This is a timeline of the history of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA.
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Holyoke: Ward 4 Municipal Bath, Public Baths in the United States, via Harvard Art Museums |
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Civic Holyoke #1, by Albert Labonte, silent footage of Holyoke and City Hall shot in 1937; via Holyoke History Room |
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 Heritage State Park is history-oriented state park located in the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The park opened in 1986 on the site of the William Skinner Silk Mill which was lost to fire in 1980. The park is managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.
The Holyoke Canal System is a system of power canals in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It is split into three canals based on elevation and distance from the inlet at the Holyoke Dam- the First Level Canal, Second Level Canal, and Third Level Canal. Constructed over a period between 1847 and 1892, the Canal System, along with the Dam, is recognized as a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for its use in the development of the Venturi meter by Clemens Herschel, the first means of measuring large-scale flows, and the McCormick-Holyoke Turbine by John B. McCormick, which doubled the efficiency of turbines to more than 80% in its time.
Wistariahurst is a historic house museum and the former estate of the Skinner family, located at 238 Cabot Street in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was built in 1868 for William Skinner, the owner of a successful silk spinning and textile business, and is named for the abundant wisteria vines which cascade across its eastern facade. Originally constructed in Williamsburg in 1868, the mansion designed by Northampton architect William Ferro Pratt was moved to Holyoke in 1874, following the devastating flood which swept away the original Skinner mills. Following the death of Belle Skinner, its music room was operated as a private museum from 1930 to 1959, housing the Belle Skinner Collection of Old Musical Instruments, before their donation by the family to Yale University. Since 1959 it has been operated as the Wistariahurst Museum, and is open to the public. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Holyoke City Hall is the historic city hall of Holyoke, Massachusetts. It is located at 536 Dwight Street, on the south east corner of High Street and Dwight Street. Serving both as the city administrative center and a public timepiece for the industrial city's workers, construction began on the Gothic Revival structure in 1871 to a design by architect Charles B. Atwood. Difficulties and delays in construction were compounded by Atwood's failure to deliver updated drawings in a timely manner, and the design work was turned over to Henry F. Kilburn in 1874. The building was completed two years later at a cost of $500,000. It has housed city offices since then.
This article addresses the history of papermaking in Massachusetts.
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.
PeoplesBank is the largest community bank in Western Massachusetts, providing banking and other financial services. As of 2020 it had $3.3 billion in assets.
Steiger's was a department store company of New England in the 19th and 20th centuries. Founded in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1896, its flagship store for much of the company's history was in Springfield, Massachusetts. At the time of its purchase by May Department Stores, Steiger's was described as the last family-owned chain of department stores in New England.
Doing business as D. H. & A. B. Tower, brothers David Horatio Tower and Ashley Bemis Tower were internationally known American architects, civil and mechanical engineers based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, who designed mills and factories in the United States from Maine to California as well as abroad, including in Canada, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, the United Kingdom, India, China, Japan, and Australia. By the time of its dissolution, the firm was described by one contemporary account as "the largest firm of paper mill architects in the country at that time"; its files reportedly contained more than 8,000 architectural plans for sites, mill machinery, and waterpower improvements.
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.
Oakdale is a neighborhood in Holyoke, Massachusetts located to the west of the city center, adjacent to downtown. Developed as a streetcar suburb in the late nineteenth century, today the neighborhood contains many Victorian houses, and about 460 acres (190 ha) of mixed residential and commercial zoning, as well as Forestdale Cemetery, Saint Jerome Cemetery, Rohan Park, and Holyoke Medical Center.
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.
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.
William Skinner & Sons, generally sold under the names Skinner's Satin, Skinner's Silk, and Skinner Fabrics, was an American textile manufacturer specializing in silk products, specifically woven satins with mills in Holyoke, main sales offices in New York, and a series of nationwide satellite offices in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Rochester, and St. Louis. Founded in 1848 by William Skinner as a partnership between himself and his brother-in-law at that time, the company was first established at a long-term location in Haydenville in 1854, as the Unquomonk Silk Mills. Following the Mill River Flood of 1874, Skinner relocated both his home and company to new facilities in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where the company would maintain its mills for the remainder of its existence. By the 20th century, Skinner & Sons had become the largest manufacturer of satins in the world, becoming one of the first to directly market to consumers in 1903, and operated out of the largest silk mill under one roof by 1912. During the 1920s and 1930s the brand was popularized with its usage in Hollywood, with silk gowns made from its satins adorned by such stars as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis on the silver screen. The company would also work extensively with the US Armed Forces during the Second World War, developing improved silk and other textile parachutes. Following a period of decline due in part to an increasingly competitive world market, the Skinner family and other shareholders sold the company for an undisclosed amount on January 26, 1961 to Indian Head Mills, which continued to operate the mills for converting rayon and other synthetics until the closure of the plant as a textile mill in 1963. In the 1970s, the Finished Goods Division of Indian Head was acquired by Springs Global, which used the Skinner name, marketing, and product line until the late 1980s; it has been defunct since that time.
Despite representing a significantly smaller population than their Irish, French, Polish, or Puerto Rican counterparts, in the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, German immigrants predominantly from Saxony and Rhineland played a significant economic, cultural, and political role in the history of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The influx of these immigrants can largely be attributed to a single mill and millworker complex, the Germania Woolen Mills, which formed the basis of the immigrant colony that would make the ward encompassing the South Holyoke neighborhood that with the highest German population per capita, in all of New England by 1875. Along with unionization efforts by the Irish community, Germans would also play a key role in the city and region's socialist labor movements as workers organized for higher pay and improved living conditions in the textile and paper mill economies.
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.
The Children's Museum at Holyoke is a children's museum in Holyoke, Massachusetts, featuring participatory art, exhibits related to science, daily life, and an elaborate climbing area. The museum is located Downtown, within Holyoke Heritage State Park, in the renovated Sheldon Building of the former William Skinner and Sons silk mill complex.
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).
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)A correspondent at Ireland Depot Village (the new city) informs us that the workmen in excavating for the Canal there, yesterday, discovered the skeletons of four Indians, in a sitting posture, with their faces towards the East. Beside them were found a Mortar and Pestle of stone, such as were used by the Indians in pounding corn. What was quite as singular as any thing was, that a subterranean channel ran completely around the skeletons.
A correspondent of the Springfield Republican informs that there have been, at the New City at South Hadley Falls, 79 deaths of Cholera for the month ending Aug. 14h. Every one of these were Irish, and all except two lived in the Irish settlement called the Patch. During the first two weeks, in nearly all the cases, the physicians were informed by the friends, that the patients had been drunk immediately previous...Mr. Gage, an American died of cholera Thursday evening. This is the first case among the American population.
In the New City, the cholera has very much abated. There have been only 8 or 10 cases the past week.
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(help)Notre City Hall est maintenant à l'abri du mauvais temps. Les toîts sont terminés et les ouvertures closes pour l'hiver. On reprendra les travaux au printemps, et d'aprés les plans qui viennent d'être fournis par des architectes de New-York, la bâtisse sera probablement terminée pour l'hiver prochain. Ce sera l'une des plus belles bâtisses de l'état.
The fire at Ingleside, the summer resort near Springfield, Mass. proves to have been the work of an incendiary.
Oakdale, the new section of the city located at the southern slope of Fairmount, was a barren tract of land less than two years ago giving little promises of becoming the attractive spot which it is to-day. One year ago last spring O. D. Allyn, the owner of the property, began to grade the land, dividing it up into city lots, and the following August he had his first house ready for sale...
John J. Prew, who recently bought 11 acres of land on the river road, just south of the driving park has divided the tract into 64 building lots, each of which is 50 by 125 feet in size. Three streets have been laid out, two to run due west from the road and to connect with a third running north and south. The first two will be known as Temple and Vernon streets, but the third is still unnamed. Mr. Prew has named this section Springdale and means to make it a very attractive spot. He sold five lots last week to Germans and will probably sell others in a few days. These men will build houses on their lots and others will probably follow their example. Springdale is nicely located for men who are employed in the mills at South Holyoke and they can own their own houses at comparatively small outlay
[The article] reproduces a letter from Herschel to the late Dr. Unwin describing his invention of the Venturi Meter. The letter is dated June 5, 1888, and addressed from the hydraulic engineer's office of the Holyoke Water Power Co., Mass. In his letter, Herschel says he tested a one-inch Venturi Meter, under 210 ft. head: 'I am now satisfied that here is a new and pregnant principle to be applied to the art of gauging fluids, inclusive of fluids such as compressed air, illuminating or fuel gases, steam, etc. Further, that the shape of the meter should be trumpet-shaped in both directions; such a meter will measure volumes flowing in either direction, which in certain localities becomes a useful attribute...'
Carlos Martinez Silva of the Colombia delegation perhaps enjoyed the trip to Holyoke most, for Manager Curtis secured him a seat on the locomotive, where he could drink in the beautiful scenery to the best advantage. It was the best view of the Connecticut river the party had had, and it was fully appreciated.
Argentina...Bolivia...Brazil...Chili [sic]...Colombia...Costa Rica...Guatemala...Honduras...Mexico...Nicaragua...Peru...Salvador...Uruguay...Venezuela...
Dr. James A. Naismith of the University of Kansas was the originator of basket ball. Yours truly, G. L. Gabler, M. D.
There have been intermittent claims that Naismith was not the person who invented the game of basketball. Proponents of this alternate theory suggest that a friend of Naismith, Dr. George Gabler, actually created the sport in the Holyoke (Massachusetts) YMCA in either 1885 or 1890. Gabler presumably then showed Naismith the game, and Naismith taught the game at the YMCA in Springfield. Gabler, however, never challenged claims that Naismith invented the sport, and it seems unlikely that this alternate scenario occurred. Nevertheless, details appeared in the Holyoke Daily Transcript in the 1940s.
The first electric car was run over the road yesterday afternoon about 2 o'clock and it ran very well. The car was run the whole length of the line and people gathered on the street corners to watch its progress. Superintendent Loomis and some of the directors occupied front seats and smiled their approval. The horses along the line did not seem to mind the cars much
On February 9, 1895, a man named William G. Morgan invented volleyball, which he called mintonette, at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
'That was his first real mention in the press,' said Sidney Radner, a master magician who now owns most of the surviving Houdini memorabilia.
Then it was off to Holyoke, where he received eerily similar praise: 'It makes no difference with Mr. Houdini what kind of handcuffs are produced,' the reported wrote. 'He unlocks them all with as much ease as if they were strings around his wrists.' Why do both stories sound alike? Because Houdini wrote them. He wrote all the stories that appeared in newspapers in the early days.
It is expected that the new public bath-house will be ready for use the first of next week"Holyoke, Massachusetts". Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor. Vol. IX. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office (GPO). 1904. pp. 1322–1323.
Albert Steiger & Co's new dry-goods store, the first in Holyoke to be devoted strictly to dry goods, was opened last evening, and from opening to closing time was pakced with people. The building is a decided architectural addition to the city
The Matheson Motor Car Company was founded by two Michigan brothers, Charles W. (1876-1940) and Frank F. (1871-1967) Matheson. The car was noted for its Overhead Cam engine design and in 1901 was documented as the first car with a hemispherical "Hemi" cylinder head, designed by the gifted Charles Greuter.
The speaker described the work of rail welding on the Holyoke street railway lines, this road being the first road in the United States to make use of thermit welded jounts.
G. E. Pellissier, civil engineer of the Holyoke Street Railway Company, presented on Jan. 27 a paper before the Civil Engineers' Society of Worcester Polytechnic Institute on thermit [sic] welding...When the thermit process was introduced in the United States the Holyoke Street Railway Company decided to try it on a mile of track which was about to be reconstructed, and accordingly an order for 160 joints was placed with the Goldschmidt Thermit Company...The welding was commenced on Aug. 8, 1904...The work...was the first piece of track in the United States laid with thermit joints
They[, the church deacons,] were not a little shocked to see a man wearing a Roman collar energetically thumping away on the keys of their organ. One deacon had a remark to make when the recital was finished. 'Brother,' he said, 'you've got something there'"
New York. Aug. 14 —Charles F. Willard in a Curtiss aeroplane, flew with three passengers and himself for 500 yards at Mineola, L. I. this evening. This is the first three passenger flight recorded in America. With his brother, W. H. Willard, R. F. Patterson and Archibald Albin aboard he ascended prettily and skimmed the distance at a height of 20 feet.
It was a Boston man who figured in the first case recorded of an aeroplane brought to earth by a bullet...Charles F. Willard, whose machine was wrecked in Joplin, Mo., during a cross-country flight
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ignored (help)Some ground for ambitious hopes for the future was shown at the opening noon-day luncheon of the season on September sixth when William Jennings Bryan gave the address. There can never be a bigger crowd at any of the luncheons for the rooms were packed full
From the time that he was cheered wildly by the students of Holy Cross College, Worcester, whom he addressed in the forenoon, until he closed his strenuous day in Holyoke City Hall late tonight, in his campaign for the Democratic nomination...
John Burroughs, the author and naturalist, was the week-end guest of Mr. and Mrs. Clifton Johnson in Hockanum
On Monday we visited friends at Smith College and had lunch with the girls at one of the dormitories. Later we went to Holyoke and were shown through a big paper-mill. Burroughs was impressed by the marvelous processes and the long time it must have taken to evolve such magic methods, but I think he was relieved when the tour was over and he could get away from the steam and odors, the turmoil and clatter. He pitied those who had to work in such an environment.
Former President William H. Taft paid Holyoke a visit yesterday and was given a warm welcome by Holyoke people. In the afternoon an informal public reception was given him at the Hotel Nonotuck, a large number of people taking the opportunity of meeting him. Later he gave a lecture on 'The presidency' at the high school.
The personality of the man and the breadth and good temper of his speeches pleases democrats quite as much as the republicans—so it was in Holyoke Wednesday evening with those who saw Mr. Taft at the high school auditorium and in the Holyoke club. Especially appreciated was Mr. Taft's remark that Mr. Roosevelt 'places the presidents of the United States in two classes, one of the Lincoln class and the other the Buchanan'– and added, 'he puts himself in the Lincoln class and me in the Buchanan.' This was said with the utmost good nature and it was fact.
When the public market opens this morning it will mean that Holyoke is the first city in Western Massachusetts to adopt this plan of bringing producer and consumer together.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy, and James G. Blaine Jr., of the American Red Cross campaign for $90,000 last night with addresses to an audience that filled city hall.
...in the presence of nearly 200 guests who came from Holyoke, Mass., New York, Danielson[ , Conn.], Newar, N. J., Attleboro and Woburn, Mass...The couple were attended by Christ Bress, editor of the Greek weekly newspaper, The Voice of Greece, of Holyoke, Mass., who was best man
Man Killed In Bus Accident Was Former Magazine Editor Christ Bress of New York, who was cremated in a Sheboygan-Fond-du Lac motor coach after it crashed with an automobile on County Trunk Z west of Plymouth Monday. [Bress] was a former newspaper and magazine editor and fraternal organization worker, according to information received by The Press from the L. C. Markatos company by whom he was employed as a salesman. He was a graduate of a Greek university and of "the law course at the University of New Mexico", and he taught school in Greece and in the United States. His favorite subjects were history and philosophy. Mr. Bress was at one time editor of a Greek newspaper and up to the time of his death he was a writer of feature articles in the Atlantis, a daily Greek newspaper of New York City. He was at one time president and secretary of the St. Andrew Club of Holyoke, Mass., and was one of the founders of the society.
Mrs Calvin Coolidge, wife of Vice-President Coolidge was the guest of honor at the Wheaton college card party this afternoon at the Highland Park Community house. It was Mrs. Coolidge's first appearance in this city since her husband was inaugurated into his present office.
HOLYOKE LEAGUE OF ARTS AND CRAFTS, 173 Walnut Street, Organized 1923
The most spectacular fire in Holyoke's history tonight laid waste to a full city block...The damage was estimated at between $750,000 and $1,000,000.
LeMay was in his car, halfway between Westover Air Force Base and his home in nearby Holyoke, Massachusetts, when the football game on his car radio was interrupted
Holyoke, June—The final issues of the New England Rundschau; a German language paper which has circulated in Western Massachusetts for the past 59 years, and the Staats-Zeitung, a similar paper circulating in Connecticut, are being published this week. They have been published by the Wisly Printing company. Victor Wisly said today that economic forces have worked adversely against the continuance of publication
HCC also took the No. 1 spot for its percentage of students who graduated with certificates or associate degrees, and its average net price was the second-most affordable out of all the schools in our survey...Holyoke Community College has to its name a distinction that no other institution in Massachusetts can claim: When it was founded in 1946, it was the only community college that existed in the Commonwealth.
...all the parishes of the city were represented in the 35-minute parade which even the bitter bite of March air couldn't chill. How could it, when the skirling of the pipes of the Caledonian Kiltie Band, resplendent in their color kilts, came along?
The new homes will be located on the Whiting Farms Rd., recently completed to serve the new industrial park.
Until repairs can be made the Hotel Essex will be temporarily closed. The High St. building was damaged by fire early Sunday morning. Mayor Samuel Resnic, a principal officer of the corporation owning the hotel, said Monday that the exact amount of damage to the eight-story structure has not been fully determined. Fire damage was confined to the northeast portions of the fifth, sixth, seventh and eight floors, but the water damage throughout the building was extensive...The closing of the hotel leaves the city without a major hotel operating.
Mortgages totaling $500,000 have been given to the General Investment Corp. of Hartford, Conn., by the Hartford National Bank and Trust Co...Charles N. Paliocha is president of GIC which is now in the process of remodeling the former Hotel Essex on High Street here into luxury apartments. The mortgage funds cover the building and cost of extensive renovations
In addition was it just meant to be that Sports Illustrated in 1972 assigned Charles Gaines to write a story on bodybuilding as part of their policy of covering a minority sport, and giving it once in a lifetime exposure? The assignment could have been for tiddlywinks or ferret racing. And was it just meant to be that Gaines asked George Butler to come along as photographer to shoot the 1972 East Coast Championships in Holyoke, Massachusetts? And was it just meant to be that Arnold was there as a guest poser and Butler immediately identified the then Mr. Olympia's star appeal, with the ensuing result of Pumping Iron the book and the movie? A less astute personage than Butler would not have spotted Arnold's potential, and Pumping Iron may never have happened.
That summer, [Gaines] and Butler had teamed up on a story for Sports Illustrated about a contest called Mr. East Coast in Holyoke, Massachusetts...They knew they were onto a fascinating subject that was unfamiliar to most Americans.
[Alderman] Kennedy said Monday night that one of the reasons city-wide Team Police Units were done away with was to improve polce visibility to by returning men to walking beats. He said that the walking beat established in his ward to replace TPU in the beginning of the year is receiving very scant coverage
Springdale Park reverberated Sunday with boisterous music and swirled with color as the second annual San Juan Bautista festival celebrated Puerto Rican culture
Now along comes Bob Thibodo of Northampton who an landed [sic] 11 pound, four ounce fish taken below the Holyoke Dam, breaking the world record by three ounces. Thibodo weighed the fish at LeWay Bait and Tackle in Belchertown, an official weighing station...The fish did not win the Holyoke Water Power Co. Shad Derby as Bob did not weigh the fish in time.
Steiger said it would close all 10 of its stores in mid-March.