Built in 1810. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1975. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Park Square Historic District is a historic district in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The district is centered on the historic heart of Pittsfield encompassing a number city blocks adjacent to Park Square, which is at the junction of North, South, East, and West Streets.”
Wikipedia article Park Square Historic District (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 94 National Register listings in Berkshire County · listed in 1975 · category: Building · built in 1810 · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Berkshire County.
National Register reference number.75001911- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The names inscribed on the monument are those of citizens of Pittsfield who died in the war, either from wounds, or, before their discharge, from disease contracted in the war ; not including citizens of other places, who served on her quota. They are as follows :
It was determined to place it at the west end of the park, in or near which, a large portion of the Pittsfield soldiers volunteered, and which possessed many other associations of patriotic interest; and the park, however beautiful, being not considered in a proper condition for the reception of the contemplated work, the town placed in the hands of the committee before-named, a further sum of seven thousand dollars, for the purpose of making some longdesired improvements. The nature of these improvements was left to the discretion of the committee, by whom the following changes were made : The oval plot which constitutes the park, was surrounded by a handsome and substantial coping of granite, outside of which a broad gravel walk, with granite curbing, was built. The surface of the plot was graded, and a considerable number of trees, which had become so thick as to impede each other's growth, were felled. The Old Elm had fallen in 1861. In addition to this, the grade of Park place was reduced so as to make it more uniform with that of Bank row.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 120 fires within 5 miles of Colonial Theatre between
2002 and 2020, burning about 82 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
66
Recreation and ceremony
18
Smoking
8
Railroad operations and maintenance
7
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
6
Equipment and vehicle use
4
Misuse of fire by a minor
4
Natural
2
Arson/incendiarism
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Other causes
1
Fireworks
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,007 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Colonial Theatre between 1834 and
1975: 471 Plantae, 329 Animalia, 203 Fungi, 4 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A W Evans, A. H. Mead, A. K. Harrison and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
16 workings within 5 miles of Colonial Theatre: 9 past producers, 4 producers, 2 occurrences, 1 unknown.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Pittsfield, the town this property stands in, in 98 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 64 thunderstorm wind, 17 hail, 13 flash flood, 3 flood.
The reports record 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Survey team observed several structures with shingle damage to roofs. Many limbs and several trees were knocked down. Upon observation these trees were determined to be shallow rooted. Roofs dislodged from clubhouse and dugout of Waconah Park baseball stadium. Eyewitnesses with various vantage points reported observing rotating debris consistent with a tornado. Additional reports indicate a portion of the fencing at Waconah Park was also knocked down, and bleachers along the left field were pushed backward. In addition, trees and wires were downed on Tyler Street and Woodlawn Avenue, and two moored motor boats at Burbank Park were flipped over and partially submerged. There was also a report of a tree falling on a house on Charles Street. Top winds estimated at 70 mph.
A line of thunderstorms, that developed over eastern New York, moved into southern Berkshire county shortly after noon on May 25. This line of storms continued to produce strong gusty winds that brought numerous large trees and power lines down throughout the city of Pittsfield.
A cold front moving east into Berkshire County triggered widely scattered severe thunderstorms. The storms brought down large limbs and power lines in the town of Pittsfield.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
5,280 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Park Square Historic District is located in the center of the city of Pittsfield and is composed of a small oval park surrounded by commercial, religious, cultural, and civic structures. Located at the convergence of four main streets - North, East, South, and West Streets - Park Square is a focal point both geographically and functionally. The Park Square District is made up of eight buildings, ranging in age from the first quarter of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The district also contains several war memorials and a Civil War monument which are located on the lawn adjacent to the Court House and the Athenaeum and on the central oval park.
Five buildings face south on the park and are described below from east to west: #1- The Berkshire County Savings Bank Building was built between 1894 and 1896, and was designed by Francis R. Allen of Boston and constructed by Dodge and Devanny of Pittsfield. Its first two stories are Indiana lime- stone and the upper four stories are Roman brick. The sixth floor windows are set off above the rest of the building with a wide decorative cornice band above and a decorative string course below. A decorative band ver- tically separates the triple window groupings on the third, fourth, and fifth floors, and the larger bays on the first and second floors are un- adorned. The building is topped with a projecting cornice supported by brackets.
#2- The Congregational Church (First Church of Christ) is a Gothic Revival building designed by New York architect Leopold Eidlitz. Built in 1853, the church is constructed of grey Pittsfield limestone laid in broken ashlar and trimmed with square quoins of rock-faced Great Barrington bluestone.
/ARCHITECT See statement of physical appearance STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Park Square Historic District is significant as the center of Pittsfield's early development and as the site of the nation's first agricultural fair. The town's first meeting house was built here in 1762, and in 1790 townsman John Chandler Williams donated the nearby land for a public park known as "Meeting House Common," and now called Park Square. Originally the park was triangular, although today it has assumed an oval shape. One of the highlights of the park was a giant elm tree beneath whichlafayette was welcomed in June 1825 as he journeyed from Albany to Boston to participate in the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument.
The great elm fell in 1861 when it was 340 years old, as judged by an examination of the annular rings, but the Park Square area remained the center of the city. Here soldiers mustered to fight in the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. In 1872 a Civil War monument designed by sculptor Launt Thompson was placed in the park to honor Pittsfield men who served in the Union Army. Park Square achieved national significance when in August 1810 the country's first agricultural fair was held. The fair had grown out of a smaller expo- sition in 1807 when the exhibit under the old elm of the first two Marino sheep seen in New England stimulated a group of citizens to organize a larger show of various kinds of livestock.
Out of this fair grew the Berkshire Agricultural Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Manufactures, which became the model for many similar societies throughout the United States.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75001911, 25 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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