The Agawam House Hotel, 26 N. Main Street (1806)

The second Treadwell’s Inn was constructed in 1806 in the boxy Federal style and was a stop for over a dozen stagecoaches daily. The arrival of the railroad in the 1840s brought a flood of tourists, and the shallow hip roof was replaced with a Mansard roof that provided a third floor of rooms. In the mid-19th century, a Victorian tower and generous front porches brought the old inn in harmony with the elaborate Greek Revival and Italianate houses that were replacing the First Period houses surrounding the North Green, and it acquired a new name, the “Agawam House.”

Alice Keenan wrote that at the turn of the 20th century, “the Agawam House was still in its heyday, its comfortable wrap-around porch loaded with visitors. Summer boarders it had galore and in the fall the ‘swells’ from Boston made it their headquarters for their gunning parties that over-ran the marshes in the vainglorious hope of decimating the wildfowl population.”

It was a third revolution in transportation that brought about the hotel’s doom. With the advent of mass-produced automobiles, travelers from Boston could stay at cheap motor lodges that sprung up along Rt. 1 and the outskirts of town. When the Agawam House closed around 1930, Charles Lamson purchased the building, removed the porches to add rooms, and converted the inn into apartment housing, The building still stands today, wrapped in faded aluminum siding, its Victorian glory unrecognizable except for the Mansard roof. The Lamson family still owns 26 N. Main St. and three houses on either side of it.

A corner of the Agawam House porch is on the left in this photo of the old Warren fire engine. The white house at 30 N. Main St. on its right had a storefront on the first floor.

The Agawam House was still in its glory around 1920. The Italianate windows and the storefront were no longer on the house on the right.

Today the yellow house at 30 N. Main St. is completely unrecognizable.

The second Treadwell’s Hotel with its original hip roof is on the right and was soon remodeled to become the Agawam House. The white house on the left was the 1723 Nathan Jaques House where William Willcomb operated a confectionery shop from 1864 to 1890. The dark three-story house owned by Nathaniel Treadwell II later became “Leafy Treadwell’s Hall.” Undertaker Philip Clarke’s horse-drawn hearse is in front of it.

The fine Greek Revival house on the left was constructed by Charles Kimball in 1834. The two small houses were taken down or moved in 1906 to construct the Colonial Building. On the right you can see the stables where stagecoach horses were kept at the hotel.

Alice Keenan wrote, “Leafy Treadwell’s Hall was the first home of Agawam Lodge No. 52 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, instituted on November 13, 1844. The hall was located on the top floor of the little building, the first and second floors a tenement rented to Reuben Hardy and his family, and the first-floor front was a store. Before the Odd fellows moved in, the hall had been used for dances and socials. In time the old Jaques house (in the middle of the photo) was torn down and Leafy Treadwell’s house and hall were moved to the rear of the Agawam House, and whether it still exists, we haven’t been able to trace yet.” There is no indication of its survival today.