Located along the Connecticut River, Chicopee lies between Holyoke and Springfield and is bisected by the Mass Turnpike. My best friend's family lives here, part of a significant Polish immigrant community, and it is has a definite working class, suburban feel to it. I only managed to take pictures in the Chicopee Center area, the official "downtown", but, the city itself is made up of a cluster of older communities with their own neighborhood centers.
Faux brick!
What is that blue stuff?
My friend's parents were married at this church...MANY years ago!
City Hall
Now this is how to repurpose old buildings and neighborhoods!
The scale of this building is crazy!
We could here them working on renovating many of these as we walked through
Many of these are already full with businesses
Cabotville is the old name for this section of Chicopee
Well this was a treat. I drove near Chicopee, but was running out of time, so I skipped it in favor of Holyoke. I love cities like this. The old factories, blue collar neighborhoods, and ethnic churches remind me of the Scranton area (where my folks grew up, and we use to visit when I was a youngin'). And the City Hall tower is wild. Thanks so much for the tour stepper.
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Get off my lawn you whippersnappers!!!!!
Great thread!! Can't wait to see Springfield!! Question: Those old industrial buildings they're renovating, What did they used to be??
The majority of the mills in Chicopee, according to my friend, were for textiles. In fact, one of his grandmothers used to work in one of them when her family first settled in the area. I believe the factories in Holyoke were more centered around paper mills.
And if they needed to house the looms for textile manufacturing, I guess that's why these were so immense.
On the second picture below, I zoomed into the original and the plaque says the building was a cotton mill built in the 1850s.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stepper77
Thanks for the comments. It was a lot of fun exploring these cities, especially as a change from the "old west" towns we have in California.