Summit House, Mt. Holyoke, Skinner State Park, Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts

Barlow Album 120 Unknown Place Z080.jpg

Title

Summit House, Mt. Holyoke, Skinner State Park, Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts

Description

#120 in 1874 Barlow Album.

The Summit House at Skinner State Park in Hadley, MA. The structure leading up the mountain to the building was a covered tramway.

The following history is from Wikipedia:

In its prime, a steamer would pick up guests at the Smiths Ferry railroad station across the Connecticut River in what was then Northampton, ferrying them to a tramway leading to the Half Way House. From there guests could take a steep inclined tram to the summit. The Prospect House, under the proprietorship of John and Fanny French, was expanded twice, first in 1861 and nearly doubled in size with the construction of an annex in 1894.

In 1908 the property was sold to the Mt. Holyoke Hotel Company. This corporation was formed by Joseph Skinner, a local industrialist, L. Treadway of Treadway Inn fame, and Christopher Clarke to hold the land in trust for an eventual state reservation. The hotel continued operation until the Great Hurricane of 1938 badly damaged the 1894 annex, which was subsequently demolished. Soon after this, Joseph Allan Skinner offered to donate the hotel and the surrounding land to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the condition it would become a state park bearing his name. The formal dedication was held in June 1940.

State funds for maintenance of the summit house and tramway during the intervening years were inadequate. The remains of the tramway were removed in 1964 and by the mid-1970s there were proposals to condemn and demolish the summit house. This led to a public outcry and in the mid-1980s the Summit House, consisting of the original 1851 structure and the 1861 addition, was restored by the state.[5] The building was reopened for tours following restoration work performed in 2014.

Rights

Granville Public Library Historical Room

Citation

“Summit House, Mt. Holyoke, Skinner State Park, Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts,” Granville History Digital Collection, accessed March 28, 2024, https://granvillehistory.omeka.net/items/show/308.

Comments

Bob Hague

This is the Summit House on Skinner Mt. in Hadley or south Hadley. Just google it and you will find pictures of this vintage. My grandparents (George and Ruth Aldrich) were photographed there on their honeymoon. I have a picture of it.

On another matter, would you like a CD of Denny Clifford (Leona's son) playing old-timey music on guitar and banjo? He was well know as a musician in town and surrounds.  Bob

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