Sycamores is the 1788 home of Col. Ruggles Woodbridge, a man of many parts.  He was a physician, shop-owner, owner of a potash refinery, a sawmill, a still, and the town’s only chaise–all by the age of 33. He was our representative in Boston for 12 years, and led a regiment at the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Upon his death in 1819 the house became The Woodbridge Scientific School for 40 boys from well-to-do families living in New York and Hartford.  At that time the house had so many wings it was said it could fly.  The Montague family lived here for the remainder of the 19th C and then in 1900 it was purchased by a wealthy Bostonian, Rose Hollingsworth who undoubtedly had the recently renovated (by the Adams Family Foundation) water tower constructed.  She also planted renowned gardens. 

Joseph Skinner purchased the house in 1915.  He made it into a private dormitory for Mount Holyoke College students.  The College purchased it in 1937; it continued to be a dormitory until 1971.  For the majority of this time it was inhabited by 15 women, usually sophomores, a housemother, a maid and a cook.  It then became a home for inner city girls who attended South Hadley High School under the A Better Chance program and then accommodation for the male guests of College students. It was a warehouse and then in 1996 stood vacant and neglected, unpainted, with holes in the roof.

The Sycamores Committee purchased the house and the 3.7 acre lot on which it stands from Mount Holyoke College in 1999 for $50,000.  Simultaneously a $107,000 grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission was matched with $157,000 from the Sycamores Committee and the Frank Stanley Beveridge Foundation.  The stabilization and restoration of the exterior was completed in 2001.

            In the first decade of this new millenium much work has taken place inside Sycamores and its attached ell.  A rental apartment has been constructed with a kitchen above the old dormitory kitchen, a living room above what was once the maid’s room, a den above the connector leading to Rawson House, and two bedrooms and a bath on the 2nd floor of Rawson House.

            The maintenance men of Mount Holyoke College ran for several years a program called “A Day of Giving” during which they devoted their services, free of charge, to non-profit organizations like Sycamores.  They removed 400 ft of rusted chain link fence from the southern and part of the eastern borders of the property, then, the next year, removed the badly overgrown vegetation in that southeast corner.  In another year they hauled away all the green indoor/outdoor carpet that the previous owner had seen fit to glue to all horizontal surfaces.  Our chemist, Ken Williamson, could find no inexpensive solvent to remove the glue, so we had the floors sanded.  The hearths of the many fireplaces are still coated with glue.

            We decided that the four-foot fluorescent lights that lit every room in Sycamores had to go.  We told the maintenance men on their last Day of Giving in 2008 that we would buy anything at Home Depot and it would look better than those fluorescent lights.  To our surprise and delight the College electricians said they had stashed away the beautiful brass chandeliers that once graced the dining rooms in dormitories throughout the College, and would donate them to us.  So they now hang in most of the rooms, the halls and the stairwell at Sycamores.   Few, if any, 18th C houses would have had such a plethora of chandeliers, but they certainly beat fluorescents.  We will leave it to some future sleuth to tell us which dormitory each one came from.           

            The original sink and quarter round corner cupboard are still in the dormitory kitchen, but a  new six burner cooktop, hood, double wall ovens and cabinets, along with a reach-in refrigerator have turned this into a kitchen for catered events.  The first event, a dinner for 50, was on April 13, 2009, the 75th birthday of Ken Williamson.  The first commercial event was a dinner meeting of the South Hadley Lions Club on October 7, 2009.

            In 2008 and 2009 all the ceilings throughout Sycamores were buttoned up and given a skim coat of new plaster, or, on the third floor, new drywall by an expert plasterer, Ray Crane. He and his brother also did the same to all the walls in the three-story stairwell, after Ken Williamson and Katelyn Perchak removed all the old wall paper.  Those walls, like all the walls of the first two storeys in Sycamore, were never painted; they were always covered with wall paper. 

            Mike, our painter, painted the outside of Sycamores and did such a good job we hired him to work on the interior.  He scraped and sanded all the woodwork in the entire stairwell and then gave it several coats of paint, ending with a coat of antique white, semi-gloss.  The walls were sized and papered by the expert paper hanger used by Historic Deerfield whose services were donated by Barbara Cummings of our committee.

            On the third floor, where we intend to devote the four rooms to a unique museum of typical Mount Holyoke College dormitory rooms (one devoted to the Class of ’49) work has already started.  The A Better Chance girls painted the wall in wild colors and then the owner of Sycamores at that time adopted an interesting method of painting the rooms: apparently the painter stood on the floor with a spray gun and painted all the ceilings, light fixtures, light bulbs and all!  Ken Williamson has removed all the paint from the fixtures, many made of brass, and polished and lacquered them.  The old metal fire escape ladders are still in place in each room.

            In July, 2010 volunteers from the Holyoke Rotary Club removed the old wallpaper from the NE room,  which was the dormitory parlor, on the first floor and from the SE room on the second floor in preparation for our next decorative effort.

            In the spring of 2010 Linda Young of South Hadley donated a large number of pieces of furniture and other decorative items as she broke up the local home of her great aunt.  Among these were a very nice Wing and Sons upright piano, dated 1907.  Sycamores is beginning to look like a home.

Rawson House. 

The eight mile trek to Hadley for church was too much for our townspeople, the majority of whom did not have horses.  So South Hadley was allowed to split from Hadley (founded in 1659) on the completion of three requirements: that they build a meeting house which they did in 1732 (it is the former Woodbridges restaurant, now called The Yarde), that they hire a minister, Grindall Rawson, and that they build him a house, Rawson House.  It was built in 1733 from logs felled in the winter of 1732, as proved by dendrochronology, on the lot now occupied by Sycamores. Disgruntled parishioners removed Grindall from the pulpit in 1741, to be replaced by John Woodbridge.  Grindall was too conservative for them; he did not embrace the Half-Way Covenant. 

            Ruggles bought the house in 1787 after which the Rawson House was moved up the street and attached to the rear of 40 Woodbridge St (built 1787).  Sophie Eastman, author of In Old South Hadley, lived in the house in 1884.  When she died in the early 20th century Joseph Skinner bought the house and divided it into three units.  The back (west) ell, Rawson House, was used to house his extensive collection of Americana, now housed in the Skinner Museum.  Mount Holyoke College acquired 40 Woodbridge St with Rawson House attached in 1948.  Joseph Brodsky, Mount Holyoke’s only Nobel laureate, lived there.  It was sold to Kay Bernon in 2004 who generously gave it to the Sycamores Committee on the condition it be moved within three months. It did not fit into her plans for the renovation of the remainder of the house at 40 Woodbridge St.  It was moved on Oct 19, 2004, when it got stuck in the mud as it was coming on to its present location.  A week later it was in place on cribbing; a foundation was poured under it and it was subsequently lowered into place.  My son-in-law and our intern, Katelyn Perchak, helped me remove 14 radiators from Rawson House and the red ell of Sycamores as well as demolish the interior of the ell in preparation for the construction of the apartment. 

         When we removed the west wall of the red ell we found three shoes in the wall, now on display just above where they were found.  We also found in Rawson half an ox shoe, and a clay pipe bowl, but the only indication of who once lived there is found in an upper bedroom where someone as incised into a purlin “A Brodsky.”  This could be Alexander or Anna, both children of Joseph. 

        I had the timbers of Rawson dated by dendrochronology by Bill Flynt of Historic Deerfield.  All the logs were felled in the winter of 1732 except one that dated 1712.  Extensive rot in the places where Rawson was attached to the 40 Woodbridge house necessitated new timber framing.  We moved windows and doors, made doors wider and I built two windows for the south side of Rawson.  Boards donated by Phil  Marois and colored by Tom Kuclinski gives the south room you see today.

        Two  professional carpenters from Marois Construction built the 12 foot connector and installed the kitchen cabinets for the apartment and all the drywall.  A new shake roof, and new heating and plumbing systems were installed by professionals as well as completely new wiring, including fire and carbon monoxide detectors, cable, TV and all new 110 and 220 V lines.   Much interior painting was done by prisoners from the Hampshire County House of Correction under their work-release program.

        Meanwhile Barbara Cummings, master guide at Historic Deerfield, donated the reproduction wallpaper in the southeast room of Sycamore which was professionally installed on walls that were prepared by Katelyn Perchak and me.

        In 2010  new wallpaper, a reproduction of an 18C design, was installed in the stairwell on all three floors.  The installation of the 49 rolls of untrimmed, silk-screened paper was a generous donation from Barbara Cummings, of the Sycamores Committee.

Landscaping

In the summer of 2006 the town of South Hadley undertook a major highway project aimed at improving traffic flow in the town center.  The Common was reshaped and a traffic light installed.  In addition many utilities were buried, including those directly in front of Sycamores.  Wayne Boulais oversaw the removal of five utility poles from the property, and the burial of all utilities leading into Sycamores.  We acquired a new sidewalk in front of Sycamores, new stone steps, and a renewed brick walk leading to the front door as a part of this project.

            One contractor was allowed to park his equipment on the south lawn during the highway construction in return for donating fill around Rawson House and the tacit understanding that the lawn would be restored.  But the lawn was not restored and he killed several of the trees on the south lawn.  Our garden committee, Ellie Klepacki and Wayne Boulais, engaged the services of a local landscaper, Earthscapes, who installed a new crushed stone driveway, brick sidewalks around Rawson House, and a whole new lawn.  In the summer of 2009 Earthscapes planted three new sycamore trees, holly bushes, and a shad tree.  The vista that Sycamores presents as approached on Woodbridge St. from the College is once more magnificent.  

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