A massive piece of western Massachusetts history is on the market. Well over a century old, what’s believed to be the largest, single-family residence in Springfield is up for sale.
If you ever glanced up from I-91 at the right angle just south of the MGM Springfield casino, you likely caught a glimpse of the old Frederick Harris House.
Later known as the “Valentine Mansion” - named after previous owner Thomas Valentine - it’s a sizable estate planted between the city’s Six Corners and South End neighborhoods. It occupies a special place in the city, both in its history and the literal perch it sits on.
Erica Swallow of Swallow Real Estate is overseeing its sale, and is also president of the Springfield Preservation Trust.
“Here, where we are on Maple Street, [is] where some of the most wealthy people built their mansions overlooking the entire city line,” she says, referring to the “Gold Coast” of mansion that line part of the neighborhood. “Oftentimes some of these people would build them so they could see their factories down in Springfield, to keep an eye on things from up here.”
WAMC recently got a tour of the property and many of its 30 rooms. The mansion was initially destined to be a carriage house in the 1870s, but when that plan fell through, ownership changed hands and before the end of the decade, it became the home of the newly-wed Frederick Harris and Emily Osborne.
Harris was a prominent local banker while Osborne, hailing from Auburn, New York, came from a family of social activists and wealth herself.
“Her great aunt was Lucretia Mott, who was really well-known in the women's suffrage movement and abolitionist movement,” Swallow recounts. “You might also know one of her other relatives was Ms. [Helen Osborne] Storrow of Storrowton Village …. she is the philanthropist who completely created that: moving historic houses from all over New England to West Springfield to create a little village to show you what New England historical architecture looks like.”
The Harris household would expand their domain and family over the years, including a 40-foot-long ballroom intended for their daughter’s wedding.
Enamored with historic homes herself is the house’s current owner and steward, Katherine Prewitt.
“I have forever loved historical homes,” she explains. “I have looked probably most of my adult life for Victorian homes in particular, the Antebellum-style in particular – I’m from the south, so those are pretty big for us down there.”
She, along with Swallow and the Prewitt’s French bulldog, Valentina, walked WAMC through the complex Friday. Prewitt, who’s worked as an executive at Eversource, never wanted to see all of the home’s 12 bedrooms empty. As she purchased the property in 2019, she had hopes of running a bed and breakfast there, only for the pandemic, logistics and other issues to get in the way.
She settled for Airbnb, all while keeping the house open for Preservation Trust tours and events. It allowed many a visitor to see the mosaic tiles on the first floor, hand-crafted fireplaces throughout the building and a solarium Prewitt swears can foster some of the best flowers you can grow.
“I love orchids, I absolutely love them. They're the coolest plant known to man, as far as I'm concerned,” she says. “And [the solarium] gets direct sunlight all day long. I grew the most beautiful orchids in this solarium that you could imagine. I've never been able to produce orchids like I could in this solarium.”
The Colonial Revival-styled mansion offers more than that, as well. Harris’s banking legacy lives on in the massive safe hidden behind wooden paneling on the first floor. The ballroom, meanwhile, boasts ornate, intricate wooden moldings crafted by Italian designers, complimented further by marble imported from Italy.
Nearby, there’s a functioning dumbwaiter that goes up and down the multi-story home, though the elevator that once ran from the first floor to Emily Osborne’s room is non-functional.
Prewitt says it still makes for a good fortune teller’s booth during Halloween parties – and a fun stop during tours and fundraisers.
Now bound for Colorado, Prewitt tells WAMC she hopes the next owners can keep up the preservation efforts she and others have supported over the years – surviving the 2011 tornado and before that, potential demolition.
After almost a century in the Harris family’s possession, the mansion was donated to what was once the MacDuffie School campus across the street. But, the structure didn’t figure into the school’s plans. It almost came down until the Cornell family stepped in – they took up residence in 1975, turning much of the building into an art gallery before selling the house to Valentine a decade later.
“It's been cared for by many - it's been saved,” Prewitt says. “And I hope it'll continue to be like that…. I can't imagine anyone buying this place and not appreciating the historical nature and all the beautiful woodwork and everything that's in here, but that'll be for the next owner to decide.”
According to Swallow, who is acting as the listing’s broker, the home has been listed for $1.3 million.
More photos of the property can be found here.
