Home * Artists * Articles * Location * Contact
Weekend Gazette
by Laura Longsworth
EASTHAMPTON -The business and social center known as Nashawannuck Square that thrived earlier this century is well-remembered by residents who worked, shopped and socialized there.
Residents recall a variety of businesses on the square: a shoe store, a dress shop, a men's clothier, a taxi stand, two pharmacies, two barber shops, an inn, a movie theater, a fruit store and a tailor shop.
"It (Cottage Street) was the main business street at that time, "said DeBarbieri. "And when the politicians came to town, they stood in the middle of the square."
Frank Janik, of 41 Lyman St., said his mother, Justyna, started the family dry goods and sundries store in 1912 at 38 Cottage Street. He recalled summertime parades and "medicine men" who set up their platforms in the dirt square to sell snake oil.
There were also some special customs that developed between consumers and shopowners.
For instance, at Christmas time, Janik said women would tell his sisters what they wanted from their husbands. His sisters would then get the gifts in the store and make sure the husbands purchased the correct item.
Verna McMahon, president of the Easthampton Historical Society, recalls hanging out with friends at the DeBarbieri store, spending one warm summer watching the Lutheran Church being built, and waiting in line for the movies at the now closed Majestic Theater.
At the Easthampton Historical Society home on Holyoke Street, black and white photographs show scenes of the Cottage Street in days gone by.
In one picture, early model cars line the streets and trolley tracks ran down the center of Nashawonnuck Square past the building that now houses the Brass Cat.
In another photo, the waters of Nashawannuck Pond are expansive and the shoreline stretches much farther than it does today. Another photo shows a group of about 75 local businessmen around the turn of the century posing stiffly with waxed mustaches in front of the Cottage Inn, which once stood where Cottage Street Motors, of 47 Cottage Street, does now. The inn burned down in the early' 1920s.