Making it on Main Street
Historic Northampton, Northampton MA
For 365 years, Main Street has been a crossroads, marketplace, town center, and public square. In 1655, English settlers built their meeting house on a small hill at the center of their new village, near where the courthouse stands today. The wide rutted road in front of the meeting house became Main Street. In 1769, the first store opened across from the meeting house and a tavern. By 1800, “Shop Row” was the place to shop for local goods and luxuries from London. The wooden stores were replaced by brick commercial blocks, and by 1900, Main Street looked much like it does today.
But the history of Main Street is more than a changing parade of stores. “Making it on Main Street,” tells the story of the people who lived, worked, played, and celebrated on Main Street—how they earned a living, faced the challenges of changing times, treated their neighbors and outsiders, advocated for justice, and shaped the culture and history of the area.
The newly designed exhibition space displays the continuing story of Main Street in steel and glass cases custom built locally, with background murals drawn from descriptions of the historical landscape, prints and photographs drawn by local artist Nancy Haver, and a scale model of a section of Main Street built by members of the Amherst Railway Society.