Maybe it’s the product of growing up in the seventh oldest settlement in the U.S., but I like to know a bit of history about anywhere I live. When I moved to Northampton earlier this year, I knew about its recent reputation as a queer and cultural hub, but not much else.
A quick google search led me to discover that I live down the street from the Historic Northampton Museum. How convenient! I saw that they were having an exhibit all about the history of Main Street, which is even more specific to where I live. Maybe I could learn about my apartment building there.
The big yellow house was easy to find, and the museum is fairly small inside—at least the part that’s open to visitors. The museum’s co-director welcomed me and gave me a little introduction to the museum space and the history of Main Street, which I really appreciated.
The main focus of the museum is the Making It on Main Street exhibit. In the center is a diorama of Main Street as it would have been in 1847, with signs indicating where modern buildings are now. In 1847, my apartment building was apparently a bush (i.e., not yet in existence*).
The perimeter of the room walked through the decades of Main Street history, starting with the mid-1600s settlements—folks moving to the area for The Meadows—to present times.
I appreciated that the exhibit didn’t shy away from the not-so-great parts of Northampton history, including racial injustices, economic devastation, and even (gasp!) homophobia. The years between 1920 and 1970 sounded particularly rough, with many vacancies downtown. I was surprised to learn how much the Thornes family played a role in reviving the town in the 70s. Thornes Marketplace is still a central downtown institution today.
A main takeaway—which I think reflects an honest historical portrayal—is that for majority of its history, Noho (or Hamp) wasn’t such such a great place to live. It wasn’t really until the 1980s when more people started moving here for college, particularly Smith College, that Northampton started becoming the arts and cultural hub that it’s known as today.
I’m not sure if the museum will have other exhibits in the near future, but I’d be interested in going back. It was definitely a worthwhile way to spend a drizzly Saturday afternoon.
*I later learned via some online research that my apartment building, as it stands now, was built in 1915 in the place of an earlier building that was likely built in the 1860s but collapsed (?!) in 1914. Just like, casually collapsed for unknown reasons. This is the most modern apartment I’ve lived in nearly a decade, and it’s still over a hundred years old. What can I say? I love it. I’m making it on Main Street!
