About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the twenty-first century.
On July 13, 2015, The Berkshire Edge published the mandatory “Great Barrington Main Street Reconstruction Update.”
It has been mandatory to have a Great Barrington Main Street reconstruction update from the moment Great Barrington became a town in 1761, but not before.
When Great Barrington was still the North Parish of Sheffield, Main Street was a footpath through the woods. Later, because it was much traveled, it was widened to a cart road (a road bed the width of cart wheels).
In 1744, the great bridge was built spanning the Housatonic, and the road leading to it – Main Street — was widened to 2 rods (33 feet). Nonetheless, Main Street was not the main street of the North Parish.
Main Street was cut through undeveloped woods. It was crisscrossed by rivulets and ran beside a swamp. It was so wet that it was often impassible. Furthermore, when mist rose off the wet lands, it resembled ghosts and so the roadway was said to be haunted. It was strongly advised, therefore, that it not be traveled at night. Apparently, travel on Main Street was limited to daylight hours and dry days.
In the eighteenth century, the honor of main drag went to Pixley Street (now Route 7 from the bridge to Route 23). The center of Great Barrington was north of the bridge. There were 22 settlement families and few lived south of the bridge. Building was concentrated on the east side of Pixley Street. There were houses, the cemetery, the meeting house, the mills, and Elijah Root’s tavern.
Evidently, nothing said center of town like a jailhouse that did double duty as a tavern so when the tavern moved, the center moved. It happened this way: in 1765, four years after Great Barrington was incorporated, it became the shire town (home to the county court). Construction began on the new courthouse and jail built on Main Street (close to the Castle Street intersection). When the infrequently used jail became a more frequented tavern, Main and Castle became — perforce — town center. (Aside: when the courthouse and jail moved to Lenox, so did Elijah Root and his tavern).
From 1761 – 1775, the population of Great Barrington grew from 500 to 961 in 128 dwelling houses. Many houses, and a complement of public buildings, were on Main Street, including two churches, a school, and a number of taverns “disproportionately high for the total population.” Still in 1777, a German officer arrived in Great Barrington and condemned the roadway as a “miserable rocky and stony road through woods.”
For the entire stretch of two and a half centuries, Main Street improvement was associated with commercial growth and civic pride, and at every town meeting some suggestion was made.
In 1809, to improve the look of Main Street, settlers planted Elm trees. The trees were nice but the roadbed was narrow and dusty when it was not narrow and muddy. Changes were suggested: widen the public way to 10 rods (165 ft) allowing for a wider roadbed, hitching posts, and sidewalks on Main Street. Money was tight, and Captain William King, the man to whom townspeople went for his advice and lingered for his wit, voiced his opposition by saying, in that case, Main Street should be renamed “Strut Street” because it would be too fancy for a small rural town.
By Christmas Eve 1825, the number of taverns and churches had grown and were equal in number. That night two enterprising young men — Ralph Taylor and William Cullen Bryant –walked Main Street and counted the teams hitched in town while their owners attended services. There were 300 rigs hitched to trees, posts, and fences; some safely out of the roadway and some abandoned in the dead center of Main Street making passage impossible. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, it was decided that Great Barrington had a major parking problem.
In 1882, Main Street was declared “picturesque” but it was still a dirt road patched with gravel, and the century-old Elms were dying. Nonetheless any suggestion that Main Street be improved met with resistance for the next eight years.
In 1890 a fully-loaded lumber wagon sank into a hole on Main Street in front of Town Hall. A serious conversation commenced then and there about improvements. The state got into the act in 1895 and exerted pressure. In 1898 all projections into the sidewalks including the remaining trees were removed. In 1899 hitching posts were removed. In 1904, Main Street was widened and paved.
By 1909, therefore, Main Street was paved, the sidewalks had curbs, and the roadbed was raised to avoid water pooling. All, however, was not gas and gaiters. While the road was improved, criticism was equally enhanced.
The Great Barrington Advisory Committee made its 1909 report:
“Within the last five years….we have expended for paving Main Street…over $60,000 per mile, and when finished, [the paved street] costs much more to keep in repair than does a good macadam, cinder, or gravel road…it is hoped that no further appropriation for expensive street paving be entertained…”
The committee stated the reason for its advice: “Taxes in our town are heavy, and during these years of general business depression, when trade is dull and many…laborers are but partially employed, [we cannot] bear with this excessive weight upon us.”
The 1909 report goes on, “Many of us remember when, in 1896, $700 was appropriated for the care of Main Street from the Mahaiwe Cemetery to the Great Bridge, and the late Mr. Andrew L. Hubbell was given charge of the expenditure and that the whole street was cleaned up and kept clean and in most admirable condition, smooth and even (like a trotting track) the entire season and at the end of the year $346.28 was returned to the town – an unexpended balance. It is our opinion that macadam, gravel or cinder, well laid and kept in repair, is the cheapest and most suitable road for the needs of our rural town.”
In 1910 a businessman sued the town for damage to his business caused by runoff from the raised road. The court records do not list the suit, so perhaps it was settled out of court, because in 1912, $1,500 was appropriated for “grading…to deal with surface water.”
For more than 250 years, improvements were made to Main Street. In that same 250 years, there was discussion, discord, and support for civic improvements. The goals, the problems, the underlying arguments never really changed.
