In Easthampton, Massachusetts, efforts are ongoing to bring a former 19th-century town hall fully into the 21st century. The work hasn't been cheap, but with regular concerts, galleries and vendors operating there, organizers remain upbeat - especially after getting over $3 million in federal support.
Every first Saturday of the month, bluegrass music can be heard throughout Old Town Hall, echoing down the long hallway that leads to the "Blue Room."
It's a rhythmic departure from the city offices the building housed until 2003 - the structure itself dates back to 1869. For 20 years now, a non-profit, volunteers and the city have been restoring as much of the massive structure as they can.
As a result, locals like Easthampton resident Amber Black say it’s become one of the valley’s unique art hubs.
“It's so special. I mean - it's such a gathering point. I came down here tonight on my own and I knew that I would know people, and I did!” she said as a circle of banjo, cello and various string pluckers played on. “It's just wonderful to have the arts be very vibrant and open, and spaces like this, [like] the monthly art walk that we can walk through and interact with the artists and with other community members, really experiencing art together. It just is great energy.”
The restoration and operations are overseen by the nonprofit CitySpace, a group focused on retrofitting the brick and brownstone structure: almost cathedral-like structure, with its Victorian Italianate-style architecture.
One of its first post-municipal office tenants is Jean-Pierre Pasche, owner of "Big Red Frame" framing company and the "Elusie Gallery" next door. He’s been assembling custom frames and featuring art in the space for at least 18 years now.
“I was the first tenant here and the only tenant for two years,” he recounts for WAMC. “When I learned that the city had plans to change/transform this into an art center, I was very interested. I took a chance and I think I was right.”
Across the hall, playing cello for a crowd, is one of Easthampton City Arts’s latest featured artists, Rebecca Schrader, surrounded by her exhibition, “Chromaticism,” a series of small, enigmatic watercolor and acrylic pieces
“They're mindscapes - dream landscapes - and they are all through a language of abstraction that I've developed in the past year, where I clear my mind and go out into the world, usually at golden hour, and reflect on the atmosphere around me - pick up on bits of color that are happening with the light and try to translate the energy of the day and the energy that I'm feeling internally and the landscapes that I'm seeing,” she explains.
She tells WAMC that, as a studio art Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Easthampton’s become what she considers “an incredible place to make art.”
It’s the kind of feedback city officials have been hoping for. Once a hub for manufacturing and mills, the Hampshire County city has been pivoting and investing in its arts and culture community in recent years.
At least $3 million in Community Preservation Act funds have gone toward the hall’s restoration, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. This month, organizers celebrated a new infusion, this time from the federal government, presented by U.S. Senator Ed Markey.
“Here's the truth: a vision without funding is an hallucination,” he said to a crowd gathered in the Blue Room on March 7. “And so, we put $3.4 million into the federal budget… and that's what we are celebrating here today…”
Markey was in the Pioneer Valley for weekend, touting recently-allotted Congressionally Directed Spending, like a million dollars for Monson Fire Station renovations or $5 million for the HOPE Center for the Arts in Springfield.
Much of the cash for Easthampton is likely to bolster CitySpace’s latest renovation project: a multi-phase effort to not just make the building fully ADA-compliant, but also restore the massive auditorium on its second floor.
Previous estimates pegged the project as costing $11.5 million. Phase I, with its HVAC and electrical work, is done while Phase II is underway, costing about $4 million to install an elevator and make other structural improvements.
The elevator shaft alongside the building has been coming together over the past year, progress that CitySpace President Burns Maxey says is stunning to see, given how far the organization’s come and the setbacks created by the pandemic.
“We started this project right before the pandemic, and so, we expected to finish it pretty quickly, but then COVID hit, and… we ended up changing/pivoting,” Maxey says. “We are now … completing our second phase of the project, which is the elevator and entryway, to make it fully accessible, then we're heading on to Phase III. To really think about completing the second floor, getting performances in that space - 350 seats, right on Main Street - it's just amazing to think about that finally happening.”
Markey tells WAMC it’s the kind of work that merits federal support.
“It’s just increasingly making Easthampton the place to go,” he said of the city and CitySpace’s commitment to the arts. “There’s just a special spirit that’s been unleashed and I feel it as I’m walking around the streets of Easthampton.
The senator also dipped his toe in the arts himself during his Easthampton stop: His funding announcement featured a rendition of “This Land is Your Land.”
For @WAMCNews: @EdMarkey is in Easthampton, Mass., promoting $3.5 million secured for the group CitySpace and the restoration work they're doing at Old Town Hall pic.twitter.com/y4JwyR7hCp
— James Paleologopoulos (@WAMC_J_Paleo) March 7, 2026
Rebecca Schrader’s “Chromaticism” gallery runs through March 26
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This piece originally aired on Monday, March 16, 2026.
