Round Hill Road 48.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):
April, 2011 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 31B-004-001 Easthampton NTH. Town: Northampton Place: (neighborhood or village) Address: 48 Round Hill Road Historic Name:
Coolidge Hall Uses: Present: classrooms Original: classrooms Date of Construction: 1933 Source: Integral date block Style/Form: Colonial Revival Architect/Builder: A. Lincoln Fechheimer,
Architect, Ohio Exterior Material: Foundation: poured concrete Wall/Trim: brick, cast stone, clapboards Roof: slate Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates):
Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 7.4 acres Setting: This building faces east and is set back from the street on the campus. It is heavily shaded with trees and shrubbery.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON ] [48 Round Hill Road] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 1 NTH. _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. Coolidge Hall is a two-and-a-half story brick and cast stone building under a side-gabled slate
roof. It has clapboards in its gable ends, an idiosyncratic feature that is found in Skinner Hall and the Engineer’s Cottage as well. The building has two cross-gables on its east façade
with 12-light steel casement windows under 8-light transoms. Lintels are Colonial Revival style splayed forms. The entry to the building is centered on the east façade and is composed
of a hood on curved brackets. The door surround has fluted pilasters and is trabeated. There are entries in the cross-gables at each side of the main entry. On the west elevation is
an oriel windows supported on cast stone consoles. This building as well as Skinner Hall is designed to carry on the Colonial Revival style while improving on the illumination of the
interior by large windows that take up a much larger portion of the exterior walls than in previous decades of the style’s popularity. 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. Coolidge Hall was built
by the Clarke School for the deaf in 1933 to house the Domestic Science Department’s courses on cooking, sewing, art and crafts. It is a companion building to the campus’s Skinner Hall
where technical courses were offered for the boys at the school. Coolidge Hall was named for President Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace Goodhue Coolidge. Calvin Coolidge served on
Clark’s Board of Trustees from 1920-1933. Grace Coolidge taught at the school and then served as a Trustee from 1933 to 1957. She was president of Board of Trustees from 1935 to 1952.
The documented architect of Coolidge Hall is A. Lincoln Fechheimer who was in the class of 1891 at the Clarke School for the Deaf and returned to design for the school in the 1930s.
Besides Coolidge Hall Fechheimer designed Skinner Hall and Hubbard Hall and most likely the Engineer’s Cottage. He was an Ohio architect trained at Columbia University and the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He began practice in Cinncinnati in 1906 in partnership with Harry Hake and then with Benjamin L. Ihorst into the 1940s, and specialized in school campus work.
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 ] [48 Round Hill Road] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 2 NTH. 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.