'Millions of dark, sooty bricks'

The Albion Paper Mill, designed by internationally renowned mill architect David H. Tower, c. 1869, an example of Second Empire industrial architecture in Holyoke.

High Street in downtown Holyoke, circa 1920

“Holyoke {Mass.} is pure New England mill town….First there is the {Connecticut} river, wide and full of rapids, swinging around a curve, and then the city itself, climbing the hills on the far bank. Holyoke is vast, dense, and somber….Smokestacks and church spires reach into the sky. There are bricks, millions and millions of dark, sooty bricks, and a wealth of detail: granite windowsills, brass weathervanes, copper-sheathed cupolas, bell towers, ornamental ironwork, heavy wooden doors, cobblestone alleys, stone steps worn smooth by millworkers’ feet.’’

— Ben Bachman in Upstream: A Voyage on the Connecticut River (1985)