Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Garden Theater Block
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1983. 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
“In 181 1, leading men of Greenfield, aided by men of the northern towns, succeeded in getting the old county of Hampshire, nearly fifty miles square, divided, and Greenfield made the shire town of Franklin County. Great efforts were made to have the county buildings located at Cheapside, then a flourishing hamlet, because of its shipping facilities upon the Connecticut river, and considerable excitement was the result.”
Greenfield (Massachusetts) Sesqui-centennial, 1753 June 9 1903 : a Model Town of 8000 People (1903). Machine-read text.
one of 28 National Register listings in Franklin County · listed in 1983 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Franklin County.
National Register reference number.83000591- 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 PUBLICATION of this little Souvenir is made possible by the assistance of the Publishers of The Boston Globe, The Gazette and Courier and The Greenfield Recorder, and that of other friends and the cordial co-operatiori of the Business Men of Greenfield. It has the indorsement of the Coaching Club and the Board of Trade.
Between 1630 and 1640, more than 20,000 settlers had gathered about the shores of Massachusetts Bay. In 1635 a few daring people had settled upon the lower Connecticut river and the richness and beauty of the river bottoms soon attracted many people searching for homes. Springfield was settled in 1635. Settlements at Northampton, Hadley and Hatfield soon followed and by 1662 the population had become sufficient for the organization of Hampshire County. Deerfield was purchased from the Pocumptuck Indians in 1667, and in 1669 vSamuel Hinsdale had built on the rich meadow his log cabin and plowed his field. Greenfield, Conway, Shelburne and Gill were originally a part of Deerfield.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 38 fires within 5 miles of Garden Theater Block between
2002 and 2020, burning about 15 acres in total. None started naturally. None was 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
24
Recreation and ceremony
5
Smoking
5
Railroad operations and maintenance
4
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 3,347 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Garden Theater Block between 1822 and
1975: 1,259 Plantae, 1,095 Animalia, 861 Fungi, 114 Unrecorded, 14 Protozoa, 4 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A S Pease, A V Osmun, A. Clark 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.
black sh, [property of T.M. Stoughton, 1871 Beers County map, previously owned by Dr. Roswell Field], S side of Connecticut River, Horse Race, Montague
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
8 workings within 5 miles of Garden Theater Block: 4 past producers, 2 occurrences, 1 producer, 1 prospect.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Barium-Barite, Copper, Iron, Copper, Barium-Barite. 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
Greenfield, the town this property stands in, in 59 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 36 thunderstorm wind, 9 hail, 9 flood, 4 flash flood.
The reports record 1 death. 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.
A water soaked ridge near the Green River Cemetery gave way resulting in a mudslide 13 inches deep that slid over Meridan and Water Streets. Three cars were buried and the mud was up to the foundations of three houses. This resulted in the evacuation of 17 people. These people were evacuated first to a shelter at Greenfield School run by the American Red Cross and then to family members houses (2 families) and a hotel (1 family) for the night while crews cleaned the mud from their houses. A portion of Meridian Street where it ends at Deerfield Road remained closed through the night of the 7th.
At 4:12 PM EST heavy rain in Greenfield caused flooding of several basements on Franklin Street. At 4:33 PM EST Scout Road was flooded and impassable with some basement flooding. At 4:36 EST PM Sanderson Road near Kennemetal and the Medical Center was completely flooded. At 4:46 PM EST Adams Road was flooded and impassable. At 5:06 PM EST Green Street in Greenfield had significant basement flooding.
The intersections of Davis Road and Emily Lane and Chapman and Arch Streets were flooded and impassable. Basements were flooded on Norwood Street, O Street, and Elm Terrace. Part of the road was washed out at the intersection of Phillips and Elm Street. A manhole cover popped off on 7th Street from flooding. Columbus Avenue was flooded and impassable.
In Greenfield, power lines were downed on West Street and Wisdom Way. Tree limbs fell on a police cruiser on Route 2 but there were no injuries. In Gill, trees and wires were downed on River Street and West Gill Street. Thunderstorm winds also downed trees and wires on Chestnut Lane in Turners Falls, on Parmenter Road in Berndardston, and on Captain Bears Plain Road and Burnham Road in Northfield.
Several thunderstorms with heavy rain moved through Greenfield resulting in flooding. Ten basements were flooded and there was some sewage backup on Silver Street.
One of the TV meteorologists from WWLP reported a couple of large trees downed in front of a house on Forest Avenue in Greenfield. From pictures, it appears there was some damage to the roof of a front porch.
Several streets in Greenfield experienced minor street flooding (less than 6 inches of water flowing over the road), including Deerfield Street south of Meridan Street and Federal Street.
Large trees were blown down and a power line was knocked down. National Weather Service site inspection confirmed that a microburst occurred in Greenfield. In Turners Falls, trees and power lines were reported blown down.
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
3,316 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
Located east of Bank Row on the south side of Main Street, the Garden Theater Block is part of a row of commercial buildings in Greenfield's central business district. The block consists of three sections, namely a two-storey front (north) building containing offices, stores and a lobby, a one-storey lobby (middle) and an auditorium (south). A11 are built of brick and concrete with steel supports; roofs are flat and covered with tar and gravel. Of the block's three sections, only the north elevation of the front section contains a finished facade which is visible from the street. Built of red brick laid in Flemish bond and trimmed with cast-stone, this facade is symmetrical about a central pavilion. This pavilion is framed by paired pilasters which support a decorated cornice and pediment.
At the pavilion's first storey are display cases flanking a deep lobby which is panelled with dressed stone (marble) and has three bronze doors (east, west and south) as well as three pairs of French doors leading to the theater lobby; this lobby has been altered only by the removal of its octagonal ticket kiosk(1960s). At the pavilion's second storey are three 6/1 windows set in arched surrounds with cast-stone fans. The pavilion's pediment is decorated with a central shield and swags executed in bas-relief in cast-stone. Extending out from the pavilion is a pressed metal marquee decorated with a variety of classical motifs and some opaque art glass. Above the marquee and set out from the facade on metal supports is an original electric sign bearing the name "GARDEN" on each side.
Flanking the central pavilion are two narrow bays and four wider bays divided by single pilasters which support a decorated cornice at the roofline.
(in one paragraph) Builder Architect Mowll & Rand of Boston, Architects The Garden Theater Block possesses integrity of location, design, setting, materials and workmanship, in addition to historical associations as the location of Greenfield's largest and most ornate theater. Designed by Mowll & Rand of Boston, and constructed at a cost of $500,000 by the con- tracting firm of George H. Reed of Greenfield, the Garden Theater Block was built in 1928-1929 for Nathan and Samuel Goldstein of Springfield, then the owners of twenty-two theaters throughout Western Massachusetts. Nearly unaltered from its original design, the block preserves one of Greenfield's finer examples of Colonial Revival style architecture in its Main Street facade (north).
The block's major significance, however, is derived from the theater around which it was planned. Thus, the theater block meets criterionC of the National Register of Historic Places. Opened on March 3, 1929, the Colonial Garden Theater, as it was then called, was an "atmospheric" theater, designed to create on its interior the effect of being outside in a "colonial garden" - To this end, the lower portions of the theater's walls are covered with rough-cast plaster, scored to give the appearance of a stone garden wall. Above the rough- cast are painted murals depicting a Greek Revival style church, a brick house with a gambrel roof, a "saltbox" house and other buildings and plants which are characteristic of New England.
These murals were painted by Frederick Marshall, a theatrical mural painter living in California, and were designed to have cut-out windows, a steeple clock, and other features which are back-lighted to simulate the appearance of real buildings.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 83000591, 14 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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