There's a blog item coming tomorrow about an interesting piece of automotive history that is tied to my town, Abington, Ma. I went out to shoot a couple photos related to that item yesterday. I had the two boys with me and amazingly, they fell asleep at the same time in the car. This never happens. My wife was out drinking margaritas with one of her friends and I had nothing else to do, so I let the guys slumber and I cruised around town at took some pictures of some of the more interesting buildings as stuff we have.
If you dig local history, read on, if not, you'll probably be bored to death.
A little backstory:
Abington was settled in 1668 and founded as a town in 1712. Currently there are about 15,000 people living here. I've lived here my whole life, except for college where the majority of four years was spent in Amherst, Ma at UMass (AKA ZooMass). I've always been interested in the history of the town, although I have not joined up on the historical society. I keep thinking about it, but it would totally cement me as a "townie" and that's not a title I am ready for yet.
The town has a ton of cool history, most of it based in the early industrial era of America. It is now a bedroom community and other than small businesses and retail, there's not much in the way of stuff that gets made here.
There was, and still are lots of White Oak trees in town. The significance there is that the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned war ship in the world was build primarily of White Oak from Abington. The cannonballs that famously bounced off of "Old Ironsides" were thwarted by trees felled within a mile of so of my house. Kinda neat.
The first heavyweight boxing champ of the world, John L Sullivan (as shown in the photo below my name) called Abington his home, and his brick farm house is about a 1/2 mile from where I am typing this right now.
The primary industry of the town during the Civil War era was shoe making and it is documented that more than half the shoes provided to the Union Army came from Abington Factories. The building below is the Moses Arnold shoe factory. It was built in the early 1800's and during the war was turning out something like 10,000 shoes a week, a heady number in those days.
Next up is the largest building in town and one that gives the fire department cold sweats when thoughts of it catching fire are mentioned. Now it is largely known as the "New England Art" building but it started life as the Crossett shoe factory in the 1880's. This building is of wood construction and for ages had machinery that dripped oil and other stuff into the floors. It is a tinder box, especially now because it is used by a printing company and is full of paper products. Looking past the building in the distance you can see the corner of another building. That was my elementary school, and at on time, the factory went all the way down there. It is about the size of a city block. The towers are kind of weird as well. Notice the one on the right is about a story taller than the one of the left. The town bought a very expensive truck with a six story ladder on it a few years back because of this building. There was lots of teeth gnashing over that one.
This eight sided house actually sits across the street from the factory and was built in 1850 by a guy named Americus Vespicius. People had cool names back then.
This was once a one screen movie house, but when it was built in 1894, it was a shop that sold sleighs, horse riding products, and apparently the owner brokered horses out of here as well. Around 1915 it was sold to a theater company and operated as a theater for some time. It later became a card store. When I was a kid the building was abandoned, I think it was abandoned sometime in the 1970's. We never had the guts to go in, but some of the older kids said that there were still seats and a screen in the building and the card company only occupied a portion of the building. It was bought and restored back to life by a local developer. I think it is one of the coolest places in town. The original owner was a man named Henry Crossley, you can see his initials at the top of the building.
One more if you are still awake.
This train station was built in 1893 was was witness to one of the most interesting events in the history of the town. It was the site of the "Great Abington Train Riot". Abington has always had a history of railroad service. The factories were supplied by them. The town had a trolley system that they were expanding during the 1890's and they reached a point where they needed to cross the railroad tracks owned by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad company. The town needed to do this to connect the trolley to the neighboring town of Rockland. The RR company voted against allowing the town to cross their tracks. This meant trouble! The town had their work crews start laying the track under protection of the town constabulary, but the workers for the RR company were going to have none of that. I huge melee broke out with the coppers clubbing RR company workers, people whacking each other with tools and whatever else they could get their hands on, and fists flying. Eventually the whole mess was sorted out and the town made amends with the RR company in order to finish their line. In 1993 the town had a neat re-enactment of the events of the day which was well attended. I was 13 at the time and really enjoyed seeing it. Here's the station that was part of the peace offering by the town.
There's some info on my little corner of the world. Hope you enjoyed it, if you're still awake. Stay tuned to the blog to see some cool automotive history tomorrow!
Brian
If you dig local history, read on, if not, you'll probably be bored to death.
A little backstory:
Abington was settled in 1668 and founded as a town in 1712. Currently there are about 15,000 people living here. I've lived here my whole life, except for college where the majority of four years was spent in Amherst, Ma at UMass (AKA ZooMass). I've always been interested in the history of the town, although I have not joined up on the historical society. I keep thinking about it, but it would totally cement me as a "townie" and that's not a title I am ready for yet.
The town has a ton of cool history, most of it based in the early industrial era of America. It is now a bedroom community and other than small businesses and retail, there's not much in the way of stuff that gets made here.
There was, and still are lots of White Oak trees in town. The significance there is that the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned war ship in the world was build primarily of White Oak from Abington. The cannonballs that famously bounced off of "Old Ironsides" were thwarted by trees felled within a mile of so of my house. Kinda neat.
The first heavyweight boxing champ of the world, John L Sullivan (as shown in the photo below my name) called Abington his home, and his brick farm house is about a 1/2 mile from where I am typing this right now.
The primary industry of the town during the Civil War era was shoe making and it is documented that more than half the shoes provided to the Union Army came from Abington Factories. The building below is the Moses Arnold shoe factory. It was built in the early 1800's and during the war was turning out something like 10,000 shoes a week, a heady number in those days.
Next up is the largest building in town and one that gives the fire department cold sweats when thoughts of it catching fire are mentioned. Now it is largely known as the "New England Art" building but it started life as the Crossett shoe factory in the 1880's. This building is of wood construction and for ages had machinery that dripped oil and other stuff into the floors. It is a tinder box, especially now because it is used by a printing company and is full of paper products. Looking past the building in the distance you can see the corner of another building. That was my elementary school, and at on time, the factory went all the way down there. It is about the size of a city block. The towers are kind of weird as well. Notice the one on the right is about a story taller than the one of the left. The town bought a very expensive truck with a six story ladder on it a few years back because of this building. There was lots of teeth gnashing over that one.
This eight sided house actually sits across the street from the factory and was built in 1850 by a guy named Americus Vespicius. People had cool names back then.
This was once a one screen movie house, but when it was built in 1894, it was a shop that sold sleighs, horse riding products, and apparently the owner brokered horses out of here as well. Around 1915 it was sold to a theater company and operated as a theater for some time. It later became a card store. When I was a kid the building was abandoned, I think it was abandoned sometime in the 1970's. We never had the guts to go in, but some of the older kids said that there were still seats and a screen in the building and the card company only occupied a portion of the building. It was bought and restored back to life by a local developer. I think it is one of the coolest places in town. The original owner was a man named Henry Crossley, you can see his initials at the top of the building.
One more if you are still awake.
This train station was built in 1893 was was witness to one of the most interesting events in the history of the town. It was the site of the "Great Abington Train Riot". Abington has always had a history of railroad service. The factories were supplied by them. The town had a trolley system that they were expanding during the 1890's and they reached a point where they needed to cross the railroad tracks owned by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad company. The town needed to do this to connect the trolley to the neighboring town of Rockland. The RR company voted against allowing the town to cross their tracks. This meant trouble! The town had their work crews start laying the track under protection of the town constabulary, but the workers for the RR company were going to have none of that. I huge melee broke out with the coppers clubbing RR company workers, people whacking each other with tools and whatever else they could get their hands on, and fists flying. Eventually the whole mess was sorted out and the town made amends with the RR company in order to finish their line. In 1993 the town had a neat re-enactment of the events of the day which was well attended. I was 13 at the time and really enjoyed seeing it. Here's the station that was part of the peace offering by the town.
There's some info on my little corner of the world. Hope you enjoyed it, if you're still awake. Stay tuned to the blog to see some cool automotive history tomorrow!
Brian
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