The Jones Point Park walking tour booklet is available from me. They cost $5 for a black-and-white stapled copy. Each additional copy after that is $3 more when shipped together. For a color copy, the cost is $8 and each additional copy in color is $6.
Email me from my contact page for details. The booklets that you order will be mailed to you via USPS so I need a physical address. Other booklets are available at the BOOKLET page. You can follow this tour at LINK.
The Olmsteds in Holyoke booklet is now available. They cost $6 for a black-and-white stapled copy. Each additional copy after that is $4 more when shipped together. For a color copy, the cost is $10 and each additional copy in color is $8.
Email me from my contact page for details. The booklets that you order will be mailed to you via USPS so I need a physical address. Other booklets are available at the BOOKLET page.
Follow the part of the tour HERE. This is a 36 page booklet that includes a partial suggested tour route for the Wyckoff Park area.
Joseph and John Prew started up Prew’s Picture Rooms in Holyoke. From 1864 to 1880, this studio was on High Street.
They were located at times in the Corser’s Block and at times in the Fuller Block. From 1867 to 1872 they called themselves the Prew Brothers. Joseph N Prew ran the firm from 1873 to 1879.
The three tours of the Olmsted parks in Holyoke will have one joint raffle. This will benefit the Historical Tours of Greater Holyoke and its annual charity.
PRIZE: Two night stay at the Homewood Suites in Holyoke – value $400
Homewood Suites by Hilton – 375 Whitney Avenue of Holyoke Massachusetts
a $10 raffle ticket gets you:
a $20 raffle ticket gets you:
Tickets will be sold during tours. You need to be a tour goer to purchase a ticket. TOURS:
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The Elmwood Park walking tour booklet is available from me. They cost $5 for a black-and-white stapled copy. Each additional copy after that is $3 more when shipped together. For a color copy, the cost is $8 and each additional copy in color is $6.
Email me from my contact page for details. The booklets that you order will be mailed to you via USPS so I need a physical address. Other booklets are available at the BOOKLET page. You can follow this tour at LINK.
City Beautiful Plan (for Holyoke)
This PLAN found in the 1908 city register was delivered to the mayor in 1907. It comments on the improvements in the parks of the city. The City Beautiful report for Holyoke was written out by the Olmsted Brothers. The booklet is great to read and offers up mostly a philosophical plan for improving the parks of the city.
It was furthered a year later in the City Plan (for Holyoke) – LOC – PHOTOS which is a photography exhibition on the pros and cons of the city environment. It also gives hints on how to improve and streets.
There was also a Preliminary Report (from 1901) – see parks department report in city report (pages 207 to 214).
Holyoke owes much to these reports since the plans were used in the many parks of the city.
Lewis Wyckoff house
The Wyckoff house is at 1040 Northampton Street. The Olmsted plan is HERE. Lewis Wyckoff owned the greeting card firm of White and Wyckoff that was on the Third Level Canal of Holyoke (MILL). He loved golf very much and was the president of the country club for decades.
Wyckoff Park was the creation of J Lewis Wyckoff and some associates. The golf course area would completely reworked. The street layout of the Wyckoff Park neighborhood is an Olmsted design. This neighborhood was designed from 1921 to 1925 by the Olmsted Brothers. The deed to the land changed hands in 1922 from the Judd family of South Hadley to the Mount Tom Realty Trust. The 44 acres went over to Alderman, Wyckoff, Raynolds, Patridge, Coburn. The development in the residential district started in 1923.
The Mount Tom golf course is from the 1898. The course was redesigned in the early 1920s and its eastern edge turned into a neighborhood.
One of the designs for the house was to have another road wrap around back and to build homes there. Only two homes were built. You can see one of them as the house that is directly to the south of the Wyckoff home. Its stone wall was formerly on Wyckoff’s land lot.
A private walking tour is possible. Also a one hour indoor presentation can be given.
This is the Anniversary and Community Fields Walking Tour. To read up on its general history, go HERE.
Stop 1 – Community Field and Day Brook
Day Brook is about 2.5 miles long from the top of Crafts Hill to its end at the Connecticut River. The segment from Norwood Terrace to just past MacKenzie Field was placed underground from 1925 to 1926. This is 4883 feet long or about 0.9 miles. It is not yet know when the segment from MacKenzie Field to the Connecticut River was placed under ground.
Stop 2 – Recreation
Ralph Sacks memorial stone
Stop 3 – Civilian Conservation Corps Trails
This trail system within Community Field and Anniversary Hill Park was made by the CCC in 1936. They have been maintained through the years by private individuals.
Stop 4 – CCC Stone Bridges
One bridge is more obvious than the other and both are more obvious in winter than in summer. Find the pole with the markings as seen in the first image and then take a right into the woods on the dirt path. The bridge is passable but the sides need repair.
Stop 4A – CCC Stone Bridges
To find the other bridge, find the telephone pole marked 11. Then look to the right side of the road and there should be a trail there. The bridge is still in good shape but there was a fallen tree on it as of 2022.
There are four stone bridges in the land that forms Community Field and Anniversary Field. Two are described above and two more are hidden within the lands and have no trails to them. The one higher in elevation within the land is shown in the two images below. The one lowest in elevation within the lands is not shown yet.
Stop 5 – Old Road
Back on the road, you will see a stone wall on the left. This was made by the CCC to support the grade of the hill. If you happen to go onto this dirt road and walk 150 feet more, then you will find a larger stone wall to support the even steeper hill and with a another wall at its right to support its base. This is the original road from the 1930s. The trail system and the road did not cross until a later time.
Stop 5A – Dam on Brook
About 30 feet more along the road find a peculiar looking dam on the brook. This is to your left. It was most likely a flood control dam. People did swim in it.
Stop 6 – Old Steps
Just a bit more on the tar road and on the left you will see a winding set of steps up the hill. They are walkable. There are 32 of them. The path on top leads to the tower.
Stop 8 – Scott Tower
Scott Tower was finished in 1939 by the WPA. It is named after Walter Scott who donated this land and died in 1935.
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Stop 9 – Anniversary Field
A side trail to the east of the tower leads to a fenced area in which you will get a grand view of Holyoke. Until 1963 the two parts of Anniversary Field were joined together into one. There was Anniversary Field at the bottom and Anniversary Hill Park at the top. A ski run started near this stop 9 and descended to where the fire station is now.
If you continue to your north along this fence and then onto a dirt path. This is the old Anniversary Field Road which after one third of a mile leads to the old cabin. There at Overlook Drive, Anniversary Road continued first to the north and then to the southeast to the base at Northampton Street.
See renovations.
The Steiger house was in place before the Olmsted plan of 1922 was drawn up but he had the Olmsted firm in 1911 draw up a plan for the position of the home on the access road from the new country club.
Work that was done by the Olmsted Brothers for him was the gates and the three large lots across the street.
work 2 – plans of the GATES
work 3 – Steiger triple land lots on north of Mountain View Drive and to the west
Across the street from his home Steiger bought a three lot sequence. He had the Olmsted firm design it and then made the landscape himself. The stone wall across the street runs between two lots and into a third lot. This is a Steiger made wall. The landscape is an Omsted creation but the work was done by Steiger himself. Here he added the wall that would hold the earth in place and also have a nice walkway of his own from his house to hole 1. Thusly, Steiger had a beautiful gate in front and also landscaped the five lots across the street.
Down the street from his home and to the east, Steiger on the last of this three lot sequence. Here he added a gate for golfers to walk from the country club to hole one.
Just above you have two images of the two gateways as built by or for Albert Steiger. The same? You decide!
