FORM B − BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Assessor’s Number
USGS Quad
4B-49
Area(s)
Form Number
SpringfieldNorth
Town: South Hadley Place: (neighborhood or village) South Hadley Falls
Photograph Address: 44 Canal Street Historic Name: Tomasz Zytowski House Uses: Present:
dwelling
Original: dwelling Date of Construction: 1916 Source: South Hadley Falls directories 1915, 1916 Style/Form: Craftsman Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim:
Topographic or Assessor's Map
wood shingles and clapboards
Roof: asphalt shingle Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates):
Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | |
Date
Acreage: 13,246 sq. ft. Setting: The Connecticut River passes on the south west side of the house. It is set back slightly on its lot.
Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: PVPC Date (month / year): January, 2008
Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET
[TOWN ]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
[ADDRESS ] Area(s)
Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
___ 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 Tomasz Zytowski House is an east-facing house, one-and-a-half stories in height under a hipped roof from which rise two interior chimneys and a hipped roof dormer on the north elevation. The house is Craftsman in style, a style that aimed to return to simple forms and natural materials after the excesses of the Queen Anne period. The contrast between this house and its opposite neighbor at 39 Canal Street, a Queen Anne style house, illustrates the direction that Craftsman designers were taking during the early 20th century. The house is basically square in plan, but it has a porch projecting on its south east corner and a three-sided bay on its south elevation for simple plan variation. The projecting porch is open and it illustrates the style’s reduction of ornament and use of local materials. Instead of using turned support posts and a railing with turned balusters, the Craftsman porch has ample half-length posts resting on a solid shingled railing wall. There is no ornament and forms are solid and geometric. Adjacent to the porch is a triple window composition. This window composition is repeated on the south façade as well, and their presence illustrates the style’s interest in gaining light to the interior through fewer but larger windows, which simplified the elevations. While the openings and composition of the windows remain as originally constructed the sash themselves have been changed for vinyl 1/1 sash. The house is wood shingle sided, has high brick foundations and an asphalt shingle roof.
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. In 1915 Tomasz Zytowski was living on High Street, the only farm laborer on a street of mainly paper and textile mill workers, along with a few related jobs in hardware stores and a rubber-making businesses. The following year 1916 Zytowski appears as the first occupant of this house: 44 Canal Street near the corner of Taylor Street. In 1916 when Tomasz moved here, this northern stretch of Canal Street was rather sparsely built up and was a residential and commercial mix, with an ice-cutting company nearby. Between 1913 and 1918 a number of new houses went up on the street including a two-family next door at #40. Tomasz Zytowski was not long in the new house, however. In 1918 George and Emma Moffatt moved in. George, as was typical of many of South Hadley Falls’s residents at the beginning of the 20th century, was employed in the Holyoke mills. In this case, he worked at Farr Alpaca Company, which produced serges, worsted goods and alpaca textiles. George continued to work at Farr Alpaca for many years, but in 1940 had retired. By 1950 George had died, and Emma in that year moved to 22 Spring Street. The new owners were Catherine and Owen Dunphy. Owen was a station engineer in Holyoke, and the Dunphys were still in the house in 1960. Three owners in 44 years is representative of the history of many of the houses on Canal. The street sent many of its residents to the mills to work, and the work was apparently sufficient to remain in their jobs and remain in their community. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the South Hadley Falls mills were no longer active, Canal Street residents often adjusted by taking up work in Holyoke, a larger city with a wider range of job types.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. Atlas of Hampshire County, 1878. Cronin, Irene, and the South Hadley Historical Society. Images of America: South Hadley, 1998. _______. Irene Cronin’s Newspaper Articles, scrapbook, South Hadley Historical Society files. Holyoke and South Hadley Street Directory, 1884-1965. Massachusetts Historical Commission. Reconnaissance Survey Reports, “South Hadley”, typescript, 1982. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1889-1929. Town of South Hadley, Assessor’s Records. Continuation sheet 1
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET
[TOWN ]
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
[ADDRESS ] Area(s)
Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Walling, Henry Francis. A Topographical Map of Hampshire County Massachusetts, 1856.
Continuation sheet 2
