FORM B − BUILDING Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 20/0 4/ 6 Ludlow WIL.182, MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION 183 MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Town: Wilbraham Place: (neighborhood or village) Photograph Address: 4 Acton Street Historic Name: Ludlow Manufacturing Associates house and clubhouse Uses: Present: two-family home and storage building Original: two-family home and clubhouse building Date of Construction: ca. 1910 Source: Registry of Deeds Style/Form: Colonial Revival house and stepped parapet form commercial building Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete Wall/Trim: pressed concrete block and vinyl Topographic or Assessor's Map Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Garage Major Alterations (with dates): Vinyl siding added and windows replaced ca. 2000 Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.18 acres Setting: This house and companion buildings are part of a workers’s housing neighborhood of identical buildings. Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Date (month / year): July 2010 Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [WILBRAHAM] [4 ACTON STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 WIL.182, 183 __x_ 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. This house and commercial building are part of a neighborhood of once-identical workers’s houses with the exception of the fact that the house at 4 Acton Street includes on its east side a commercial type building that was built in the same style and with the same materials. The house is a two-story building under a pyramidal hipped roof on which are two chimneys. Its first story, like those of its neighbors, is pressed concrete block, here laid with rusticated blocks at its corners for a Colonial Revival style quoin. Above projecting foundations and watertable, the blocks of the walls are smooth in the middle and have frames around their borders. The first story of the house has been painted although its neighbors at 5 and 6 Acton Street have retained their unpainted masonry. The bordered pattern was one of four patterns used on the houses: rusticated, bordered, reticulated and mitered. The second story of the house is vinyl-covered, but originally was shingled. It extends as a jetty on all four sides and flares at each corner. The house is three bays wide and the equivalent of four bays deep. Its south façade has a hipped roof and glassed-in porch across its center bay. Windows in the house are 1/1 vinyl replacements. There is a hipped roof garage, two bays wide, north of the house. It is constructed of pressed concrete block, as well, in the rusticated pattern. The commercial building is a one-story, rusticated, pressed concrete block building under a front-gable roof that is screened by a stepped parapet wall on its south façade. The parapet is vinyl-sided. The building is three bays wide and four deep for a rectangular plan and there is a one-story wing on its east elevation that is without fenestration on its south façade. The building has a center entry flanked by two fairly large windows with replacement 1/1 sash. Windows on the west elevation are smaller but also have replacement windows. 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. Acton Street was constructed and named Adams Street between 1908 and 1910 by the Ludlow Manufacturing Associates (LMA). This house, garage and commercial building are part of the company housing constructed by the LMA on the south side of the Chicopee River where the company had bought farmland after 1894. The buildings are part of a neighborhood of identical houses and row houses built by the company after 1910, which included several stores for the neighborhood residents – in 1933 there were grocery stores at 7 and at 10 Acton Street. Construction of these streets, houses and stores were part of the network of workers’ buildings that the LMA constructed between the l890s and 1920s in both Ludlow and Wilbraham. The Company had begun in the 1840s producing textiles and bags and had prospered but after it had been chartered to produce electricity in 1889, it grew exponentially. At first the housing was on the north side of the river and an entire village was constructed around 1901 including a block for stores and housing. By 1910 the company turned to the Wilbraham side of the river to expand its housing further. This was a phase in American industrial history when attracting and keeping an adequate workforce drove many companies to act in a paternalistic manner building houses, stores, clubs and more for their employees. Street directories indicate that the neighborhood residents were largely eastern European and specifically Polish. By the 1950s the houses and stores had passed into private ownership and in 1955 this house was owned by Frank and Mary Cieplik. Frank (and possibly Mary too) had come to Wilbraham early in the century and in 1908 was boarding at the Ludlow Manufacturing Associates housing 22-36 West Street, which had been built first in the area. Frank still worked at the Ludlow Manufacturing Company in 1955 but had moved to this house, although many others in former company housing worked elsewhere. The commercial building in 1955 was the Polish American Veterans Club. The Ciepliks shared their home in the 1950swith Joseph and Mary Cieplik and Joseph worked at a business in Springfield. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES U. S. Censuses 1790-1930. Peck, Chauncey. The History of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, Wilbraham?, 1913. Massachusetts Historical Commission. Reconnaissance Survey, “Wilbraham”, typescript, 1982. Continuation sheet 1 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [WILBRAHAM] [4 ACTON STREET] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 WIL.182, 183 Merrick, Charles L. (ed.) History of Wilbraham, USA, North Bennington, Vermont, 1964. Springfield Suburban Directories, 1949, 1955,t 1961. Maps of 1830, 1860, 1870, 1894, 1912. Continuation sheet 2 FORM B − BUILDING Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 20/0 5/ 7 Ludlow WIL.185 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD Town: Wilbraham BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Place: (neighborhood or village) Photograph Address: 5 Acton Street Historic Name: Ludlow Manufacturing Associates Housing Uses: Present: single-family house Original: single-family house Date of Construction: 1908-1910 Source: street lists Style/Form: Colonial Revival Architect/Builder: Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete Wall/Trim: pressed concrete block, vinyl Topographic or Assessor's Map Roof: asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: half of shared garage Major Alterations (with dates): vinyl sided, ca. 1990 Condition: good Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.10 acres Setting: This is a north-facing house set on a small lot in a relatively densely-settled neighborhood. Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Date (month / year): October, 2010 Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET [WILBRAHAM] [5 Acton Street] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 WIL.185 _x__ 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. This is one of a number of originally identical workers’ houses that line Weston and Acton Streets. It is a two-story house under a pyramidal hipped roof with two chimneys. The first story of the house is unpainted, pressed concrete block with corner quoins and the second floor is vinyl sided. The second floor, in Colonial Revival fashion, projects slightly beyond the first story in a flared jetty. The house is three bays wide and three bays deep. A watertable encircles the building above the foundations. Sash is 1/1 wood and 1/1 vinyl. On the west elevation is a secondary entry under a shed roof portico on braces. There is a hipped roof porch on the north façade that is open and has solid railings that are now vinyl-sided. The house shares a two-bay frame garage with the house next door. The pressed concrete block follows the same pattern as the blocks on the house at 4 Acton Street being smooth faced inside a framed border. The quoins are rusticated. 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 history of the owners of this house mirror the histories of many of its neighbors as it was a Ludlow Manufacturing Associates-owned house built between 1908 and 1910 for their jute mill workers. The company had expanded from Ludlow into Wilbraham early in the century to provide housing for its many workers, the majority of whom came from Poland. Typically, families lived in the multi-family blocks on Weston Street and then moved into the single and two-family houses on Acton and Weston Streets.