Historic Northampton

06/02/2026

Join us for our annual Reading Frederick Douglass Together event! We’ll meet on Historic Northampton’s lawn at 11 am on July 5 to take turns reading passages from Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

06/01/2026

A 1.5 minute video postcard from Northampton's Mineral Hills Greenway.
Volume on for sounds of splashing moose, slurping bear, chorusing frogs, and songs of returning migratory birds.

Recorded along a flooded stretch of a 19th century wood road
Browning Recon Force Advantage
Northampton, MA

05/28/2026

Yesterday we hosted a lovely outdoor luncheon for the volunteers, former interns and staff who helped on our 3-year clothing and textile inventory project. Led by expert clothing curator, Lynne Bassett and Historic Northampton's collection manager, Kelsy Sinelnikov, the team assessed, described, photographed, and properly stored more than 5,000 dresses, shirts, pants, belts, socks, shoes, children's outfits and other items in Historic Northampton's clothing collection! A BIG thank you to our interns and volunteers who donated 100s of hours to the project-we couldn't have done it without you!

Pictured left to right: Rosie Buchanan, Kelsy Sinelnikov, Schuyler Fohrhaltz-Burbank, Anaelle Cama, Betsy Stone, Elizabeth Sacktor, Lynne Bassett, Sherry Brown, Marie Panik, Margy Jessup, Madison Julio, Martha C***s, and Bill Holloway.

Funding for this project was made possible from grants through the City of Northampton's Community Preservation Act.

05/25/2026

, of Space Explorers, , , , , , , ,

Audiences at the Shea Theater Arts Center will be blasted off into space during an immersive musical and multimedia performance by Earth Music Theater Live. This free event will take flight Sunday, May 31 at 4 p.m. The production features genre-defying music by an ensemble of local musicians led by....

05/24/2026

In the spring, the early emerging leaves of skunk cabbage--in spite of their smell and the presence of calcium oxalate crystals-- provide an important food source for black bears.

In this 1.5 minute compilation recorded over 6 weeks, a skunk cabbage patch in Northampton's Fitzgerald Lake Conservation Area transforms--and the bears come.

Bring on the breath freshener.

Recorded on a Browning Recon Force Elite HP5
Northampton, MA

05/22/2026

It's the third week of May and we're at the peak of pink ladyslipper season, the end of pinxter flower, and the beginnings of huckleberry blossoms. All three species are found in Northampton and prefer open woods and forest edges, with more acidic, drier and less fertile soils. Given the soil qualities these species prefer, if we look back into how these areas were used during the last 300 years, most were not used for growing crops, but rather were set aside as wood lots (white pine, pitch pine, oak).

Photos by Laurie Sanders
May 21, 2026

05/15/2026

A few spaces remain for the upcoming walking tours with Historic Northampton's Elizabeth Sacktor:

"Immigration to Northampton" (May 21 , May 26 , and May 31 ), which explores downtown Northampton through the theme of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, taking a closer look at the immigrant populations who worked and built community amid changing sentiments and discrimination and asking the question of what it means to be an American.

"Women's History in Life & Death" (May 28 ), which focuses on the lives of ten women buried in the Bridge Street Cemetery between 1776 and 1923--from early 18th-century midwives to the first Indigenous woman to attend Smith College.

To learn more and register, visit: https://www.historicnorthampton.org/upcoming-programs.html