Days Gone By: Images from the Eagle Archives
Most of the city’s baby boom schools were named for prominent community leaders or historic figures, with but a few exceptions. This is the third installment of a three-part series describing the 20 schools and how they were named.
The second installment of a three-part series exploring the origin of the city of Pittsfield's 20 elementary schools during the baby boom era. Most were named for prominent community leaders or historic figures, with but a few exceptions.
On April 19, 1775, near 10 a.m., Joseph Palmer, a member of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, wrote a short letter detailing the arrival of British troops in Cambridge and the ensuing battle …
Most of the city’s schools were named for prominent community leaders or historic figures, with but a few exceptions. Here is the first of a three-part series looking at how the schools got their names.
Piotr Gwozdz began producing Orange Squeeze soda in 1920 at a plant on Summer Street in Adams. Squeeze Beverages later moved to Howland Avenue in 1947, where it remained until closing in 2004.
Ever the innovator, Gabe Virgilio purchased a state-of-the-art coal-burning oven to make pizzas in his East Side Cafe. To this day, the cafe makes pizza in this oven.
Over the years, Pittsfield's Park Square has been allowed to host only a handful of permanent items, including a plaque recognizing John Williams, who donated much of the parkland to the city, a bronze plaque to commemorate the first agricultural fair, and the Civil War statue honoring 108 local soldiers who died in the war.
For decades, the sundial in Park Square marked the location where a historic tree, known as the Old Elm, once stood. It has since been moved to a spot that gets more direct sunlight.
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Today in History
On May 20, 1956: The United States exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
In 1962: Film star Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday to You” to President John F. Kennedy during a Democratic fundraiser at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
On May 18, 1980: The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.
This Story in History
From the Eagle Archives
Eagle Archives, May 21, 1942: With no clues reported, Berkshire County found itself today with its first horse theft in more than 40 years.
Eagle Archives, May 20, 1978: The highlight of the National Model Railroad Association's convention in Williamstown this weekend will be a private viewing of Richard Elwell's 16-year accomplishment — a model of the Hoosac Valley Railroad line in the basement of his Bienick Avenue, Adams, home.
Eagle Archives, May 19, 1950: Shoe-shining ain't for fun in Pittsfield — even if you're a kid.
Eagle Archives, May 18, 1960: It's a happy man whose vocation is something he'd do for nothing if he couldn't make a living at it. Such a fellow is James R. Knight, an expert woodworker and cabinet maker, who has been making a good living for the last 15 years or so by doing just what he wants to do.
Eagle Archives, May 17, 1950: An auto accident trial went forward in Superior Court today thanks to a group of Golden Agers and others who volunteered service as extra jurors.
Eagle Archives, May 16, 1956: Maplewood Essays have been written, corrected and returned to the more than 230 girls in the senior class at Pittsfield High School. For the author of the best essay, it will mean a prize at the June graduation ceremony.
Eagle Archives, May 14, 1942: Leon L. Riche, local insurance man and chairman of Draft Board 123, and Raymond L. Moulen, treasurer of the Triplex Machine Company, today became the owners of the 68-year-old basket-making firm of M.E. Ballou & Son, Becket.
Mysteries from the Morgue
Did the first written account of maple sugar being made in this country come from the Berkshires? "It Happened First in Berkshire," a column of The Berkshire Eagle, declared it as so April 3, 1940: …
Nor'easter expected? Blizzard in the forecast? Either prediction is a sure sign that media outlets will dig up photos and facts from historic storms of years past. Sure to be included are the Blizzard of 1888 and the Blizzard of 1978. But were those the worst storms to hit the Berkshires? To find out, we hit The Eagle's archives.
On Oct. 18, 1918, 700 workers of the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Co. were out sick with "the grippe," silencing a third of the Berkshire Mills' 6,500 looms.
Three weeks earlier, the town had reported its first cases of Spanish influenza — 16 sick and one death. Now, the town had 850 recorded cases and 28 deaths from the Spanish flu or flu-related pneumonia. But, town health officials suspected the number was much higher, around 2,000 infected individuals.
Only a few things could separate the Pierce twins — a broken shoulder, a marriage and death.
Mary Abbe and Martha Anne, who held the title of "oldest twins in New England" from January 1929 until August 1934, spent the majority of their 90 years together, living in the house in which they were born in Savoy.
Mysteries From the Morgue: Against the vote? The Anti-Susan B. Anthony also came from the Berkshires
On Saturday, Nov. 5, 1932, just days before the presidential election, Anna Laurens Dawes, 81, known as the "grand lady of Pittsfield," took to the airwaves to urge every Republican to head to the polls that Tuesday.
Being from the Berkshires, birthplace of the most famous suffragette, Susan B. Anthony, Dawes' ardent push for voters to head to the polls doesn't seem out of place — until you consider she, just a dozen years prior, was the leading anti-suffragette of Western Massachusetts, if not the state.
Lucretia Williams, hearing the ax sing, rushed from her nearby home into the center of town and thrust herself between the axeman and the tree, declaring, “You will have to cut through me first.”
NORTH ADAMS — Anna Helen (Crofts) McCuen lived a secret literary life.
The crowd gathered at the Hinsdale Mining Co. on Oct. 7, 1899, held its breath as the hammer fell upon the clay crucible in the center of the room. It cracked, splinters flying into the air, as a …
SAVOY — Bent and twisted trees are not an unusual site in Berkshire County, thanks to Natalie Jeremijenko's "Tree Logic" at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The art installation's …
SAVOY — "She must have been beautiful once, for weatherbeaten as she is, she is very fine looking, and her straight nose and black bright eyes bear evidence of better days ... She is amazingly …
During the summer of 1933, Otis was invaded by a nudist cult.At least that's how a headline in the Boston Globe on May 24, 1933, described the pending establishment of a nudist colony in the township …
ADAMS — When an MTV logo was painted across the front of the Wellspeak's home in August 1988, it wasn't part of some elaborate prank. The graffiti-style logo, in various shades of green and …
A tribute to those we have lost, December 2021 - February 2022.
Prepare for the long-term with The Berkshire Eagle’s annual guide to financial readiness and life planning.
A tribute to those we have lost, September - November 2021
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1Berkshire presents the official guide to the 65th Annual Fall Foliage Parade.
