“I want lots of questions, comments, too.â€
So said author Joe Manning Oct. 17 as he began to lead the sixth grade Williamstown Elementary School class of teacher Dick Steege on a walking tour of North Adams.
Sixth graders at the school have been reading Dear Mr. President: Letters of a Mill Town Girl, a fictional account of a young North Adams girl during the Depression by Elizabeth Winthrop, a summer resident of Williamstown. In the children’s book, published in 2001, an Italian immigrant girl from North Adams writes to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he writes back to her. Winthrop will speak to the sixth graders as part of the Words Are Wonderful program on Oct. 25.
The tour started at MASS MoCA which, before it became a world famous museum, was the home of Sprague Electric Company. Before that the mill complex was the Arnold Print Works. Manning spoke to this history, but he first he spoke of the origins of Emma Bartoletti, the young heroine of the book.
“There were a lot of people like Emma Bartoletti,†said Manning. “Elizabeth Winthrop put a lot of stories into one person.â€
To a large extent, Winthrop based the book on the experiences of Rosalie Cancro Morgan, a 74-year-old woman who grew up in North Adams and lives in Pownal, whom she interviewed, Manning said.
He stopped the group by the guardhouse of MASS MoCA on Marshall Street by a rusting sign at the pedestrian gate left over from the Sprague years telling employees that they must wear their badges.
Manning explained how 34 years ago, 4,200 people worked in the 27 buildings on the complex when it was Sprague Electric. Manning and the children calculated that this is seven times the number of students now in the Williamstown Elementary School.
“You had to stand in line to get a sandwich,†Manning said. “That’s how it was when Emma was growing up.â€
Author of Disappearing Into North Adams, a book about the 1960s urban renewal of North Adams and its effect on the city and its people, Manning connected his knowledge of the North Adams that was to the theme of the tour by telling the children that these were the buildings and sights with which Emma Bartoletti would have grown up.
Stopping under the Veterans Memorial Overpass, Manning told the group that it wasn’t there when Emma was growing up, neither was the Big Y supermarket. He spoke of all the buildings on Center Street which were torn down. He told them how Emma attended St. Anthony’s Church, but not the one built in the late 1950s on Marshall Street, but the original church that once stood on the east side of Holden Street.
Stopping on Main Street, Manning asked the children to look up at the Holiday Inn across the street. He said that in Emma’s time a different hotel stood there: the Richmond Hotel.
“They tore it down 32 years ago,†he said. “When they tore it down lots of people stood right where you’re standing watching them tear it down.â€
He noted that in this phase of urban renewal, 136 other buildings to the south side of Main Street were torn down, including businesses, homes, apartments, and restaurants.
There was plenty of youthful exuberance during the tour. At one point a few of the children started singing “Old MacDonald.â€
Crossing a pedestrian bridge and coming across a small train tunnel under West Main Street, an impressed girl said she had never seen that before.
“Whoa, neither have I,†exclaimed a boy.
Climbing the steep inclines of Furnace Street, in an area of the city once considered its “Little Italy,†the group stopped on Francis Street at an eight-apartment block of European design where Emma — and Rosalie — grew up.
“There were stores on every corner,†Manning said of those Depression-era days. He also noted that the green block north of Emma’s home was once the home of a synagogue.
On the way back down, standing on the side of Furnace Street and looking down at downtown North Adams with the students, Manning asked if there was a place in Williamstown with such a view of that town. A boy answered that there is one from where he lives on Pine Cobble Hill.
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Berkshire Food Project Closed for Power Issues
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Berkshire Food Project is closed Monday because of a power outage early in the morning.
"We are unable to get proper electricity and heat to the building," according to Executive Director Matthew Alcombright. "We hope that this can be resolved and be open tomorrow."
The project does have some sandwiches and frozen meals that will be distributed at the entry.
The city has lifted a boil water order — with several exceptions — that was issued late Monday morning following several water line breaks over the weekend. click for more
The bridge had been closed to all vehicle traffic since March 2023 after being deemed structurally deficient by the state Department of Transportation. click for more
