The old Sprague Electric mill on Brown Street is being demolished.
NORTH ADAMS - The former Sprague Electric Co. plant on Brown Street has slowly been disappearing over the past several months, taking with it a chunk of the city's industrial history.
•Watch the video here
The brick mill buildings are being demolished by owner Great American Financial Resources, which has no immediate plans for the property other than leaving it a vacant lot. The buildings have been empty since 2001, when Commonwealth Sprague - one of the last vestige's of the city's manufacturing titan - departed for Mexico.
The polluted three-acre site has had environmental remediation done in the mid-1980s and over the last decade or so under the state Department of Environmental Protection. Most of that work has been completed.
The structures were built in the 1870s as a textile mill; Sprague Electric took the property over before World War II and produced gas masks there. Later, the company manufactured metalized film paper for capacitors.
Part of the property was used as an industrial landfill and, from the 1950s to the 1970s, drummed wastes containing trichloroethylene, or TCE, were dumped there. A 1983 preliminary assessment filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency reported that 55,000 gallons of acids, solvents, TCE degreaser, ceramic sludge, aluminum oxide sludge, oily solid resins, paints, fly ash, and titanium and uranium oxides were dumped in the landfill on the property.
Surface soil samples collected from the property between 1983 and 1995 indicated the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls and volatile organic compounds, all toxic materials. Contamination was found in homes on the outer edges of the property along Alton Avenue and Avon and West Main streets in the late 1990s. Great American, then known as American Annuity Group, bought and demolished 17 homes in the area. The toxic plume of groundwater seeping west from the site continues to be monitored.
Sprague Electric once operated in the Beaver Street and the Eclipse mills, now both owned by artist and developer Eric Rudd, and in the main plant on Marshall street that is now the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Hundreds of area residents worked over the years in the Brown Street plant for Sprague and its successor there, Commonwealth Sprague.
The mill will soon be history so we are inviting local residents to post their memories of it on iBerkshires - what room did you work in? How many years were you there? What was it like?
Click on the link below to post your memories of Brown Street.
If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.
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MCLA Graduates Told to Make the World Worthy of Them
By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
Keynote speaker Michael Bobbitt was awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts. He told the graduates to make the world worthy of them. See more photos here.
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Amsler Campus Center gym erupted in cheers on Saturday as 193 members of class of 2026 turned their tassels.
The graduates of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' 127th commencement were sent off with the charge of "don't stop now" to make the world a better place.
You are Trailblazers, keynote speaker Michael Bobbitt reminded them, and a "trailblazer is not simply someone who walks a path. A trailblazer makes one, but blazing a trail does not happen alone. Every trailblazer is carrying tools made by somebody else. Every trailblazer is guided by stars they did not create. Every trailblazer stands on grounds shaped by ancestors, teachers, workers, neighbors, friends, and strangers."
Trailblazing takes communal courage, he said, and they needed to love people, build with people, argue with people, and find the people who make them braver and kinder at the same time.
"The future will not be saved by isolated geniuses, it will be saved by networks of people willing to practice courage together. The future belongs not to the loudest, not to the richest, not to the most certain, but to the most adaptive, the most creative, the most courageous, the most willing to learn."
Bobbitt was recently named CEO of Opera American after nearly five years leading the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He stressed the importance of art to the graduates, and noted that opera is not the only art form facing challenges in this world.
"Every field is asking, who are we for now? What do we, what value do we create?" he said. "What do we stop pretending is fine. This is not just an arts question, that is a healthcare question, a climate question, a technology question, a community question, a higher education question, a democracy question, a life question. ...
Brooke Harrington scored four goals, and Abigail Rodhouse had a hat trick as Wahconah won its second straight Western Mass title and the rubber match against the Mounties in the third one-goal game between the teams this spring. click for more
The graduates of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' 127th commencement were sent off with the charge of "don't stop now" to make the world a better place.
click for more
•Watch the video here
The brick mill buildings are being demolished by owner Great American Financial Resources, which has no immediate plans for the property other than leaving it a vacant lot. The buildings have been empty since 2001, when Commonwealth Sprague - one of the last vestige's of the city's manufacturing titan - departed for Mexico.
The polluted three-acre site has had environmental remediation done in the mid-1980s and over the last decade or so under the state Department of Environmental Protection. Most of that work has been completed.
The structures were built in the 1870s as a textile mill; Sprague Electric took the property over before World War II and produced gas masks there. Later, the company manufactured metalized film paper for capacitors.
Part of the property was used as an industrial landfill and, from the 1950s to the 1970s, drummed wastes containing trichloroethylene, or TCE, were dumped there. A 1983 preliminary assessment filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency reported that 55,000 gallons of acids, solvents, TCE degreaser, ceramic sludge, aluminum oxide sludge, oily solid resins, paints, fly ash, and titanium and uranium oxides were dumped in the landfill on the property.
