On January 24, 1848, six years after the Western Railroad was completed
through Hinsdale, a newly created group of concerned citizens met at Merriman’s Hall
on Hinsdale’s Main Street, calling themselves the Hinsdale Academy Association.
They met to plan formation of a new academy in the town, to consider construction of a
building to house it, and to ascertain a site for the proposed building.
! J. M. Tuttle called the meeting to order. William Hinsdale was appointed
chairman and Charles J. Kittredge chosen as secretary. He recorded the Association’s
concern:
”In view of the increasing population and the interest we feel in education of [the] rising
population, we strongly desire to place within their reach [more] advantages of a higher
education than can be offered in our public schools.”
! To finance the new educational venture, Ezra B. Tracy proposed that the
members form a stock company with shares to cost ten dollars per share. Dr. Benjamin
Kittredge and Henry Putnam became the committee on subscriptions. On June 3, 1848
the sum of
$ 370.00 was subscribed and $ 400.00 dollars were borrowed from the town.
! Through the action of another committee, Henry Putnam, Charles F. Kittredge
and Henry Merriman, the new academy was incorporated by the state legislature on
April 21, 1848.
! A site for the new academy was chosen on land bought from the Kittredge family,
a knoll near the emerging new center of the town, immediately west of the place
where the Congregational Church was to be moved nine years later in 1857. After
much active discussion of materials whether wood or stone and architectural
design, the Association chose wood with marble steps and a classical Greek temple
design, reflecting the Greek neo-classical spirit of the era. The design also echoed the
style of buildings in Pittsfield’s then active Maplewood Academy, the building commitee
having borrowed the Maplewood Academy plans as a guide.
! Architectects of the time provided a detailed description to guide the builders.
The Hinsdale Academy was to have a hexastyle (six-column) south facade with an
entablature, the horizontal forms above the fluted columns. The entablature includes
the three main horizontal parts, the archtitrave, frieze and cornice, resting on the
columns. Above those three entablature sections is the pediment, the low triangular
space with a small window. In more elaborate buildings, like the Parthenon in Athens,
the pediment is decorated with sculpture figures. ! !
! The fluted columns themselves display the Ionic Order, one of the five classical
orchitectural orders. At their capitals or tops are pairs of spiral volutes, which identify
the Ionic Order. The column bases have two toruses, doughnut-edged discs resting on
a plinth, the square-edged base slab.!
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! Henry Merriman, one of the Academy planners, in addition to Merriman’s Hall on
Main St above the rooms that housed generations of Hinsdale pharmacies, built the
first textile mills on the nearby Housatonic cascades. In the mid-1800’s his name also
identified Merriman’s Corners, as the junction of Longview Avenue with Curtis Street/
Robinson Road was once called. When originally built, the real estate for the
Academy wasvalued at!
$15,000.00 and the personal property, excluding books and apparatus, at $5,000.00
! Building construction proceeded through late 1848, and on October 3 that year a
bell was hung in the belfry. Cast by the Bell Foundry in West Troy, NY, it weighed 209
pounds at a cost of 32 cents per pound....$ 66.88, and with the wheel and frame the
asembly totaled $81.61. The completed Academy was dedicated January 11, 1849,
one year after the Association first met, with William B. Sprague, D.D., minister of the
First Presyterian Church of Albany, NY, as the main speaker.
! The faculty of the new Academy included Isaac N.Lincoln, A.B. as Principal;!
Samuel W. Lincoln, Assistant Principal; Miss Mary E. Lincoln, preceptress, and Miss
Elvira
L. Richards, music teacher. Later principals included Charles E. Bissell of E.Windsor,
CT;
Rev. Chauncy Goodrich, D.D., Dr. Benjamin F. Kittredge and Henry Putnam, a
prominent farrmer, all Hinsdale men.!
! The students could choose between two programs, Latin which stressed
classical sfudies, and English, a general program. Eventually numbering some 159
pupils, the student body included “90 Gentlemen and 64 Ladies”, making the
Academy among the earliest to include both men and women. Tuition was four dollars
for the winter term. From successive classes, eighteen men continued their studies
and graduated from Williams College. !! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! The Academy continued as an educational institution
for close to a generation, from 1849 to1867, both before and after the Civil War.
Widespread educational changes following the Civil War saw the emergence of the
public high school, and the Hinsdale Academy, facing bankruptcy, sold its facilities by
public auction to the town of HInsdale in 1857. The property was deeded to the town by
William Ambrose Taylor in May 1857 for $4,000. Over the next three or four decades,
until the early 1900’s, Hinsdale High School occupied the site, educating two
generations of Hinsdale young people. The local high for school financial reasons like
its predecessor was at last closed, and students then attended either Dalton or
Pittsfield High Schools. The building, entering its third phase,
became the HInsdale Town Hall.
! Town meetings were held in the large upstairs room, with town offices in other
rooms. The Hinsdale Boy Scouts, Troop 21, formed by S. R. Swift about 1914, one
of the earliest troops in the nation, occupied a lower room. In 1954 the Town Offices
and meetings were moved, and the building was used only by the Boy Scouts and Girl
Scouts for some years, succumbing to gradual decline. On April 23, 1963 the town
voted to permit the Lions Club, led by Charles DeAngelus, to restore the building to its!
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present use as the Hinsdale Youth Center. Extended hours of labor for the restoration
were volunteered by townspeople and out-of-towners, including summer campers from
Camp Taconic, with donations from civic, business and industrial groups and many
individuals.!
! Standing in classic style on its elm-bordered knoll, the building, restored,
maintained and usefully occupied testifies to the foresight of the men who gathered in
1848 as the Hinsdale Academy Association, and to the civic spirt of generations of its
guardians.!
!
(Drafted from notes assembled by the late Mrs. Marion A. Ransford, and the late Mrs.
Thelma Suitor and expanded with additional information by L. F. Swift. 6/1/02)
