Metro Center, Springfield, Massachusetts
Metro Center is the original colonial settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, located beside a bend in the Connecticut River.
[2][3] It is difficult to estimate the origins of human habitation in the Connecticut River Valley, but there are physical signs dating back at least 9,000 years.
The region was inhabited by several Algonkian-speaking Native American communities, culturally connected but distinguished by the place names they assigned to their respective communities: Agawam (low land), Woronco (in a circular way), Nonotuck (in the midst of the river), Pocumtuck (narrow, swift river), and Sokoki (separated from their neighbors).
In 1634, a devastating plague, probably smallpox, reduced the Native American population of the Connecticut River Valley to a tiny percentage of its previous size.
Governor Bradford of Massachusetts writes that in Windsor (notably the site of a trade post, where European diseases often spread to Native populations), "of 1,000 of [the Indians] 150 of them died."
Within less than a decade after its founding in 1636, differences arose between the leaders of Agawam (Springfield) and Newtown (Hartford) over how to relate with the region's Native population.
Springfield hoped to pursue peaceful relations with the Natives so as to better facilitate trade and communal farming, whereas Hartford – and many of Connecticut's early settlers – had fought the bloody Pequot War to claim their territory, and thus took a more militant view.
[4] This was a rapid cycle: Native people relied on trading seasonal goods such as furs, so they took out mortgages with land as collateral.
[6] In 1675, during King Philip's War, the colonists of Western Massachusetts resorted to extraordinary measures, including the taking of arms and hostages,[7] to weaken and preclude a threat from Native people.
Goods from New York, Boston, Chicago, and even as far west as San Francisco travelled through Springfield on their ways to coastal distribution centers.
The Quadrangle features the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, which is known worldwide for having the largest collection of Chinese cloisonné outside of China.
The Springfield Science Museum features the first-ever American planetarium (built 1937,) Dinosaur Hall, and a live animal center.
The restaurants and clubs by the Basketball Hall of Fame also feature live music, Las Vegas-style shows and several sports bars.
This trait is now looked on as a positive by developers at the Urban Land Institute, who have written "Metro Center now stands out from its peers, most of which long ago demolished the human-scale architecture that made their downtowns livable."
Both now feature artistic crosswalks and ornate streetlights, which add to the eclectic and increasingly whimsical atmosphere of Metro Center.
Metro Center provides quick access to I-91 and I-291, both of which connect to I-90 (the Massachusetts Turnpike), making trips to Boston, Albany, New York City, Montreal, Hartford, Worcester, and New Haven convenient by car.
This convenience, however, came at a steep price to Springfielders: hasty, poor urban planning decisions during 1958 created the now elevated I-91 viaduct along the Connecticut River, which essentially cut off Springfield from the Connecticut, the parks surrounding it, and the Basketball Hall of Fame complex, preventing foot traffic and resulting in untold losses of tourist dollars among other losses.
[19] Recent academic papers have documented negative economic and sociological effects of I-91's placement in Springfield – it has fragmented three neighborhoods, inhibited the economic growth of Springfield's most valuable land – on the Riverfront and around the Basketball Hall of Fame – and essentially made the river inaccessible to people as a place for recreation and tourism.
[20] The highway's inhibiting effects on riverfront development were exacerbated during the 1980s and 1990s, when giant, above-grade highway parking lots were built underneath I-91, and later when earthen, grassy mounds and 20-foot limestone walls were constructed around large sections of it, blocking all but the tallest Metro Center buildings' views of the Connecticut River, and discouraging economic and social interaction between Metro Center and the Basketball Hall of Fame.
As of 2011, it is fast regaining that status among people attracted to urban living without the expense – bohemians, artists, empty-nesters, and LGBT residents have constituted the first wave of Metro Center's recolonization, which began only during the new millennium.
