Its landmark designation was in honor of journalist and Utopian writer Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), whose home it was for most of his life.

Bellamy grew up in the house, and returned there after completing his studies and a brief stint of work in New York City.

His principal absences from Chicopee were made in a quest to improve his tubercular health, which eventually claimed his life.

The association operates part of the property as a historic house museum, and rents out office space in the remainder.

[3] Inside the main house, a stairway leads up from the front entry, with a parlor occupying the space to the left.

The neighborhood was then one of the wealthier in the town (Chicopee was not incorporated as a city until 1891), where the owners and managers of the local factories lived.

In 1876, in a quest to improve his health (he suffered from tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him), he went on an extended tour to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).

[9] In 1887 he published Looking Backward, a utopian novel that was instantly popular, and brought Bellamy wide notice.

In his later years Bellamy would also use other areas of the house for his work, leaving chaotic piles of manuscript paper lying about.

[13] Despite Bellamy's lifelong association with Chicopee, he was a detached observer of the social changes unfolding in the growing industrial areas of the town.

When it was suggested that Bellamy move to Boston to facilitate the production of the journal A New Nation (begun to support and promote the social and political movements established in the wake of the publication of Looking Backward), Bellamy demurred, writing "I have the deepest aversion to change.

Biographer Arthur Morgan notes that many of his other stories are set in towns based "quite obviously [on] the village of Chicopee Falls".