Bedford Terrace 32.pdf
Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. FORM B − BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph Topographic or Assessor's Map Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: PVPC Date (month /year): June, 2010 Assessor’s Number
USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31B-228 Easthampton NTH.692 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 32 Bedford Terrace Historic Name: Charles and Elizabeth Pomeroy
House Uses: Present: 12-unit college housing Original: single-family house Date of Construction: 1895-1900 Source: Street directories Style/Form: Colonial Revival Architect/Builder:
Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: clapboards Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): windows opened to become doors on
south, ca. 1960. Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.187 Acres Setting: This house is on a steeply sloping lot on a short street combining private and college residential
buildings.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [32 BEDFORD TERRACE] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 1 NTH.692 _x__ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much
space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate
the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. The Pomeroy House is one of four large-scale Colonial Revival style houses on Bedford Terrace,
all four relatively high style. This house is three-and-a-half stories in height, having a double attic and fully exposed brick basement on the east side of its sloping hillside lot.
The clapboard-sided house has a hipped roof with two levels of hipped dormers on the south, east and west. The façade of the house is essentially five bays wide with two, three-sided
bays at each end and three bays in the center. The three-sided bays rise beneath front-gabled roofs whose eaves make returns to form pediments. A flight of stairs rises from street level
to the main entry prece3ded by a porch on composite, fluted columns. The entry has a broad surround with sidelights, and a door with upper half of beveled glass and lower half paneling.
The entry is flanked by two additional doors that originally would have been windows. The house is richly decorated with festooning in the pediments of the bays, on the pilasters that
frame the bays, and on the dormers as well. The overhanging pediments have scroll cut brackets at the eaves level. There are two interior chimneys and windows are largely 1/1 sash. This
house with its unique design and many details was probably architect-designed. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local (or state)
history. Include Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. From the Form B of 1980, “The first known owner of a building on this
lot was Charles Pomeroy, a horse trainer who is listed in the 1900 directory. By 1918, however, this address had become the Bedford Lodge apartment house.” Charles R. Pomeroy appears
in the 1893 Northampton directory as a horse trainer and dealer and was living at that time, single and on King Street. In 1895 he had moved to Bridge Street and married that year, but
in 1900 was in this house with his wife Elizabeth on Bedford Terrace where he continued to work as a horse dealer and trainer along with running a boarding house for Smith College students
next door at 36 Bedford Terrace. The Pomeroys had five servants living with them in this house, who presumably helped out with the boarding house next door. Charles Pomeroy had died
by 1920 and Elizabeth lived alone in this house and kept up her work at the lodging house, as it was then called, next door. Although the Pomeroys began running a boarding house for
college students as a couple, it was common for single women in Northampton to earn their living by acting as boarding house matrons or boarding single students in their homes. By 1937
the building had become the Bedford Lodge of Furnished Rooms. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire Massachusetts, New York, 1873. Hales, John G. Plan
of the Town or Northampton in the County of Hampshire, 1831. Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895.
Northampton Directories of 1900 and 1905. U. S. Federal censuses, 1880-1930. Walker, George H. and Company. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Walling, Henry F.
Map of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New York, 1860.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [32 BEDFORD TERRACE] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 2 NTH.692 National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in an historic district Contributing to a potential
historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by _____Bonnie Parsons___________________ The criteria
that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. Pomeroy House would contribute to a potential Bedford Terrace historic district that developed after the street was laid
out at the end of the 19th century with houses built by well-to-do merchants, educators and independently wealthy residents. Many of the first owners were single women several of whom
were professional academicians and physicians . The street is significant for its long association with Smith College as early on it became a part of the Smith College housing plan when
the school had insufficient on-campus housing and a growing student body. At the end of the 19th century the houses became student boarding houses, dormitory residences or single rooms
were rented out. The Bedford Terrace association with Smith College grew even stronger with construction of two large-scale dormitories on the street. Architecturally the potential historic
district is significant for the fine examples of the Colonial Revival style that line its western side and for the architect-designed Revival style dormitories on its eastern side. This
potential historic district has integrity of workmanship, feeling, setting, design and materials.