Bay State Village

By Jackie Ballance (2024)

An aerial satellite map views a residential neighborhood outlined by a thick red border. Labeled "Bay State," a red pin marks the center of the neighborhood, which features tree-lined streets, houses, and buildings. The Mill River wraps around the left, bottom, and right borders of the highlighted area, while a straight red line marks the northern boundary. The lower curve of the river is labeled "Mill River Reservoir." Outside the red boundary, dense green forests, open agricultural fields, and neighboring roads are visible.

This map displays the "South Part of Florence, Town of Northampton," detailed with property boundaries, land tracts, roads, waterways, and industrial zones. A large winding river flows vertically through the left-center of the map, branching into smaller streams and ponds on the right, which power various mills such as the Eagle & Vernon Paper Mills and the Warner & Lathrop Silk Mill.The landscape is divided into numerous rectangular and irregular plots of land labeled with the names of nineteenth-century residents and prominent local businesses, including S. Strong, P. Nutting, J. Warner, and the Greenville Manufacturing Company. Distinct neighborhoods and industrial clusters are highlighted with light yellow text overlays, reading "BAY STATE," "BAKERS HILL," and "PAPER MILL VILLAGE." Roads cross the terrain in a grid-like and diagonal fashion, labeled with names like Beacon Street, Locust Street, and Main Street. In the bottom-left corner, a large "Florence Business Notices" directory lists local merchants, manufacturers, and tradespeople, categorizing them under headings such as Carpenters, Manufacturers, and Stoves, Tinware, and Hardware.

Left: Google Earth image. Right: Map of Florence from the County Atlas of Hampshire Massachusetts, F.W. Beers & Co., 1873. Historic Northampton (ID no. 1976.155.5).

The boundaries of Bay State Village have never been firmly established and are still disputed. The [red] lines on the [Google Earth] map above are generally accepted today as Bay State Village. It incorporates the former Paper Mill Village and ‘Victoria Bismarck,’ the neighborhood that grew up across the river after the Clement Street Bridge was built in 1895.”

— BSVA Archives

A black-and-white photograph shows a group of male factory workers posing along a busy production line. The workers are arranged in a diagonal line extending from the right foreground deep into the background on the left side of the room. In the immediate right foreground, two young men sit on low wooden stools, one holding a tool or piece of wood across his lap. Behind them, several other men with mustaches and dark work clothes sit or stand at their respective workstations alongside an array of heavy machinery. Large overhead mechanical pulleys, belts, and driveshafts run along the ceiling structure above the workers. To the left, a long row of tall, arched windows lines the wall, letting in a strong, hazy light that creates a bright glare in the background and reflects softly across the wooden floorboards and ceiling beams. — Men working in Baystate Tool Company. Photograph courtesy of Forbes Library.

18th Century, Early Industrial Development

Development of industry in the area now called Bay State Village began early in the 18th century with the fulling mill. Built about 1702 and situated on today’s Federal Street, it was the first mill run by a waterwheel this far upstream on the Mill River. Women spun thread and wove it into cloth at home, then sent this cloth to the mill to be “fulled,” that is, shrunk and thickened by moistening, heating, and pressing.

William Butler, founder of the Hampshire Gazette, built a papermill in 1785 on the same site as the fulling mill. All the paper for the Gazette was made here. Paper was made from rags collected by the employees. Rollers driven by the waterwheel crushed rags into pulp. Converting the pulp into paper was done by hand. An 1830 map of the area shows no appreciable development yet beyond the paper mill. There may have been farms, but there are no streets or roads shown.

Various industries have been located on this site ever since. In the 20th century, it was the site of the Electric Wire Company, and in the 21st century, the site was home to O’Rourke’s Driving School.

A photograph showing the front facade of a historic two-story house with dark brown wood siding under a cloudy blue sky. The rectangular building features a gabled roof topped with two brick chimneys, flanked by autumn trees with yellow and orange leaves on both sides. A line of five rectangular windows with white frames runs across the second floor, while the first floor features four matching windows alongside a central double wooden door and a smaller red door further to the left. Lush green, rounded bushes line the foundation, and a grassy front yard slopes downward toward the bottom left, where a small section of a paved street and a silver car are visible. — The old boardinghouse building. Photograph courtesy of Forbes Library.

19th Century, Rapid Growth

By 1831, the Butler Paper Factory employed 27 men and women. Men earned one dollar a day; women earned 32 cents per day. The surrounding neighborhood became known as Paper Mill Village. A boarding house was built at the corner of Federal and Milton Streets to house paper company workers. The big brown house still stands.

Meanwhile, 1838 saw Joseph Warner dam Broughton’s Brook, which ran through land off of Elm Street, now owned by Smith Vocational High School. With that water power, he opened a silk mill with boarding house accommodations provided for his workers. Warner operated the silk mill until his death, when his son Luther J. Warner took over the business. Luther Warner joined in partnership in 1882 with John N. Leonard, and the company took the Leonard name, John N. Leonard & Co. By 1890, when its name became Leonard Silk Company, they built a completely up-to-date steam-powered mill complex that spread over five acres. The company made sewing silk and machine thread.

In June 1891, only 14 months after the new mill was celebrated, Leonard’s Silk Mill suddenly went bankrupt. In spite of Leonard’s efforts to reorganize and to raise money from investors, the factory went under. Then in 1895, the building burned to the ground and the site was bought by the Nonotuck Silk Company.

Heavy spring rains in 1906 caused Warner’s then 68-year-old dam to collapse, flooding the meadows of Bay State Village between the hospital and the river. By a blessing of geography, Bay State had been spared death and destruction when the Williamsburg dam broke, causing the disastrous flood upriver back in 1874.

The Vernon brothers had bought both paper mills in 1845. They installed a 25-horsepower steam engine to use when the water level dropped too low to run the mills’ waterwheels. One of their products, called Eagle Paper, was considered as fine a quality as any paper made in this country.

An image of a long, two-story industrial building made of dark red bricks under an overcast sky. The structure consists of two main sections: a taller block on the left with part of its facade densely covered in crawling green ivy, and an elongated right wing with rows of small, identical rectangular windows. A paved parking lot with faded white space markings stretches across the foreground, while a dense green forest covers the rising hillside immediately behind the property. — The Northampton Cutlery Company consisted of several buildings built between 845-1918 arranged around a central courtyard. The oldest section is a paper mill (Northampton Paper Company) along the Mill River from 1836-1848.

The Northampton Cutlery

Baystate Tool Company was founded in 1854 employing 150 workers. It was the first of several cutlery mills run by water power on the Mill River. Housed in the building that stands on Riverside Drive today, the factory made farm tools like shovels and hoes. During the Civil War, it switched to manufacturing gun barrels, bayonets, and sabers. The owners were, like other early entrepreneurs, men whose names have lived on in our streets and schools—William Clement, Charles Maynard, Jerome Jackson, and later, H.R. Hinckley.

1871 saw the Baystate Tool Company become the Northampton Cutlery, producing fine tableware and hunting knives. The knife plate and fork tines were made of stainless steel, then sold to silver companies such as Reed and Barton, who added silver handles.

19th-century census records show that many Bay State residents came from Ireland during the potato famine years, and more came from French-speaking Canada. For example, one page from the 1880 census taken in homes close to the cutlery shows 26 out of the 50 residents enumerated were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Of those 26, 23 came from Ireland or England, and three from Canada.

Much work at the cutlery was highly skilled and done by hand. Those skilled craftsmen came from Sheffield, England, and Solingen, Germany, from families who had worked as grinders and platers for generations.

The cutlery jobs were forging, grinding, buffing, plating, and polishing. People worked 12-hour days. Grinding and polishing required more skill and earned $12–$18 per week. That’s 18 to 28 cents per hour. Many workers suffered—and died—from “grinders consumption.” There were also children as young as 10 years old working in the mills. As workers’ conditions improved and silver prices rose, production became less profitable, until 1986, when the Northampton Cutlery closed its doors.

Many of the cutlery workers hoped to bring family from back home to the U.S. eventually, and they needed to stay in touch. With 12-hour workdays and the only post office a long walk or bike ride downtown, mailing and receiving letters was difficult. In 1888, workers went house to house with a petition asking for a post office. There followed much debate over how their letters would be addressed.

Then on February 14, 1888, the Gazette printed a notice, “All letters for people here should be directed to ‘Baystate, Mass’.” The post office was in the village store (known to many as Smitty’s after 1975). It was located directly across the street from the Cutlery.

Butler’s paper company had been destroyed by fire in 1889. Edward Wood rebuilt and started another mill that made fine cutlery on the same old paper mill site. He was the first businessman in town to use oil instead of coal to heat forges. He also operated a grocery store and was chief of the fire department. The beautiful old fire house still stands next to the cutlery building on Riverside Drive, crowned by its historic bell tower.

A black-and-white photograph shows a large group of young schoolchildren and their female teacher posed on the brick steps of a schoolhouse building. The children, approximately thirty in number and appearing to be between five and ten years old, are arranged in four tiered rows that fill the frame. They wear late 19th- or early 20th-century attire; the girls are dressed in long, dark, often plaid or pinafore-style dresses, while the boys wear dark jackets, button-down shirts with oversized white collars, and trousers. On the far right, a woman stands tall in a dark, high-collared dress with voluminous puffed sleeves, her hair pinned up as she looks toward the camera. The background consists of a textured brick wall with a large wooden door and tall, narrow windows directly behind the group. — School children and their teacher at Bay State School, 1896. Photograph courtesy of Forbes Library.

Baystate Village Schools

In the area, were also two schools serving the community. One, the original Bay State School on Main Street (now Riverside Drive), was built in 1869 to serve about 100 children in seven grades. These children and their teacher were photographed in 1896.

The school building was demolished in 1929, replaced by the present building, and renamed in 1955 for mayor William Feiker, who came from an old Bay State family. The Feiker school closed in 1975, but the building continues to serve as the Nonotuck preschool and community center.

The other school, called the Papermill School, was located in what would now be the parking lot of Northampton High School. It was a classic one-room school house with a woodstove and an outhouse.

For many years there had been a brickyard at the foot of what is now the high school hill, across from present-day Greg’s Garage. In 1885, William Bailey and Jeremiah Brown bought the brickyard, converted it from horsepower to steam, and began producing millions of bricks. These bricks were used to build the Forbes Library, Smith College buildings, Clarke School, First National Bank, McCallum’s (now Thornes Market) and the Blessed Sacrament Church.

An extremely yellowed black-and-white photograph of an open-air streetcar numbered 27, branded with a "BAY STATE" sign on its roof. Two uniformed transit workers pose with the vehicle; one conductor stands on the ground alongside the open passenger rows, while the motorman stands at the front controls on the platform. The open-sided trolley features rows of wooden bench seats under a curved roof supported by slender pillars, with overhead electric wires visible above. — Bay State to Bridge Street trolley car, with Frank A. Tilley (on steps) and Charlie Thompson, motorman, c. 1905. Historic Northampton (ID no. 1976.120.1).

Wet bricks, made from the clay of a nearby hill, were laid on rows of parallel racks six feet high and covered with pointed roofs. Huge log fires were built in the ditches below those racks to dry the bricks. After dark, neighbors would gather on the hill above to see the racks silhouetted against fire and sometimes a workman pushing a wheelbarrow through the inferno. The brickyard went out of business in the early 1900s.

Transportation

The Northampton Street Railway, which had been using horse cars for public transportation beginning in 1866, converted to electric trolleys in 1893.

There were “closed cars” for winter travel and “opens” for the summer. According to Northampton historian Alice Manning, “For pure traveling pleasure the open car was like nothing else that ever was invented.” Street cars named Bay State, as pictured, eventually connected the Village with Northampton and other points as far as Williamsburg, Greenfield, and Amherst for mere pennies. The end of the line was in front of the Bay State village store. Trolleys were done in by the coming of the automobile and the Depression, and they stopped running in 1932.

A three-quarter view of a historic, two-story red brick building. The structure features a dark grey roof with green trim. The left facade has tall, arched multi-pane windows with stone sills evenly spaced across both floors, along with vertical brick decorative detailing on the corner. A small awning with a dark roof and green support posts projects over a side entrance with a green door and concrete steps. To the right, a tall, attached square brick tower rises above the main building roofline. The tower has arched window openings at its top tier beneath a dark, flared bell-shaped roof, a small round window on the middle tier, and arched windows and a green door at ground level. A lush green bush frames the lower right foreground, while a small portion of a white car is visible on the far left. — This building on Ladd Avenue was designed by Florence architect E.C. Gardner and built for the International Screw and Nail Company in 1866. It was sold to the W.T. Clement Cutlery Company. later the Northampton Cutlery Company.

The growth of industries in Bay State Village in the mid to late 19th century naturally led to increased traffic in the area. Bay State villagers had to make detours of several miles to cross the river. There was some community agitation around this inconvenience. In 1893, Mayor John B. O’Donnell’s annual address included the following statement: “…a bridge ought to be provided somewhere across the Mill River between the Old Bridge and the Railroad Bridge. I think it would be well to have the whole City Council meet these people…to decide this question.”

The city went ahead with a plan to build a new one-lane bridge. According to the city engineer’s report of 1894, “a new iron bridge over the Mill River at Bay State…has been completed and a new street graded.” The new street, built to serve the bridge, required the labor of “30 men and five teams,” and it was named Clement Street. The city treasurer’s report of the same year indicates that the bridge construction cost $3,433.23. Unfortunately, there is little other documentation related to the original construction of the Clement Street bridge, and the engineer and builder remain unknown.

Bay State Today

A photograph of a historic, single-lane bridge made of dark grey or black painted iron or steel. The bridge features an overhead, arched framework composed of latticed beams and horizontal cross-braces spanning the paved roadway. On the right side, dense, vibrant green foliage and mature trees grow closely against the structure, their branches leaning over the top of the bridge framework. A modern silver guardrail runs along the right edge of the paved surface, separating it from the steep drop-off into the unseen ravine or riverbank. In the background, the road curves gently upward and to the left, where a gray car is visible approaching the bridge from a distance. On the far left, a small, rectangular bronze plaque is affixed to the main vertical support beam of the bridge near the ground. — The Clement Street Bridge, built in 1894.

The Clement Street bridge has served the Bay State community throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st. In 2014, neighbors submitted an application to list the bridge in the National Register of Historic Places. A clerical error at the Massachusetts Historical Commission put the paperwork in limbo until a follow-up inquiry was finally made in 2023. Whether or not National Historic Registry status is pursued, the bridge is both a neighborhood treasure and a frequently used shortcut between Easthampton and Florence.

A city report from 1991 evaluated Bay State Village for Local Historic District status to preserve a community that still offers a look at a traditional 19th-century New England mill village. The unique natural and built landscapes of Bay State Village continue to remind residents of the history, drama, and quintessential character of small-town New England life as experienced by our ancestors.

Many of these 19th-century factory buildings and houses still stand in a streetscape that evokes a feeling for life in those times. While the community no longer has its own post office, the original village store and post office building still serves the community, currently in 2023, as a popular Vietnamese restaurant.

An image of a historic, two-story red brick building. The house features bright red brick walls with white trim along the roofline, which includes decorative white brackets beneath a wide overhang. On the second floor, multiple double-hung windows are visible, including one centered over the porch with a white curved decorative lintel above it, and two more on the right side of the house. The enclosed front porch, positioned on the lower left, has beige siding at its base, a peaked roof, and a row of large glass windows separated by white frames. A small set of stairs with a dark metal railing leads up to the porch entrance on the left. Green bushes and dense foliage grow in front of the porch and along the base of the house, partially obscuring the lower foundation. On the far left, a portion of an adjacent dark grey house with a shingled roof is visible. In the background, the lush green canopy of a tall tree rises above the roofline of the red brick house. — Brick home formally owned by a mill manager, built in 1870.

One can find houses on Google maps that match the homes on the old Bay State Village maps. Two examples from Riverside Drive reflect the class divide. The brick home was a mill manager’s house, built in 1870.

It faces six cottages across the street that were built in 1860 for workers of the International Screw Company. Many of Bay State’s early cottages were like these: a story-and-a-half, with stone-walled, dirt-floor cellars and traditional New England clapboard siding. Sometimes the cottages were home to factory workers’ widows who took in boarders for income.

Modern residents of Bay State Village proudly display a 58-foot-long “Wall of History” each spring and fall at neighborhood gatherings. It is that same “Wall of History” which inspired this treatise.

A colorized postcard depicting a view looking down a quiet, tree-lined street. Small, gable-roofed residences border the street. On the left side of the dirt and paved road, a row of two-story wooden houses sits behind manicured green lawns and small stone steps. Lush green trees and utility poles with crossarms line both sides of the street, casting soft shadows across the landscape. In the far distance on the right, a single trolley car rests on a set of tracks that runs parallel to the road. — The 6 houses were built by the Bay State Hardware Company in the mid-19th century for employee housing. Postcard showing street car on Main Street (now Riverside Drive) in Bay State, circa 1890s-1920s. Historic Northampton (ID no. 2016.26.7).

A photograph of a wall with a crafted "Bay State Wall of History" timeline displayed on a long sheet of brown craft paper. A solid, dark horizontal line runs continuously across the middle of the paper, acting as the main timeline axis. Vertical tick marks and large, hand-drawn numbers mark the centuries, starting with 1600 on the far left, followed by 1700, 1800, and 1900 toward the right. Dozens of historical items and typed text are pinned or taped above and below the center line, creating a dense, chronological collage. These items include printed text blocks in speech bubbles pointing to specific dates, black-and-white photographs of historical buildings, old sketch illustrations, historical maps, and newspaper clippings. Near the left side, a prominent white sign with a red and blue border reads "BAY STATE WALL OF HISTORY." Further right, a vertical document displays technical illustrations of knives or tools. The items become significantly more crowded as the timeline progresses toward the 1800s and 1900s on the right. — Portion of the “Bay State Wall of History” timeline on display in the Nonotuck Community School, formerly the Feiker School, in March 2006 during the annual Bay State Bash.

This essay is dedicated to and dedicated to BSVA members Sue Norton, Alex Ghiselin, Diane Welter, Peter Mclean, and Karen Fiegenbaum, who created the BSVA “Wall of History” in 2020.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Bay State Village Association Archives

City of Northampton Local Historic Districts Final Report, May 1991.

Hannay, Agnes. A Chronicle of Industry on the Mill River. Smith College History Department, 1912.

MHC Northampton Reconnaissance Survey.