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Round Hill Road 46.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, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31B-004 Easthampton NTH.591 Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 46 Round Hill Road Historic Name: Gawith Hall Uses: Present: School Original: School Date of Construction: c. 1870 Source: The Northampton Book Style/Form: High Victorian Gothic Architect/Builder: Ware and VanBrunt, architects, Boston Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: brick/brownstone Roof: asphalt Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): South wing added, n.d.; new entry, n.d.; northwest infill added, ca. 1960 Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 7.14 acres Setting: This building is set above the street level behind a low embankment. It is heavily screened by trees. INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [46 ROUND HILL ROAD] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 NTH.591 __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. Gawith Hall is a two-and-a-half story, High Victorian Gothic brick building under a mansard roof. It has three-story projecting towers at each end of its five-bay façade and an attached wing set back on the south, which has an attached tower on its south elevation. There is a two-and-a-half story ell on the west with a mansard roof and in the angle on the west between the ell and the main block is a one-story section that was later added to the building. The brick of the building is laid in High Victorian Gothic style with a doubled, continuous stringcourses at the sill and lintel levels of both second and third stories. The building’s cornice line is also laid decoratively with a brick dentil row. Hipped and flat roofed dormers project from the lower slope of the roof and their eaves are bracketed. Windows in the main block and its towers are 2/2 and they are segmentally arched. The original main entry is centered on the east façade of the main block and is segmentally arched and contains double leaf doors (replacements) beneath double 6-light transoms. Above the entry is a slope-roofed copper hood on wooden braces. It may date from the 1920s. There is a new wood entry in the angle between the main block and the south wing. It is two stories in height and is essentially a three-sided bay. Stylistically the building is relatively modest as architect-designed institutional buildings buildings of the times were designed, but in sheer size and setting it is a dominant building. 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: “In 1864, Mr. Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a prosperous Cambridge lawyer with a deaf daughter, attempted to persuade the Massachusetts Legislature to charter and support a school for young deaf children for the purpose of teaching them to speak and read lips. This effort failed and in 1866, Mr. Hubbard assisted Miss Harriet Rodgers in opening a small private school in Chelmsford. Until that time the system of instruction was sign language. The length of instruction was generally six years, beginning about the age of twelve. Miss Rodgers success with her young students in teaching them to speak and read lips encouraged Mr. Hubbard to try again for a state chartered school. At the same time, Mr. John Clarke of Northampton offered the state $50,000 to establish a school for the deaf in Northampton. The bills incorporating Clarke School were approved June 1, 1867. Mr. Clarke gave his $50,000 and an additional $250,000 legacy was left in his will. The school was established in the old Gothic Seminary on Gothic Street. In 1870, after Mr. Clarke’s death, the school was able to purchase 12 acres of land on Round Hill, south of the Round Hill Hotel. This land included two buildings on the east side of Round Hill Road that had been built by the Shepherd brothers, and had been used for the Round Hill School for Boys. A new building, Baker Hall (now Gawith Hall) was built on the western side of the road. It was named for Osmyn Baker the school’s first treasurer. This was from designs of Ware and Van Brunt, the prominent Boston architects. It was occupied by the boys, while Rodgers’ Hall was the girls’ residence and Clarke Hall was used for the school and library. Clarke Hall was replaced in the early 20th century by Hubbard Hall. In 1871, Alexander Graham Bell came to the Clarke School to instruct the teachers in his father’s system of Visible Speech. On July 11, 1877, he married Mabel Hubbard, the daughter of Mr. Hubbard, the first president of the school. Dr. Bell served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1883-1893, and as President from 1917-1922. Caroline Yale, the second principal of the school, came to the school in 1870 as a 22 year old teacher. She made Clarke School her life, and during her 63 years as teacher, Principal, and Director of the Teacher Education Department, the school achieved international prominence. In 1903, Grace Goodhue was admitted as a student in the Teacher Education Department. After completing her training, she remained as a teacher, during which time she made the acquaintance of a young Northampton lawyer, Calvin Coolidge. They soon married and Mrs. Coolidge retained her connections with the Clarke School for the rest of her life. She served as President of the Board of Trustees from 1935 to 1952. In the last twenty years, the school has erected two large buildings: the Alexander Graham Bell dormitory on Round Hill Road (no. 45) and Magna House on Crescent Street (no. 26).” INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [46 ROUND HILL ROAD] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 NTH.591 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. INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [46 ROUND HILL ROAD] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 NTH.591 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. This property would contribute to a potential Round Hill Historic District. This potential historic district is significant according to criteria A and C and would have local significance. The residential streets that cross Round Hill are significant according to criterion A for their reflection of development in Northampton from the early 19th century (1807) through the 1950s. Residential development began on Round Hill with the establishment of gentleman’s estates but grew with schools and a resort hotel until the 1890s when residential development increased significantly. From the 1890s through the 1950s (1959 McAlister Infirmary) Round Hill became home to Northampton’s wealthy and to the Clarke School for the Deaf. Architecturally this area of Northampton is significant for the range of residential architectural styles including the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival, and for its institutional buildings in the French Second Empire, through High Victorian Gothic and Colonial Revival styles ending with the American International style. The potential district has integrity of workmanship, design, feeling, association, and materials.