Nonotuck Street 179-181.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: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Date (month /year):
March, 2011 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 23A-242 Easthampton NTH.225 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Florence Address: 179-181 Nonotuck Street Historic
Name: Bensonville Worker’s Housing Uses: Present: Two-family residence Original: Two-family residence Date of Construction: 1840s Source: Sheffield and visual evidence Style/Form: Raised
Cape Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: brick, concrete Wall/Trim: vinyl Roof: asphalt Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): Siding applied
and windows replaced, ca. 2000 Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.442 acres Setting: this is a south-facing house set on a rise in the landscape.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [179-181 NONOTUCK STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 1 NTH.225 ___ 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. This house like that at 193-195 Nonotuck Street is an early version of workers’ housing in which
a single-family, raised Cape house form was adopted for two-family use by adding one-story kitchen wings at each side. The result was a very compact house for two families, but was not
often repeated as mill owners needed to attract and keep workers by housing that adapted to families of greater size. This is a one-and-a-half story five bay house under a side-gable
roof with chimneys at each end. It has a single entry on the south façade, lending it a strong appearance of a single-family house. The one-story wings have a second chimney on their
roof ridges and they are three bays long. The vinyl siding and vinyl replacement windows obscure the historic details of this house. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building.
Explain its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. From Form B of 1980: “This is
the most ornate of the double cottages with side ells in Florence, all of which except for one are located on Nonotuck Street. This street was laid out in 1836 and for a short while
was the center of Florence, which had developed within a bend of the Mill River, and took advantage of the available water power for manufacturing. After the dissolution of the ‘Community’
in 1846, 1846, two industrial companies, the Nonotuck Silk Company and the Bensonville Mfg. Co., carried on in the area. The Bensonville Co. became the Greenville Co. in 1850 and they
owned all of the residential property which was located on the north side of Nonotuck Street.” By 1830 Nonotuck Street as an extension westward of Elm Street was in place and in the
area that was to develop on the Mill River into Florence textile mills was an oil and saw mill. The rest of the area was sparsely populated by farms. With establishment of the Northampton
Association for Education and Industry in Florence in 1842, the village began to grow as new members and their families arrived to work in the Association’s silk mill and attend its
school. Most of the Association members lived in the “factory boarding house”, as the multi-purpose building was called, but the Association also owned a few houses on Nonotuck Street,
one on Spring Street and two on Meadow Street. At the closing of the Association its mill was bought by George George W. Benson and several other investors and became the Bensonville
Manufacturing Company. Benson bought land on Nonotuck Street and sold lots to people who worked in his mills for housing and used other houses for rental. Benson lost his part in the
cotton manufacturing business over a religious issue, and it became the Greenville Manufacturing Company and the housing was a part of the company’s property. This house was identified
in 1860 as part of the Greenville Manufacturing Company Housing and once again as such on the map of 1873. By 1884 A. L. Williston had taken over the Greenville Company and with it the
housing. Williston sold the company to the Nonotuck Silk Company in 1886. The houses were sold off. 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. Walker, George H. and Company. Atlas of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Walling, Henry F. Map of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New
York, 1860.