Seven Acres

While most properties in Longmeadow today clock in at well under an acre of land, that hasn’t always been the case, particularly along Longmeadow Street where it was once common to own long, thin parcels of land of about eight acres that stretched down towards the Connecticut River. As Longmeadow moved away from its agricultural roots, more and more land was sold and developed into the many side streets we have up and down Longmeadow Street today. However, there is still one parcel of land in town that maintains just about seven acres. This property, near the intersection of Longmeadow Street and Edgewood Avenue, features a home built in 1919 which came to be called, appropriately, “Seven Acres.”

The home was designed by H. Hilliard Smith and Donald G. Bassette, partners in the well-known architectural firm Smith and Bassette located in Hartford, CT. They were in business from 1911-1946. Their designs were based upon Classical and Colonial Revival styles. They designed several homes in the Colony Hills neighborhood, as wells as the iconic Longmeadow Community House (built in 1921) and the Richard Salter Storrs Library (built in 1933).

Prior to The Community House and Storrs Library, the firm designed several beautiful homes in town, including the property that came to be known as Seven Acres.

The seven-acre property was purchased from sisters Martha and Mary Ella Cooley, whose surname hearkens back to one of the earliest family names in town. At the time, the sisters resided in the family home at 418 Longmeadow Street.

1912 Longmeadow Map showing the land owned by the Cooley sisters

that would become Seven Acres

John F. and Marjorie S. Jennings, who resided at 33 Benedict Terrace after marrying in 1912, purchased the property. John Jennings, a 1906 graduate of Harvard Law School, and his wife, Marjorie, a Smith College graduate who brought her training and interest in landscape architecture to the Springfield and Longmeadow Gardening Clubs, sold their home for the larger lot. They hired the Smith & Bassette firm to design their new home.

John Jennings died in 1947, but his wife continued to live there until her death in 1980 at the age of 99. Extensive renovations were done to the property in the early 1980s. Today the house maintains its lovely acreage and the seclusion away from the bustle and traffic of Longmeadow Street. Now along with the extensive grounds, this is one of the loveliest homes in Longmeadow. A seven-acre oasis in town!

- Contributed by Lenny Shaker, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member

Blueberry Hill School

Longmeadow Annual Town Report, 1960

Another week, another school visit! This week, Blueberry Hill School’s 3rd graders had a visit from the Longmeadow Historical Society to talk about local history. In the process, they learned a little about the history of their own school.

Springfield Republican, May 13, 1956

The mid-1950s was a whirlwind of school planning and building in town. Prior to 1955, Longmeadow junior high students finished 9th grade at the Junior High on the green (presently part of Center School) and boarded trolleys or buses headed to one of the high schools in Springfield to complete their education.

In 1955, Longmeadow responded to a boom in residential construction and population growth by constructing its own first high school on Grassy Gutter Road to house students in Grades 10-12. The 9th Grade soon joined them. Wolf Swamp Road School opened the next year in 1956 to relieve the overcrowding at the Norway Street School off Maple Road. And in September 1957, Blueberry Hill School welcomed students in Kindergarten through Grade 6. Imagine how busy town meetings and school committees must have been in those years as important decisions about budgets and school district boundaries were being made.

Blueberry Hill School was constructed to handle the overflow of elementary school students from the Converse Street School which had been built around 1918. The land east of Burbank Road had not been developed into neighborhoods yet, but would be after school construction had begun. Annual Reports from the time are filled with warrant articles about the naming of streets, paving of roads, and infrastructure related to water and sewer systems in the area off Bliss Road near the high school.

Longmeadow Annual Town Report, 1956

Blueberry Hill School opened its doors in September 1957 to 200 elementary school students under the leadership of Principal Ronald G. Billings, who had previously held the same role at the Converse Street School. As far as the name “Blueberry Hill,” it is hard to find any solid evidence pointing to an abundance of blueberry bushes in the area. Perhaps it’s true that the area was a great place for picking, but it is also possible that it was just a nice-sounding name.

Interestingly, the famous song of the same name by Fats Domino was released in September of 1956, and became a chart-topper after a November 1956 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Surely, workers on the school construction site and in households around town were humming along to the tune as they went about their work. The song was popular in other versions all throughout the 1940s as well, but it was Fats Domino’s take that had staying power.

Longmeadow Annual Town Report, 1957

Even as initial construction on all three new schools was occurring in the 1950s, it was already apparent that each building was going to need additions in the years to come to meet the needs of a rapidly growing town population. As a matter of fact, other sites were also being looked at as potential sites for additional school buildings, including an area of Emerson Road.

In time, the Converse and Norway Street Schools were turned over for other purposes in town and the additions to Center, Wolf Swamp and Blueberry Hill School have been sufficient to house Longmeadow’s youngest learners. Can we talk about those middle schools, though…..?

This week the Longmeadow Historical Society recognizes

M&T Bank for their support of History Notes

Wolf Swamp Road and School

Wolf Swamp Road School c. 1956

Longmeadow Historical Society Archives

Who among us has not wondered about the name “Wolf Swamp?” In preparation for a visit to Wolf Swamp Road School’s third-grade class for a presentation on Longmeadow history, I thought it would be the perfect time to look into the origins of the unusual moniker.

Spoiler: I couldn’t find any compelling stories about marauding packs of wolves inhabiting that area of Longmeadow. I really, really tried. Most newspaper database searches from the 18th century onward only mentioned a similarly named part of West Springfield. There was no mention of it in the earliest town records nor in Stephen Williams’ diaries either.

There was a brief June 1883 legal notice in The Springfield Republican about an estate auction that included a parcel of land in Longmeadow whose eastern boundary was “the land called Wolf swamp.” I had to jump forward to a 1947 Annual Town Report record of a warrant article about renaming Rowe Road to Wolf Swamp Road. It did reference a 1757 plan for the laying out a road there three rods wide. A road in that area can be seen on the 1831 town map with a house owned by “N. Rowe” clearly identified. A 1939 map shows the road was labeled “Rowe Road.”

Warrant Article 26 at Longmeadow Town Meeting, February 1948

"N. Rowe" 1894 map of Longmeadow

1939 map of Longmeadow showing Rowe Road

And there is a transfer of deed from Josiah Cooley to David Ferry in 1805 mentioning “a lot of land called Wolf Swamp lot”. The document explicitly mentions that Cooley received the land from his “Mother Cooley.” It is telling that Mother Cooley was the daughter of Thomas Hale and an early map of Longmeadow shows an area near the East Longmeadow border named “Hale’s Meadow.” Perhaps Hale’s Meadow contained an area that had colloquially been known as Wolf Swamp.

1805 land transfer of "Wolf Swamp lot" from Josiah Cooley to David Ferry

As for the school, land for a new school was set aside by a town vote in 1947 in anticipation of the need. Two important factors led to a need for a new school in the vicinity of Wolf Swamp: a post-war baby boom and a post-war housing boom. Since the beginning of the turn of the 20th century, Longmeadow’s population was increasing at an incredible rate. Per census data, the town’s population in 1910 of 1,084 residents jumped to 6,508 in 1950. This meant an increased demand on every possible town service, from sewers and roadways, to the library and schools. Also, the shift from public trolley transportation to private automobile ownership meant that neighborhoods could expand beyond the Longmeadow Street side streets.

The area around Maple Road had been served by the Norway Street school since 1918, but that building was struggling with issues of overcrowding. Planning and construction for the new Wolf Swamp Road School began in 1954 and it opened its doors to serve 188 students in 1956. The first principal, Miss Dorothy Gilman, served as principal for 21 years until her retirement in 1977. Today Wolf Swamp Road School serves approximately 444 Longmeadow students from Pre-K through Grade 5.

Springfield Union, October 8, 1954

Springfield Union, August 19, 1956