FORM B - BUILDING Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Areas(s) Form Number

027-04-011 Springfield HLY.1466 HISTORICAL COMMISSION North MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING

220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Town/City: Holyoke

Place: (neighborhood or village): South Holyoke

Photograph Address: 21 Jackson Street

Historic Name: Otto Brueck Tenement

Uses: Present: Multi-Family Residential Original: Multi Family Residential

Date of Construction: c.1884 - 1889

Source: Maps, Deeds

Style/Form: Italianate / single tenement block - freestanding

Architect/Builder: Not Known

Exterior Materials: View from the southwest. Photo by Zachary Violette Foundation: Brick

Wall/Trim: Brick / Limestone Locus Map (North is up) Roof: Membrane

Outbuildings: None

Major Alterations (with dates): Sash and doors altered (in recent decades)

Condition: Fair

Moved: no yes Date:

Acreage: 2,614 Sq. Ft.

Setting: Originally a dense industrial landscape made up mostly of three-to-five story masonry buildings: residential, commercial, industrial, and mixed-use. Many of these have been demolished and replaced with vacant lots

or lower density construction

Recorded By: Zachary Violette

Organization: Consultant, Holyoke Office of Planning and Development

Date (month/year): October 2020

12/12* Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET HOLYOKE 21 JACKSON STREET

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125

HLY.1466

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 Otto Brueck Tenement is a three-story, three-unit masonry bearing wall construction constructed c. 1884-89. The building has a rectangular footprint, 28 feet along Jackson Street, and 37 feet deep. The building has a single-pitch roof sloping away from Jackson Street. Unlike most Holyoke tenements of this era, which have seven-bay fenestration with two units on each floor, this building has four bays of fenestration. This suggests a single unit per floor, arranged off a side hall aligned to the right (east). Tenements of this class at this moment in Holyoke typically had shared water closets accessible through the public hall. The interior circulation provided by the stair hall is a supplement in the Dufresne Tenement, as in most Holyoke buildings of its type, by stacked exterior porches on the rear. Usually accessible from the kitchen, these provide secondary circulation as well as utility space.

The building is set above a low brick foundation. The recessed entrance is reached through a set of steps, clad in stone tile of modern vintage. A wooden, hip-roof canopy shelters the entrance, set on scroll-sawn brackets. A segmental arch spans the entrance opening. The door has been replaced with a modern embossed steel unit, it retains its original wooden, three-light transom. The front elevation is clad in pressed brick, painted yellow. First floor openings have brownstone lintels with rounded corners; articulated impost blocks on these openings are executed in limestone. Second-floor openings are supported by segmental arches, with brownstone voussoirs with limestone keystone and imposts. Finally, third-floor windows are fully round- toped and repeat the same contrasting limestone and brownstone for voussoirs and imposts. Sills throughout are of brownstone. A simple brick corbel cornice tops the facade. This arrangement, comparatively unusual for this period, is identical to the nearby Blaise Borlen Tenement, 181 Clemente Street (c.1883 - 1884), HLY.1463. The sidewalls of the building are finished in common brick with brick jack-arch window openings. The rear porches have been rebuilt with modern pressure-treated material. Windows throughout have been replaced by 1/1 vinyl sash; the arch top of the third-floor windows have been clad in aluminum panning.

The building is set directly on the sidewalk and is aligned to the right-of-way of the alley that runs between Jackson and Adams street.

While smaller than most of this period, the Otto Brueck Tenement is a characteristic of the types of dense, multi-family housing that was unique to Holyoke in this period. Most industrial cities of the northeast in this period housed its working-class in smaller buildings, like the attached row houses of the Hadley Falls Company on Grove and Center street (HLY.36, HLY.40), or the smaller privately-built wooden houses further north of this building on Clemente Street (HLY.AL).The Holyoke Waterpower Company's tight control of much of the land in the city during its period of explosive growth and the concomitant high real estate prices combined with an active class of small-scale, recent immigrant builders to produce by the 1870s and 1880s a landscape remarkable for the number and size of its large, brick tenements. Even Boston had relatively fewer purpose-built tenements until the 1890s than Holyoke. The Brueck building demonstrates many of the most common traits of the earliest period of these buildings: shallow footprints, dual interior and exterior circulation; multiple units per floor; and modestly articulated brick exterior.

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.

The landscape of Holyoke's neighborhoods below the First Level Canal was shaped by the 1849 "New City" plan of the Boston- backed Hadley Falls Company, which laid out a vision of a city ideally planned for textile production, taking advantage of the abundant waterpower of the River. The original plan had anticipated blocks of company-sponsored housing on specifically-designated tenement lots appurtenant to mill sites. While for several reasons, the city developed a diversity of Continuation Sheet 1 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET HOLYOKE 21 JACKSON STREET

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125

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industries beyond the control of Boston textile interests, the Holyoke Water Power Company, the Hadley Fall's Company's corporate successor, controlled many of the 1200 acres of the original plan well into the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Despite the city's rapid growth, highly inflated real estate prices, and crowded housing conditions, waterpower company backers were long reluctant to release sites for individual development, preferring the stability that large corporate interests brought. 1 The company finally abandoned this policy in 1873, allowing the sale of lots to individuals.2 In the context of the rapid growth of paper-making in Holyoke in these years, the sale of these lots prompted a boom in tenement construction, most often carried out by immigrants, usually small business owners or members of the construction trade, a large portion of whom built on a small scale for their use, the use of family members, and for rental income.

This building was part of the first major wave of private tenement construction in Holyoke. In 1881 the Holyoke Water Power Company sold this lot, the adjoining property at 635 - 637 South Summer Street, and the lot to the north of that to Otto Brueck (1839-1908) in two transactions.3 Shortly after that Brueck built the Otto Brueck Block (HLY.1497) on the eastern portion of the lot. Between 1884 and 1889, Brueck built this building in the rear yard of that property. Brueck was born in and immigrated to the in 1867. The 1900 census finds Brueck, then widowed, living alone in one unit in this building. He listed his occupation that year as "landlord." The building housed 13 other people in four households, all of whom were born in Germany. Their occupations included a teacher, a silk weaver, two cotton winders, and a clerk in a bakery.

This, and the South Summer Street property, still part of the same parcel, were sold in 1899 to Max Heincke (1865-1940).4 Born in Buckholz, Saxony, Germany, and immigrated in 1890. This location was the heart of the city's German community. The group's social life was anchored by the Turn Halle (620-626 South Bridge Street, 1874, HLY.46), which stood on the opposite corner of this block and the Sons of Hermann/ Hermanns Soehne Association Hall, 629 South Summer Street (1912), HLY.1495. On the block to the north stood the German Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Anshai Rodfai Synagogue. Across Jackson Street from the church was a narrow triangular park known as Germania Park, which faced the Germania Block, a large tenement owned by the Germania Mills Company.

In 1930 the elder Max Heincke's children split the property into two parcels. Brothers Paul and Max retained the corner property, while William and Karl Heincke retained this portion of their father's parcel. The property was owned by the Heincke family until 1947, selling this portion of the land to Frederick S. Czupkiewicz.5 He owned the property until 1961. The building had a series of short-term owners over the next decades. The property was purchased by the present owner in 2019.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES

MAPS 1849 Plan of the New City at Hadley Falls 1870 Beers, Ellis and Sole – Combined Map of Holyoke and Chicopee 1877 Bird’s Eye View of Holyoke, J. Knauber and Co 1881 Bird’s Eye View of Holyoke and Village of South Hadley Falls; J.J. Stoner 1884 Sanborn 1884 George H. Walker Atlas of Holyoke 1889 Sanborn 1895 Sanborn 1911 Richards Standard Atlas of the City of Holyoke 1915 Sanborn 1949 (1915 rev) Sanborn 1956 (1915 rev) Sanborn

1 Green, Holyoke, 39-44 2 Green, Holyoke, 172 3 HCRD 377:318, 1881; 397:478, 1881 4 HCRD 580:232, 1899 5 HCRD 1855:14, 1947 Continuation Sheet 2 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET HOLYOKE 21 JACKSON STREET

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125

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SOURCES FOR BIOGRAPHIES Ancestry.com Biographical Encyclopedia of Massachusetts of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Metropolitan Publishing and Engraving Co., 1879. Eliot, Samuel Atkins, ed. Biographical History of Massachusetts: Biographies and Autobiographies of the Leading Men in the State. Boston: Massachusetts Biographical Society, 1914. Forbes, A., and J. W. Greene. The Rich Men of Massachusetts, Containing a Statement of the Reputed Wealth of about Fifteen Hundred Persons, with Brief Sketches of More than One Thousand Characters. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1851. Holyoke Directories: 1869, 1871, 1876, 1879, 1882-1888 (complete), 1890-1959 (complete), 1960, 1961, 1964 Massachusetts Newspapers http://access.newspaperarchive.com. Withey, Henry F. and Elsie Rathburn Withey. Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased). 1956; rpt. Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1970.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Davis, Marleen and Thomas K. Davis. “Holyoke, Massachusetts: An Urban Design Study.” Journal of Architectural Education. Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter 1985), 17-27. Dickey, John. Holyoke: An Architectural Perspective. Holyoke: Holyoke Savings Bank, 1973. Green, Constance McLaughlin. Holyoke, Massachusetts: A Case Study in the Industrial Revolution in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939. Haebler, Peter. “Habitants in Holyoke: the Development of a French-Canadian Community in a Massachusetts City, 1865-1910.” Ph.D. Diss: University of New Hampshire, 1976. Harper, Wyatt. The Story of Holyoke. 1973 Hartford, William F. Working People of Holyoke: Class and Ethnicity in a Massachusetts Mill Town, 1850-1960 New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Holyoke Daily Transcript. Thirtieth Anniversary, Holyoke Daily Transcript. Holyoke, 1912. Holyoke Massachusetts Centennial, 1873-1973. Souvenir Program, 1973 Holyoke Past and Present, 1745-1895. Transcript Publishing Company, 1895. Holyoke Past Present Progress and Prosperity Historical and Industrial Notes. Souvenir, 1910. Honor Holyoke: Her Heroes, Her Heritage, Her History. Complete Program of Holyoke’s Seventy-Fifth Anniversary. 1948 Hautaniemi, Susan I. et al. “Mill Town Morality: Consequences of Industrial Growth in Two Nineteenth-Century New England Towns.” Social Science History. Vol. 23, No. 1. (Spring 1999), 1-39 Illustrated and Descriptive Holyoke Massachusetts. Williams S. Kline Company, ND Jacobson-Hardy and Robert E. Weir. “Faces, Machines, and Voices: The Fading Landscape of Papermaking in Holyoke, Massachusetts” Massachusetts Review Vol. 33, No. 3 (Autumn 1992) 361-384. Lockwood, John H. Western Massachusetts: A History 1636-1925. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1926 . Massachusetts Historical Commission. City Report for Holyoke. ______, Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System. http://mhc-macris.net/index.htm. ______, MACIS Maps, 2.0 beta. http://maps.mhc-macris.net/. Picturesque Hampden. Northampton: Picturesque Publishing Company, 1891. Report of the History and Present Condition of the Hadley Falls Company at Holyoke Massachusetts Published by Order of the Stockholders. Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1853. Scanlon, Anna U. History of Holyoke, Massachusetts. 1939. Transcript Industrial Edition. Great Industrial Establishment of the Paper City Described and Illustrated. Holyoke: Transcript Publishing Company, c.1897. Underwood, Kenneth Wilson. Protestant and Catholic: Religious and Social Interactions in an Industrial Community. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1973. Views of Holyoke and Northampton. Portland, Maine: L.H. Nelson Company. 1905

GENERAL WORKS ON COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE Bradley, Betsy Hunter. The Works: The Industrial Architecture of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Longstreth, Richard. The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to Commercial Architecture (, DC: Preservation Press, 1987) Continuation Sheet 3 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET HOLYOKE 21 JACKSON STREET

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125

HLY.1466

View from the southeast. Photo by Zachary Violette

Continuation Sheet 4