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Wistariahurst
Wistariahurst is a historic house museum and the former estate of the Skinner family, located at 238 Cabot Street in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was built in 1868 for William Skinner, the owner of a successful silk spinning and textile business, and is named for the abundant wisteria vines which cascade across its eastern facade. Originally constructed in Williamsburg in 1868, the mansion designed by Northampton architect William Ferro Pratt was moved to Holyoke in 1874, following the devastating flood which swept away the original Skinner mills. Following the death of Belle Skinner, its music room was operated as a private museum from 1930 to 1959, housing the Belle Skinner Collection of Old Musical Instruments, before their donation by the family to Yale University. Since 1959 it has been operated as the Wistariahurst Museum, and is open to the public. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Architecture and history Wistariahurst occupi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wistariahurst
Wistariahurst is a historic house museum and the former estate of the Skinner family, located at 238 Cabot Street in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was built in 1868 for William Skinner, the owner of a successful silk spinning and textile business, and is named for the abundant wisteria vines which cascade across its eastern facade. Originally constructed in Williamsburg in 1868, the mansion designed by Northampton architect William Ferro Pratt was moved to Holyoke in 1874, following the devastating flood which swept away the original Skinner mills. Following the death of Belle Skinner, its music room was operated as a private museum from 1930 to 1959, housing the Belle Skinner Collection of Old Musical Instruments, before their donation by the family to Yale University. Since 1959 it has been operated as the Wistariahurst Museum, and is open to the public. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Architecture and history Wistariahurst occupi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holyoke
Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, that lies between the western bank of the Connecticut River and the Mount Tom Range. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,238. Located north of Springfield, Holyoke is part of the Springfield Metropolitan Area, one of the two distinct metropolitan areas in Massachusetts. Holyoke is among the early planned industrial cities in the United States. Built in tandem with the Holyoke Dam to utilize the water power of Hadley Falls, it is one of a handful of cities in New England built on the grid plan. During the late 19th century the city produced an estimated 80% of the writing paper used in the United States and was home to the largest paper mill architectural firm in the country, as well as the largest paper, silk, and alpaca wool mills in the world. Although a considerably smaller number of businesses in Holyoke work in the paper industry today, it is still commonly referred to as "The Paper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holyoke, Massachusetts
Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, that lies between the western bank of the Connecticut River and the Mount Tom Range. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,238. Located north of Springfield, Holyoke is part of the Springfield Metropolitan Area, one of the two distinct metropolitan areas in Massachusetts. Holyoke is among the early planned industrial cities in the United States. Built in tandem with the Holyoke Dam to utilize the water power of Hadley Falls, it is one of a handful of cities in New England built on the grid plan. During the late 19th century the city produced an estimated 80% of the writing paper used in the United States and was home to the largest paper mill architectural firm in the country, as well as the largest paper, silk, and alpaca wool mills in the world. Although a considerably smaller number of businesses in Holyoke work in the paper industry today, it is still commonly referred to as "The Paper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belle Skinner
Ruth Isabelle Skinner (April 30, 1866 – April 9, 1928) was an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She was a daughter of silk manufacturer William Skinner (1824–1902) and his second wife, the former Sarah Elizabeth Allen (1834–1908). Belle Skinner was a humanitarian and music-lover whose life her brother William memorialized in the construction of the Skinner Hall of Music at Vassar College in 1932. She lived most of her life at the family home, Wistariahurst, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, now a historic site. She renovated and expanded this house to reflect her interests, including adding the music room, where she housed her musical instrument collection, now housed at Yale University. In 1902, she and her sister Katherine established the Skinner Coffee House in honor of their late father, the coffee house initially hosted women working in the Skinner mills for social, service, and educational activities but gradually became a meeting place for dozens of men's and wome ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yale University Collection Of Musical Instruments
The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, a division of the Yale School of Music, is a museum in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1900 by a gift of historic keyboard instruments from Morris Steinert, and later enriched in 1960 and 1962 by the acquisition of the Belle Skinner and Emil Herrmann collections. Initially housed under the dome of Woolsey Hall, it was moved in 1961 to a historic Romanesque structure on Hillhouse Avenue, constructed in 1895 for the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Collections Highlights from the museum's holdings include keyboard instruments from three centuries, featuring an organ by John Snetzler (London, 1742), harpsichords by Ruckers (Antwerp, 1640), Blanchet (Paris, c. 1740), and Taskin (Paris, 1770), a clavichord by Hoffman (Ronneburg, 1784), and pianos by Könnicke (Vienna, c. 1795), Boesendorfer (Vienna, c. 1830), and Érard (Paris, 1883). The Collection possesses stringed instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri, and Stainer. Also include ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wisteria
''Wisteria'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae (Leguminosae), that includes ten species of woody twining vines that are native to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southern Canada, the Eastern United States, and north of Iran. They were later introduced to France, Germany and various other countries in Europe. Some species are popular ornamental plants. The aquatic flowering plant commonly called wisteria or 'water wisteria' is in fact ''Hygrophila difformis'', in the family Acanthaceae. Etymology The botanist Thomas Nuttall said he named the genus ''Wisteria'' in memory of the American physician and anatomist Caspar Wistar (1761–1818). Both men were living in Philadelphia at the time, where Wistar was a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Questioned about the spelling later, Nuttall said it was for "euphony", but his biographer speculated that it may have something to do with Nuttall's friend Charles Jones Wister S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarence Sumner Luce
Clarence Sumner Luce (1852–1924) was an American architect who practiced first in Boston, then at Newport, Rhode Island, and finally in New York. He is best known for his design for the Holyoke Opera House, and his designs for a series of Newport houses. Early life Clarence Luce was born at Chicopee, Massachusetts on June 10, 1852, the son of Augustus Luce and his wife, Clarissa Elvira Clapp. As of 1855, the family lived at Haydenville, Williamsburg, Massachusetts, where Augustus Luce worked as a "brass moulder" in the mill of the Haydenville Manufacturing Co. By 1870, Augustus Luce was a superintendent of the mill, living next door to the Greek Revival mansion of the mill's owner, Josiah Hayden. In 1874, a flood destroyed the mill, but the Hayden family rebuilt it the following year to a design by Clarence Luce. Career Luce attended the Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts for four years, where he enrolled in the "scientific course" of study. In 1870, he moved to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electric Smelting And Aluminum Company
The Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company, founded as Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company, and Cowles Syndicate Company, Limited, formed in the United States and England during the mid-1880s to extract and supply valuable metals. Founded by two brothers from Ohio, the Cowles companies are remembered for producing alloys in quantity sufficient for commerce. Their furnaces were electric arc smelters, one of the first viable methods for extracting metals. The businesses of the era dramatically increased the supply of aluminium, a plentiful resource not found in nature in pure form, and reduced its price. The Cowles process was the immediate predecessor to the Hall-Héroult process—today in nearly universal use more than a century after it was discovered by Charles Martin Hall and Paul Héroult and adapted by others including Carl Josef Bayer. Because of the patent landscape, the Cowles companies found themselves in court. Judges eventually acknowledged their innovations m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smelting
Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal base behind. The reducing agent is commonly a fossil fuel source of carbon, such as coke—or, in earlier times, charcoal. The oxygen in the ore binds to carbon at high temperatures due to the lower potential energy of the bonds in carbon dioxide (). Smelting most prominently takes place in a blast furnace to produce pig iron, which is converted into steel. The carbon source acts as a chemical reactant to remove oxygen from the ore, yielding the purified metal element as a product. The carbon source is oxidized in two stages. First, the carbon (C) combusts with oxygen (O2) in the air to produce carbon monoxide (CO). Second, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holyoke Water Power Company
Eversource Energy is a publicly traded, Fortune 500 energy company headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut, and Boston, Massachusetts, with several regulated subsidiaries offering retail electricity, natural gas service and water service to approximately 4 million customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Following its 2012 merger with Boston-based NSTAR, Northeast Utilities had more than 4,270 circuit miles of electric transmission lines, 72,000 pole miles of distribution lines, and 6,459 miles of natural gas pipeline in New England. On February 2, 2015, the company and all its subsidiaries rebranded themselves as "Eversource Energy". The stock symbol changed on February 19, 2015, from "NU" to "ES". Corporate structure Before its rebranding, the company operated six main subsidiaries: Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P), Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH), Western Massachusetts Electric Company (WMECO), Yankee Gas Services Company (Yankee Gas), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EcoTarium
The EcoTarium is a science and nature museum located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Previously known as the New England Science Center, the museum features several permanent and traveling exhibits, the Alden Planetarium, a narrow-gauge train pulled by a scale model of an 1860s steam engine, and a variety of wildlife. History The EcoTarium was founded in 1825 as the Worcester Lyceum of Natural History. The first spaces dedicated to the museum were the Natural History Rooms on the third floor of the Worcester Bank Block on Foster Street, which opened on October 1, 1867. In 1891 the museum and its collection moved to the Old Edwin Conant Mansion at the corner of State and Harvard streets. As the collection grew more and more space was needed. In 1954 the museum moved exhibits to the Daniels House and the Rice House at 41 Elm street, both in Worcester. The final move took place in 1971 to a new building, designed by Edward Durell Stone, built on of donated land. At this point the name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berkshire Museum
__NOTOC__ The Berkshire Museum is a museum of art, natural history, and ancient civilization that is located in Pittsfield in Berkshire County, Massachusetts ( United States). History The Berkshire Museum, founded by local paper magnate Zenas Crane, opened in 1903. The building was designed by the local architect Henry Seaver. The museum's first curator was Harlan H. Ballard, who stayed in that role until early 1931. He was replaced by Laura M. Bragg who became director of the museum. When Ellen Crane, Zenas's wife, died in 1934, she left a bequest of $100,000 to the museum. Gallery File:Robert Reid - The Trio - Google Art Project.jpg, Robert Lewis Reid, ''The Trio'', 1898 Renovations The Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation opened in March 2008. This new hall falls in line with the museum's traditional "curiosity cabinet" appeal and is dedicated to local innovators. In October 2014, Berkshire Museum's "Dino Dig" paleontology exhibition was replaced by Spark!Lab, a hands-on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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