Westfield Whip Manufacturing Company

The Westfield Whip Company, 360 Elm Street, Westfield, is located on the south side of the Westfield River, a tributary of the Connecticut River, in western Massachusetts. The building dates from 1887-1892; it is of red brick construction, with limestone trim, and rests on a brick foundation. The factory building faces east onto Elm Street and a small city park and is set back approximately 20 feet from the street. The immediate neighborhood surrounding the whip company building is densely built up with industrial and commercial structures.

Io the north and south, two-story commercial buildings stand about 15 feet from the whip company building, while other commercial/industrial properties, including facilities associated with the western Massachusetts Electric Company, border the lot to the rear. Elm Street, a north/south roadway, crosses the Westfield River about 180 feet to the north. Io the south, Elm Street joins Main Street about one half mile from the nominated property to form Westfield's commercial and institutional center. An industrial city on the primary western corridor from Springfield to the Berkshires, westfield has been served since the 1840s by the east-west route of the Western Railroad (now Conrail), whose tracks stand due north of the whip company, on the north side of the Westfield River.

The tracks of the ca. 1855 westfield and Northampton Railroad, a north-south route now part of the Pioneer Valley Railroad Company, run to the west of the property. The area in which the building is located has been, since the early 19th century, the industrial center of the town, and is dominated by railroad-related structures, industrial buildings, and workers' housing, all of mid- to late-19th century construction.

(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect Unknown The Westfield Whip Company, located in westtield, Massachusetts,has been, under a variety of owners and appelations, in near continuous use as a whip manufactory it was first constructed in 1887. Westfield, a community known since 1801 as "The Whip City of the World," at one time supported more than 60 such enterprises, of which the present westfield whip Manufacturing Company is the sole survivor still in operation. The factory is significant historically for its continued associations with an industry that constituted some 80 percent of the city's economy through much of the 19th and early 20th centuries and dominated the manufacture of carriage and harness-racing whips worldwide.

Architecturally, the building is significant as an intact example of typical late 19th century industrial construction, and it is among the best preserved of similar, though no longer operating, whip plants in westfield. Of particular note is the factory's original, specialized machinery, much of it intact, in situ, and still in fine working order. The Westfield Whip Company retains integrity of setting, design, location, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and fulfills criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. The introduction of the whip business into Westfield is credited to Titus made of white oak and were twisted stock whips, with sheepskin lashes covered traded to farmers, who attached them to whipstocks.

But in the early 1820s, plaited stocks were introduced. Hiram Hull's invention, ca. 1822, of the "barrel" plaiting machine mechanized a tedious hand process and made it practical to introduce factory conditions to the industry. By 1832, Hull was the largest whipmaster in town, employing 26 men to make 50,000 whips annually, about half the number then made in Westfield. With continual technical advances, the industry expanded rapidly.