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View of the Town Hall

View of the Town Hall, Northampton, Massachusetts
Engraving from a drawing by Mrs. L. Ann Chandler of Boston
Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, circa 1854.

Town Hall, built 1814

On March 19, 1849, the town of Northampton voted to replace the 1814 town hall (rebuilt in 1818 after a fire) located next to the Hampshire County Courthouse. A committee of thirteen citizens was chosen to select a site, a building plan and a contractor within a budget of $15,000. On May 15, 1849, the Hampshire Gazette reported that the committee selected the site of the homestead of the widow of Ebenezer Hunt having received an offer to purchase the "Widow Hunt's premises" for $2,500. A plan for a building designed by Northampton resident and architect William Fenno Pratt was accepted. In 1835, Pratt had designed the Gothic Seminary, a private school for girls located near what is now Gothic Street. The Gothic

Seminary, shown at right, featured spiky finials, a crenellated rooftop and pointed-arch traceried windows recalling the age of Gothic cathedrals. The design for Town Hall combined elements of the Gothic and Tudor styles with Norman towers replete with arrow slits. William Fenno Pratt would design houses, commercial blocks and other buildings in Northampton for the next 40 years.

The town hall committee accepted the bid of Decreet, Boynton and Company of Springfield for the construction at a projected cost of $12,975. A gala celebration of dedication was held on March 13, 1850. While the first story held the town office, the second story featured an auditorium. This public space hosted notable speakers and political, literary and music events until it was remodelled into office space in 1923. In May 1852, Jenny Lind performed before a crowd of over 1,000. Writers Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Washington Cable spoke in 1853, 1855 and 1889, respectively. Anti-slavery speakers included Florence resident Sojourner Truth in 1854, William Lloyd Garrison in 1852 and 1858 and Frederick Douglass in 1866. In response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, ten "fugitives of Southern Slavery" living in Northampton invited the "the inhabitants of the town of Northampton ... to assemble in public meeting in Town Hall, ... to express their opinions and adopt such measures as they may deem proper to prevent

Notice in the Hampshire Gazette
February 28, 1854

Massachusetts from being made slave hunting ground." On March 6-7, 1855, William Wells Brown spoke as part of an anti-slavery convention held at Town Hall. On Friday, December 2, 1859, a large meeting assembled there after the execution of John Brown, adopting 16 resolutions and collecting contributions of aid for his family.

In the 1902 book, Northampton of Today, city clerk Egbert I. Clapp wrote that, "cuts of the structure were published in several of the leading magazines of the period and all in all, Northampton was looked upon as a possessor of a most beautiful and attractive Town Hall and one which was in keeping with her charming scenery of mountain, meadow and stream." In 1850, a woodcut of the building was featured on the front page of Ballou's New York Illustrated Weekly. The engraving shown above was featured in Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion in 1854 with the following caption:

Town Hall, Northampton.
The view we present in the engraving above is taken from a drawing by Mrs. L. Ann Chandler, of Boston, and is a representation of the Town Hall in Northampton, Mass. It is built of brick, in the gothic style of architecture, and covered with mastic cement in imitation of red sandstone. It is one hundred feet long, by sixty wide, and was erected in 1851, at a cost of $20,000. The lower story contains offices for town clerk, selectmen, and “Young Men’s Institute,” while the upper story is a large hall, used for town purposes, lectures, agricultural fairs, etc., and is capable of seating about one thousand persons. The building occupies the old site of the late Eben Hunt’s house, which has been moved back, and may be seen in the rear. The architect of this beautiful building is Mr. William F. Pratt, a native of Northampton, a young man of much promise, and who is fast rising in his profession. To the right of the picture there is given us a view of the Unitarian Church. From this fall an enchanting view may be had of Mount Holyoke, 830 feet, and Mount Tom, 1214 feet above the river, and the verdant meadows on the Connecticut River, which is one mile and a half distant. Northampton stands unrivalled in New England for the beauty of its scenery, the gentle windings and graceful curves of its beautiful drives, and the venerableness of its broad old elms, a natural specimen of which is here given us in the foreground. The country in the immediate neighborhood of Northampton is exceeding beautiful and picturesque, and has long been a favorite resort, especially of southern people. The neighboring Mount Tom is quite a lion in its way, and is annually mounted by hundreds of tourists, to gain a view of the Connecticut valley where the river winds through the plains of Hadley.

View over 100 photographs of Main Street, Northampton in the digital collections catalog.

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