SOUTH HADLEY — With official approval from the Select Board and Massachusetts Historical Commission, South Hadley is moving closer to establishing its first local historic district at the Old Firehouse Museum and Fred M. Smith Memorial Green.

“The historic district will promote possible revitalization of the Old Firehouse and it basically provides a big boost to the Falls area in town and other redevelopment work in the Falls,” Melissa Taylor, chair of the Historic District Study Committee, said.

The committee finalized the study on May 15, 2024 and received approval from the Select Board on July 9, but efforts to create a local historic district began in 2013 when the Select Board established the Historic District Study Committee. The committee initially proposed a district consisting of several private properties on North Main Street but residents living on and around those parcels pushed back against the increased regulations on their homes.

Without public approval to support the district at Town Meeting, the committee went back to the drawing board, and in 2023 the trustees of the Old Firehouse Museum offered to make the public parcel a single-property district. The study committee added the Fred M. Smith Memorial Green due to the significance of the open space’s namesake and added a small slope north of the property where the firemen used to wash equipment.

“The firehouse not only is at the center of South Hadley Falls, but it now contains the most important historic relics in South Hadley history,” Taylor said. “It’s not only important historically and architecturally, but it serves such an important function.”

As reported in the historic study, the Old Firehouse served as home base for South Hadley’s first volunteer firefighters, storing the hand-pump fire engine, from when it was built in 1889 until 1974, when the Fire House on North Main Street was constructed. Its architecture represents the Shingle Style revival period of the late 1800s, a style of home specific to New England that detailed walls, roofs, gable ends, towers, and porch columns with shingles. It sits in the center of the Falls, right across from the Connecticut River and site of the 1795 canal registered on the National Register of Historic Places.

“When I do any survey of old South Hadley photos and postcards, the firehouse is very prominent. It indeed seems to be a very important site in the Falls,” Taylor said.

In 1976, the the South Hadley Historical Society, with support from the Lions Club and many volunteers, turned the vacant firehouse into a town museum. Exhibits in the museum display farm and carpentry tools; brick-making processes; dinosaur tracks and relics from Indigenous tribes, most likely either Nipmuc and Nonotuck peoples; a model of the historic 1795 canal and Fountain Engine No. 1, the hand-pump fire engine used by the fire companies at the firehouse.

“It’s an important threshold to have your first local historic district, that opens the door to a lot of other things,” Taylor said. “It shows our commitment to historical preservation and as a result that provides some access to funding sources and grant money.”

The green open space was dedicated to Fred M. Smith in 1930, two years after his death. According to the historic study, Smith was very involved in town politics durving his life as leader of the Republican Party in South Hadley. He also served as a member of the School Committee, town treasurer, water commissioner, master of the Mount Holyoke Chapter of Masons, town moderator, and in the Massachusetts Legislature. He headed the Local Draft Board during World War I to decipher which citizens could serve in the military.

“People loved him so much that they wanted to dedicate this beautiful green space to him, and it’s a rare open space in the center of the Falls,” Taylor said.

With the study completed and approved by the town and the state, the Historic District Study Committee moves onto the public hearing stage, the step the committee got stuck on last time. Taylor, however, said she’s not as worried about pushback since this district is on public property and cannot expand without due process.

“These are town-owned parcels and so there’s no risk of impeding on any private property. The oversight commission for this historic district would have absolutely no authority whatsoever for any neighboring private property,” she said.

Taylor predicts the public hearing will occur in early fall. A bylaw establishing the historic district requires a two thirds majority at Town Meeting in May 2025 to become official.

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.