Historic Surveys

Holyoke Main Street Corridor Survey Final Report September 30, 2020 Zachary J. Violette: This project was an intensive-level neighborhood survey of its Main Street Corridor. Running parallel to, and just below the Second Level Canal, Main Street spans neighborhoods called the Flats and South Holyoke (Figure 1). The area was a locus of development during the early periods of industrial development of the city, initially conceived of and planned as a textile manufacturing center by a group of Boston investors. The Main Street corridor’s built environment, however, reflects the complexity of the city’s industrial developments, where textile, wire, machinery, and most notably paper enterprises developed rapidly. After the city’s main commercial and financial functions moved westward to High Street in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Main Street corridor appears to have taken on the characteristics of a local retail and service node for the sprawling and dense neighborhood of mostly working-class housing that adjoined it to the east. Industries of a scale smaller than those located on the city’s canal system were also located in the neighborhood, clustered on Race and Clemente (originally Park) streets. While the area was particularly hard hit during the decline of Holyoke’s industry in the late twentieth century, the neighborhood is now the focus of revitalization efforts. The present survey was undertaken, in part, to support those efforts.

Read all about it: Holyoke Main St Corridor Historic Survey Final Report