An historical walk in Great Barrington

By Kate AbbottPrint Story | Email Story
Joy Lyon, Manager of the Chamber of Commerce of South Berkshire Information Center, recently conducted an armchair tour of Great Barrington’s history. Main Street and Railroad Street are two of the oldest streets in the country. Walking down Main Street is a historical experience in itself, she said. It was the first street in the country, and possibly in the world, to have electric light. The lamps burned courtesy of inventor William Stanley. In in 1886, he set up a transformer experiment with alternating current electricity in an abandoned factory building where the Housatonic River Walk lies now. Railroad Street, on the other hand, became a red light district, with a number of bars. Not too long ago, Lyon said, a lady could not walk down Railroad Street unchaperoned. But ‘Dodge City’ has recently become ‘Little Soho.’ The red lights have given way to bakeries, the Triplex Cinema, sushi and Bizen pottery, and the Railroad Street Youth Project. Two monuments outside the Town Hall mark historic events. The first armed resistance against the British scrummed around this site in 1774. Lyon said 700 to 1000 rabble-rousing farmers got fed up with the British Tribuna that sat at the Town Hall and ran local affairs. The farmers gathered with muskets, sticks and whatever lay handy, and met the 10 or 12 members of the British Tribunal as they walked down the street to the Town Hall. The farmers blocked their way to the building and refused to let them enter the building. They never came back. Here also, the first slave won her freedom under due process of law. Mum Betts, a woman enslaved to Col. John Ashley, won her freedom in the 1700’s and turned Massachusetts into a free state from that day. She changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman, Lyon said. William Cullen Bryant, the Victorian law clerk and poet, lived in Great Barrington. He married a lady from Alford; her relatives lived at the William Cullen Bryant House up the road. He practiced law in the brown house just past the Days Inn, Lyon said, and wrote a poem about Monument Mountain Reservation. Every year, local people reenact the Monument Mountain Poet’s Hike: the famous hike that introduced Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Lyon said at the time of the firt hike, in the mid 1800’s, travellers could drive a buggy up the mountain. Both authors joined a picnic party heading up the hill. They had never met, but during a sudden storm, they happened to shelter together and get talking. The meeting began a close friendship that lasted through many years and letters; Melville later dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne. The Berkshire Athenaeum exhibits some of his letters to Hawthorne in the Melville room. Another Great Barrington marker on Church Street, at Cavanaugh’s Plumbing, shows the ground site of the childhood home of Civil Rights activist W.E.B. DuBois, the author of TheSouls of Black Folk. The town has put together a complete walking tour of sites connected with DuBois, as he grew, went to school and worked in Great Barrington, Lyon said. This year, the River Walk planted a garden in his memory. Just across from the South Berkshire Chamber building, Lyon pointed out the John Dewey Academy, a therapeutic school— crenellations and all. The building is also called Searles Castle. Visitors can tour it in the summer, during the day, and in the evening at the Stockbridge Chamber Concerts. It also holds a book fair every year. Searles Castle was the original residence of Mrs. Mark Hopkins, a widow from San Fransisco, Lyon said. Mrs. Hopkins had aunts in the Berkshires. She came here in 1881 and built herself a château out of local stone from the East Mountain Quarry. It cost $2.2 million all together. Stanford White architects designed it. At more than 60 of age, Mrs. Hopkins fell in love with the interior designer, who was some 20 years younger than she was— and she asked him to marry her. His name was Searles. The Searles built the outer wall when the trolley cars came down Main Street, because they did not like to see the trolley cars. The South Berkshire Chamber once had its office in a windowed turret on the wall, Lyon said. The last President of the Republic of Texas, who fought in the Alamo and had the honor of ceding the Republic of Texas to the United tates, also lived here. Lyon said she hoped some day Great Barrington would have a museum; it had seen so many firsts and so many unique historical personalities. The library did keep some historical items. Mason Library, by the way, was the site of the second home of Laura Secord, a famous Canadian heroine of the French and Indian War.
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North Adams School Committee Applauds Award Winner, Hears Budget

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

Superintendent Timothy Callahan presents his first Superintendent's Award to Brayden Canales. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Committee on Tuesday voted to send a recommending fiscal 2027 budget to a public hearing and congratulated the newest recipient of the Superintendent's Award. 
 
Drury High School senior Brayden Canales is graduating at the top of his class with 33 college credits and a grade-point average of 4.3.
 
"In addition to his impressive list of college courses, he has rounded out his transcript with several Advanced Placement and project based learning courses," said Superintendent Timothy Callahan, adding, "I had the honor to be Brayden's principal when he began a Drury."
 
Canales is a member of both the Nu Sigma and Pro Merito honor societies and received the Principal's Award for having the top five average in his class all four years and the Rensselaer (N.Y.) Institute of Technology award for science and math as a junior outside of the classroom.
 
He's also been a member of the soccer, hockey and baseball teams and this year was presented the Berkshire County Ice Hockey Officials Association's Sportsmanship Award for his leadership. Canales has also been a peer mediator, student ambassador, among other activities.  
 
He plans to pursue a major in architecture but has not yet selected a college. 
 
The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents Certificate of Academic Excellence is awarded to students who have achieved not only academically but in leadership and community service. 
 
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