Jan 16, 2025 – Presentation to highlight historical inventory update
GREENFIELD — In April 2023, Greenfield was awarded a $20,000 matching grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission to review and update documentation of the city’s cultural, historical and architectural resources. The results of this work, bringing new information into the existing inventory forms that were submitted in 1984, will be presented on Thursday, Jan. 16.
Through a competitive bid process, Brian Knight Research was awarded the contract to update the historical inventories. The firm started its work by meeting with Planning Director Eric Twarog, Greenfield Historical Commission member Margo Jones, James Terapane with the Museum of Our Industrial Heritage and Historical Society of Greenfield President Carol Aleman. Brian Knight Research’s task was conducting a community-wide survey to assess and document approximately 140 selected cultural and architectural resources.
In the fall of 2023, a Brian Knight Research representative conducted both walking and driving surveying around the city to update the inventory documents for Greenfield’s historical downtown area, to document Greenfield’s industrial sites and to document Greenfield’s African American history. The firm conducted a component of this research through various sources, including historic atlases and maps, Greenfield resident and business directories, town histories and town reports. Online resources include newspaper articles, population censuses, town directories, probate records, genealogical websites and records in the Franklin County Registry of Deeds.
Brian Knight Research surveyed 149 properties. A copy of the firm’s report, “Greenfield Historic Properties Survey” may be downloaded at greenfield-ma.gov/departments/planning_and_development/current_projects.php.
Brian Knight will present his final report at the Jan. 16 Greenfield Historical Commission meeting, which starts at 5 p.m. The meeting will be held at City Hall’s secondfloor meeting room and also on Zoom. The Zoom link can be found on the events calendar at greenfield-ma.gov/calendar.
Read MoreNEPM – May 4 and 5 – Greenfield on the picketlines
“At Sword’s Point” will be broadcast on 88.5 NEPM on Saturday, May 4 at noon and Sunday, May 5 at 3 p.m.
https://www.nepm.org/regional-news/2024-03-27/at-swords-point/
This hour-long radio documentary, hosted by public historian Tom Goldscheider, recounts these dramatic events of the early 1950s, while also providing important context on the machine tool industry of Greenfield, Massachusetts — once a center of global innovation — as well as the origins of the United Electrical Workers Union, or UE.
Read MoreTalk March 13 (GF Library) Did Grandma have a filling station ?
If you missed the initial presentation you have a chance again this coming week, March 13 at the Greenfield Library.
Local authors Sara Campbell and Shari Strahan will talk about their book and research.
In exploring the town files, they found documentation addressing the special handling of women owning businesses, and the Married Woman’s Property Act of 1855, leading to many interesting stories. A number of these are documented in their new book.
Greenfield records of women owned businesses registered under the Married Woman’s Property Act.
You can get the book at the talk, signed of course, or at Lulu (appropriately enough)
Scroll down and see a chapter.
More articles about their talks at:
- Mar 13, 2024 – Upcoming GF Library talk
- Feb 2 – talk at GF Senior Center
- North Quabbin Talk – Dec 2023
And here is a chapter to seed your interest:
Read MoreSpring Terrace Lecture on Video
If you missed the Spring Terrace Lecture or even want to revisit it,
you now can, thanks to GCTV:
Earlier posts at: About Spring Terrace
Read MoreSpring Terrace Lecture
This is a follow on to post A whole story about Spring Terrace
Travis Drury gave a detailed talk about his personal local history project about the development of Spring Terrace – a small street on the far east side Greenfield, MA – just between Crescent and High St – directly of Orchard and around from George.
He has published a book available here and, for the talk created a summary and a detailed research guides for how he found so much information. Also available are over 500 newspaper articles and map we will be making available.
The guide and summary can be found here: /about-spring-terrace
Read MorePainting a Legacy: now online
Christine Pifer-Foote from the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, who spoke on June 15th about “Painting a Legacy: the Search for Anna Judah”, has am online presentation at the Railroad Museum web site: as an Abode presentation.
It includes many details about Anna Pierce Judah as well as many related photos of Greenfield.
The full video will be available as soon as it is processed and posted.
More about the project at: California Railroad Museum
The Greenfield Recorder has written about the talk in the issue of Aug 12, 2023 on page C1
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