Twin lions guard the entrance to the Spruces Mobile Home Park. They serve as illuminated beacons to guide residents heading home on dark and stormy nights. Some people say the concrete beasts originally came from the Mount Hope Farm. This is not…

It was in 1894 that F.E. Rice, a native of Charlemont and a resident of Florida, came down from the mountain and formed a partnership with E.A. McMillian and began a shoebox manufacturing facility on Washington Avenue to supply the booming local…

Twenty year old Charles H. Cutting formed a partnership with J.W. Silsby resulting in a men’s wholesale-retail clothing store which would last for 89 years. The C.H. Cutting Company opened in a modest building on State Street in 1870. Within a few…

Joe Sharkey was the patriarch of a family of two sons and four daughters, 15 grandchildren and one great grandchild at the time of his death, December 13, 1970. In his younger years he was a shoemaker employed by local shoe shops and later as the…

It was during the middle decades of the past century when Ted Butterworth owned and operated the Olympian bowling alleys in the Dowlin Block on Main Street. This place was a large, dingy, smoke-filled, dark and cavernous expanse of floor space on…

The end of World War I did not come all at once; rather it occurred over a period of several days.  There had been false reports during the first week of November that the war was about to end as the news services had received word from Germany of…

The Blizzard of ‘88 was the greatest snowstorm of the nineteenth century in Berkshire County.  Snow started falling Sunday, March 11, 1888, and did not stop until four days later. A total sum of 37 inches fell locally and it was buffeted by 30 to 40…

In March 1936, on the day of the flood that year, an event that caused substantial damage occurred on West Main Street near Richview Avenue at the same time that the Hoosic River was taking its toll elsewhere.  The ten-stall Hamer Garage and radio…

During the last week of June--and extending into the first week in July 1938, North Adams was the scene of a spectacular event, the likes of which has not been seen before or since.  The Transcript, reporting on a pageant held on Noel Field 63 years…

1927 was not a particularly good year for North Adams. Rather, it was one of disaster -- first by fire and then by flood.  At 3:15 in the morning of February 14th, a Monday, William Gomeau, driving a Yellow Cab in downtown North Adams spotted flames…