by Laurel | January 23rd, 2014
23 January 1929
Tenement Example
Harrington Tenements
182-188 Lyman St.
Holyoke, Massachusetts
Believed to be Due to Abandonment of Several Mills Within Year
Holyoke, January 22 — Figures concerning the number of vacant tenements in the city are hard to ascertain but on comparing notes of men engaged in such work as telephony, water department, gas and electric light department and city officials it seems to be conceded that the number at present is larger than at any time in the history of the city, due in large part to the abandonment of the Hadley Thread Company, Lyman Mills and one or two smaller concerns.
The figures are placed conservatively between 1200 and 1500. This does not mean that number of families have removed from Holyoke as in a large number of cases the tenements have been vacated to take better and newer tenements, family houses or double houses in the upper parts of the city. the result has been a marked increase in the number of foreclosures in property owned in the lower part of the city and the turning back to the holders of first mortgages on blocks generally rather than the worse for wear. Wards 1 and 2 seem to have suffered the worst and there has been considerable loss in Ward 4. Roughly speaking the city population does not seem to have decreased very much, in fact there has been a movement for some time from Willimansett to Holyoke; and it seems to be evident from the number of better class tenements that men with higher than the average salary are moving into the new places.
Adapted from The Springfield Republican.
Image from the MACRIS database.
