A historic home at 24 Dickinson Street is set to make a slow, 0.6-mile crawl across Amherst overnight Wednesday into Thursday, heading to a lot on North Whitney Street. The move is scheduled to begin at 10 p.m. Wednesday and wrap up by roughly 10 a.m. Thursday, with the house heading toward Main Street before turning onto North Whitney Street.
According to WWLP, the home dates to 1900 and, per Zillow, measures nearly 2,000 square feet with seven separate office spaces inside. The relocation schedule was reported per the Amherst Police Department, which is flagging the operation as a likely disruption for anyone near the route during the overnight hours.
What Residents Should Expect
Because the move stretches from late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, Amherst officials are encouraging residents to consider alternate routes for their Thursday commute, since the operation could affect area traffic along Main Street and near North Whitney Street. The same report notes that people living nearby may also see temporary interruptions to electrical, internet, cable and landline telephone service while the house is in transit. Residents are advised to plan ahead for both the travel disruption and the possibility of a brief utility outage.
Anyone with questions about the project can reach Barry Roberts at 413-537-4737 or Gail Flood at 413-687-2869, per the same account.
Amherst Has Moved Historic Houses Before
This isn't the first time Amherst has shuffled a piece of its architectural history down its streets rather than send it to a demolition crew. In 2023, a century-old home at 174 Sunset Avenue was scheduled to move to 175 West Street on Tuesday night, April 11, departing around 11 p.m. and expected to arrive by 6 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. The planned route was via Massachusetts Avenue, North Pleasant Street, East Pleasant Street and South Pleasant Street, and the move was expected to clear the way for a 17-unit townhouse development going up at Sunset Avenue and Fearing Street. The Gazette reported it was actually the second historic home pulled from that same site — a neighboring house at 164 Sunset Avenue had been moved to 22 North Maple Street the previous August.
Developer Barry Roberts, who has been linked to several of these relocations, told Western Mass News in 2022, in connection with the Hadley relocation, that he had carried out similar moves roughly a dozen times before that move. Separately, the Gazette reported a 2021 move of a home from South Pleasant Street on the Amherst College campus to Baker Street. One of those campus-adjacent relocations involved the Martha S. Hubbard House, a 1,575-square-foot Greek Revival home built in 1862 at 205 South Pleasant Street, which the Hindustan Times reported was expected to remain a single-family home once it reached its new site. In 2022, another historic Amherst house was physically picked up and relocated to neighboring Hadley to save it from demolition and make room for a new apartment complex, Western Mass News reported at the time.
A Town With a Preservation Track Record
The pattern of saving old houses by rolling them to new lots rather than tearing them down fits with Amherst's broader preservation efforts. A Massachusetts Historical Commission letter in the town's archive, dated April 24, 2012, supported the proposed Dickinson Local Historic District, according to the Town of Amherst.
For now, the plan for 24 Dickinson Street is straightforward: a slow roll down Main Street overnight, a new address on North Whitney Street by mid-morning, and a request that nearby residents brace for a few hours of inconvenience in exchange for keeping another piece of old Amherst standing.
