfield. Chicopee is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The communities of Chicopee Center (Cabotville), Chicopee Falls, Willimansett, Fairview, Aldenville, Burnett Road, Smith Highlands and Westover are located within the city.
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.
Holyoke Community College (HCC) is a public community college in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It offers associate degrees and certificate programs, as well as a transfer program for students to earn credits for transfer to other colleges. It was the first community college established in Massachusetts, as it was founded by the city's school board in 1946, while others were subsequently chartered under state jurisdiction after 1960.
Felix D. Arroyo is the Register of Probate for Suffolk County, Massachusetts effective 2018, and a former at-large member of the Boston City Council.
Marcos A. Devers is a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, since January 2019, after having served in the same position from 2011 until 2017. Devers also is a former acting mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts; when he served as acting mayor from September to November 2001, he became the first Dominican-American to execute the role of mayor in the United States and the first Latino mayor in Massachusetts.
Robert Julio Garcia is an American educator and politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 42nd congressional district since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 28th mayor of Long Beach, California from 2014 to 2022. He was both the city's youngest and first elected openly LGBT mayor, as well as the first Latino to hold the office. He is the second person of color to be mayor of Long Beach, after Republican Eunice Sato, a Japanese-American who served from 1980 to 1982. A former member of the Long Beach City Council, he was vice mayor from 2012 to 2014.
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.
Aaron Vega is an American state legislator who previously represented the 5th Hampden district of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, co-owner of a yoga business, and a former film editor. He has been nominated for the Argentine Film Critics Association's Silver Condor Award for Best Film for directing jazz documentary Van Van - Empezó la fiesta!, and has worked on several PBS documentaries including American Experience and Ken Burns' Jazz. A member of the Democratic Party, Vega began his political career in 2009 when he successfully ran as a city councilor in Holyoke, and subsequently ran successfully for state representative for the 5th Hampden district in 2012. In 2020, then-Mayor Alex Morse appointed Vega as Director of the City of Holyoke's Office of Planning and Economic Development, replacing outgoing director Marcos Marrero; Vega assumed the office on January 21, 2021, and would subsequently lead Mayor Josh Garcia's transition team.
Domenic J. Sarno is the current mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts. First elected in 2007, Sarno has won re-election five times since and is a member of the Democratic Party. Winning election to a fifth term overall in 2023 and the third four-year term, he is the longest-serving mayor in Springfield's history.
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.
Dennie L. Farr was an American businessman and politician from Holyoke, Massachusetts. Born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire on November 29, 1861, to Lark L. and Mary Farr, he attended school at Newark, Bellow's Falls, and Westminster, Vermont, and Swanzey, New Hampshire.
The Holyoke Housing Authority (HHA) is a public agency of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts that provides subsidized public housing to low- and moderate-income families and individuals.
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.
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.
Churchill is a neighborhood in Holyoke, Massachusetts located to the south of the city center, adjacent to the downtown. Its name is a geographic portmanteau as the area was historically known as the Church Hill district prior to its extensive development in the early twentieth century. Located at the southwestern edge of the downtown grid, the area served as housing for mill workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and today contains 166 acres (67 ha) of mixed residential and commercial zoning, including a number of historical brick tenements as well as the headquarters of the Holyoke Housing Authority, Holyoke Senior Center, Churchill Homes public housing, and the Wistariahurst Museum.
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).
