Sturbridge: Then and now

By Taryn Plumb
Turley Publications Reporter

STURBRIDGE- Then: A 40-foot by 60-foot Unitarian Church, complete with a 106-foot tower, enough seating for 350, and a black walnut pulpit elevated two feet off the floor.
Now: A swath of land on Main Street encompassing the post office and Sadie Green's Emporium.
Then: Wightmere, a beautiful estate with a grand hall and staircase, built by and named after its owner, David Wight, at the turn of the 19th century.
Now: The parking area and visitor buildings at Old Sturbridge Village.
Long gone, the church was hit by the devastating 1938 hurricane; the estate struck by lightning and burned.
This is Sturbridge's past and present – a glimpse and a reminder of what was, juxtaposed with what now is.
“There were no paved roads, no automobiles,” remembered Robert Briere, the town's go-to local history guy, recalling that, back then, you knew everybody at church, at town meeting, at the store. “Bring back the good old days.”
And he did, at least for a little while, during a presentation last Tuesday at the Sturbridge Senior Center. About 40 gathered to view slides contrasting the Sturbridge of the hurlyburly 21st century with the Sturbridge of the early and mid-19th century – and fondly reminisce about the time now passed.
As Briere flipped through old-fashioned slides of sepia-colored pictures worn away at the edges, the group called out their memories and teased each other about childhood antics, the room often rippling with laughter, other times hushed quiet, with friendly “Shhh's” passed around.
One point of fascination: The former Sturbridge fairgrounds, located on what is now the Picadilly Pub on Main Street. Built in 1869, it was bustling in its time, with a midway, exhibition hall, racetrack, grandstand, bandstand and Ferris wheel. Races were held there in the summer, Briere explained, and fairs started around September; there were also clam bakes, and you could take a trolley there. For his part, Briere recalled how his father would volunteer to whitewash the racetrack fences.
Although a draw to many in the area – and beyond – the last fair was held there in 1942, Briere said.
Long before that, he explained, the fairgrounds area would've been a Native American camp. “Route 20 didn't exist way back when the Native Americans had the Bay Path,” he quipped.
Later, the crowd buzzed over shots of the former Snell Manufacturing complex, which burned down and was rebuilt several times (although that wasn't uncommon, many historians have noted, given the working conditions of gritty industrial times). Briere, for his part, remembered workers wearing sweatbands and toiling away in intense heat. And, when they opened the windows to let in fresh air, he recalled as he stood in the dusky dining room of the senior center, “You could wave to them while they were working.”
He moved on.
Click: Trolley tracks on Main Street in Fiskdale.
Click: The senior center, a former school house, with a group of young women posing in a crowd out front.
Click: The former fire station, a brick building that still stands at the intersection of Route 20 and Route 148, with four circa-1930s Ford trucks lined up side-by-side at the ready out front. As Briere explained, the town barn later burned down with all the fire trucks inside.
All told, Briere, like many in the crowd, remembered those days as simpler, slower, with more intimate connections between people around town.
“You can't convince me it wasn't better in those days,” he said.