A loud weekly tradition in Holyoke, Massachusetts recently went quiet, but instead of it being an end of an era, locals are filling the silence while calling for change at city hall.
For about half-an-hour Friday, a muddy lot off Lyman Street was filled to its brim. Around 30 vehicles filed in just before noon, gathering for what’s become a weekly, improvised rally – one you can hear from at least a mile away.
For the past few Fridays, dozens of Holyoke residents and other supporters have been parking at “The Wherehouse?” to honk their horns - a tribute to the functioning air-raid siren that stands beside the venue.
For decades, the siren would sound off for about two minutes every Friday – a tradition that ceased in January, says retired Holyoke firefighter, Jordan Lemieux. “I've been here 68 years and for 68 years, Friday at noon time, the horns were sounding,” he told reporters.
Lemieux says the siren, which was once mounted to a city fire station, was silenced after a noise complaint was filed with the city. According to Mayor Joshua Garcia, a city zoning official later determined the siren that dates back to World War II/the Cold War was, in fact, violating city code.
Here's a trimmed version for the web post that I'll share in a second pic.twitter.com/UIlS89dO7p
— James Paleologopoulos (@WAMC_J_Paleo) March 3, 2026
The Wherehouse? then complied with a cease and desist, stopping the weekly blaring that was once commonplace in the city and others like it, back when testing air raid siren systems was the norm.
“It's not noisy. It's part of Holyoke, always,” Lemieux explained. “… it was during the Cold War, Bay of Pigs - we had jets flying over with sonic booms when ‘Nam was going on, B-52s… noise is noise. I mean certain noises disturb me, but I'm not going to complain about it. It's freedom, so let it ring.”
Lemieux is far from alone. Close to 40 people were in the lot honking horns on Feb. 27. One person who made the trip was Elliot Hammerstone, a Fitchburg State University student with a passion for recording pieces of American history, sirens included.
“Dozens of other people were here just to just honk the horn and say, ‘It's only two minutes of the day. We just want our little bit of time … even if it's a bit noisy - it's this isn't the middle of the night, this isn't really like interrupting anyone's dinner,’” he said. “I mean, this country used to have noon whistles - either by actual whistle or siren - all the time. One little siren making this big of a fuss: I don't see the point in even having to deal with this problem.”
Hammerstone also operates a YouTube channel cataloguing such sights and sounds. That includes the sound of a “H.O.R. Super Sirex” going off in Tennessee – believed to be the same model as Holyoke’s siren.
Operating the recently-opened Libretto Café nearby, co-owner Tim Scott recounted the first time he heard the siren going off.
“I was unfamiliar with the siren… it echoed into our vents/heating ducts/cooking ducts,” he remembered. “I thought it was an alarm going off in the kitchen, I was not sure what it was, so... I just was looking around for quite a while, like, ‘What is that?' ... And then I went outside and [thought] ‘Ah, it's coming across the street. Okay, good.’ It was a relief that I was not on fire.”
Having grown up in Springfield, Scott says he’s used to hearing loud noises of all kinds, though the Paper City’s siren definitely hit a certain decibel.
“It is loud,” he affirmed. "It is loud, yeah..."
Still, he says, it’s endearing to see community come together to support it. Mayor Garcia agrees. He says the council has been working with the city solicitor’s office to find a way to get the siren back up and running again.
“Personally, I want to see that siren come back on. I don't do selective enforcement: my commitment to the public at every corner of the city, from West Holyoke to South Holyoke, is to do what I can managing what's important to everybody within the confinements of our laws,” Garcia told WAMC. “Here, we kind of have this situation: there is a path… a knot. We've just got to untangle the knot, so we can get back to doing the very things that you know people expect and care about.”
Among those councilors looking for a solution – Councilor At-Large Michael Sullivan, who’s co-sponsoring an amendment that could allow the siren to resume.
“It's really a piece of history and … it's a reminder to people of some of the things that this country went through in the past,” Sullivan said as he departed the rally. “It's a weekly reminder to be aware of some of the stuff that went on and the sacrifices made by some of our veterans.”
The amendment is currently on the agenda for Tuesday’s city council meeting, and would amend the city’s code of ordinances, permitting various non-emergency bells, whistles and similar
devices to go off for three minutes “in any seven-day period."
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This piece originally aired on Monday, March 2, 2026.
