[3][6] Today their former headquarters serves as the main facilities of the Holyoke Department of Public Works, now known as the Pellisier Building, for the family which owned and managed the system in its final decades.

[14] The Holyoke Street Railway Company held its first meeting on February 12, 1884,[5] with a charter granted by the Office of Secretary of the Commonwealth Henry B.

[15] According to the company's articles of association, it began with capital of $25,000 (≈$692,000 in 2017 USD) with 250 shares of $100 each issued, and was authorized to operate as a horsecar rail system in South Hadley and Holyoke.

[19] Public opinion on the South Hadley side of the river remained largely in favor of the company, however one writer for The Republican compared the ordeal to "child's play" due to lack of compromise by either.

[21] In 1887, William S. Loomis, a former partner in the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, approached the railway's board of directors proposing that their line from City Hall and Maple Street be extended further into Elmwood.

[23][24][25] The railway's first electric car ran on the South Hadley Falls line at about 2pm on August 8, 1891, and by the end of that year all routes had been electrified.

In his 1908 report to Mayor Nathan P. Avery, landscape architect and planner Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. urged the city to work to more closely align its planning with the development of the street railway in a working relationship, saying a liaison or authority ought to be established in determining future extensions and improvements in the electric railway lines operating in the city, stressing it would yield some of the most economical growth of housing capacity in tandem with the grid system.

[22] As a transportation system, the railway also held at least one unprecedented piece of technology prior to its numerous competitors in the early 20th century- thermite welding.

From 1897 until 1932, trolleys operated between Sunderland, the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now UMass Amherst), and connected with the Holyoke Street Railway's system at "The Notch" after 1902.

[37] This issue had apparently arisen from an early board meeting during which a stockholder from Sunderland moved to append the town name to the railway company's, however none of the members had new paperwork printed to reflect this.

[38] Following an extended period of discussion over the specific location of the tracks, work commenced in the laying of line in April 1897, and by June of that year the first trolleys were operational.

[34] While Stockbridge remains notable among founding figures of the street railway, his role as president of the company was limited to its first year, a greater credit was due to Walter D. Cowles, a member of the board and subsequent president of the company, whose family stored the streetcars in car barn facilities on the grounds of their lumber business in the railways earliest years.

Built in 1897, the railway quickly gained national fame when it was visited by President William McKinley who remarked upon the beauty of the mountainside.

For several years William Loomis and the rest of the board had pursued the idea of a mountain railway to connect the summit to their system, with notices published as far back as 1893, soon after the lines had been electrified.

The location of the railway, now a service road and paved trail, was determined early in planning as ideally running up the side of the mountain diagonally to follow the contours of a ravine, thus minimizing needed blasting and grading work.

The rails construction and design was said to be based on the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway's, having a single track with one passing loop between the funicular's alternating cars.

[58] The railway briefly rose to national fame when President McKinley and First Lady Ida Saxton rode to the summit house on June 20, 1899.

[60][61] Following a period of decline and financial difficulties by its parent company, the Mount Tom Railroad cable railway was sold and dismantled in 1938.

[62] Despite building new carbarns specifically for its rail fleet, the company gradually began introducing buses to their routes beginning in 1921, in response to ridership changes after the First World War.

By the time the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority was initially chartered in 1974, Holyoke and many of its former traction counterparts had already been seeing dramatically reduced revenue.

[65] The continued closure of factories and mills, and the prevalence of automobiles, reduced usage substantially and the company would ultimately join the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority in 1977 as a contractor rather than competing with the new system.

[71] Borrowing from the precedent set by Amherst for its car barn, the City of Holyoke placed a request for proposal for a feasibility study in July 1988 for re-purposing the company's offices and central garage on Canal St, and assumed ownership of the building on December 21, 1988.

[72][73] The car barn and offices, designed by the Samuel M. Green Company and built in 1914 by Casper Ranger Construction,[74] has since been rechristened the Pellisier Building for its previous owners, and converted into Holyoke's Department of Public Works headquarters, maintenance shop, and waste transfer station.

[13] No complete Holyoke Street Railway tram is known to exist today, however the Shore Line Trolley Museum's "Preserved North American Electric Cars Roster" (PNAECR) survey states the wooden cabin for one such car remains in Holyoke in the private collection of James Curran at The Wherehouse banquet hall.