Former 2 Room School and Community Center in MA

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Citizens Hall, which was built in 1870, is a small-scale version of the civic buildings constructed in the Second Empire (Mansard) and Italianate styles in major American cities following the Civil War. In Citizens Hall, that typically stone and brick architecture is translated into a wooden rural idiom and combined with elements which reflect the characteristic exuberance of the Victorian period.

The Hall is the architectural epicenter of Curtisville, a small community within the Town of Stockbridge, which grew up around twelve mills. The mills are gone but several small dwellings in Greek Revival vernacular style, a brick store building, a Federal brick church and a Greek Revival inn remain.

Historical records for Citizens Hall are scant and most are contained in the Selectmen's Report for the Town of Stockbridge for the year ending April 1^st, 1871. According to that report, Citizens Hall was designed by C. T. Rathbun. The construction of the building was the result of a new system of school administration begun in Stockbridge in 1866. Existing school districts were abolished and public education facilities were to be concentrated in the three business centers of the Town, the Plains, Glendale and Curtisville. The two rooms on the first floor of Citizens Hall housed the Curtisville school and the second floor was the community assembly hall.

Building Description

Citizens Hall stands on a hill in the middle of a wide flat expanse of grass, with the Berkshire hill rising beyond. To the rear of the building, the land drops off in a woodland thicket, while dwellings built in the vernacular Greek Revival style flank it.

The 1870 Hall is two stories high and has a gracefully curved Mansard roof. The boarded walls terminate in wooden quoins at each corner. Interrupted only by a tower, a wide cornice with closely spaced and delicately detailed brackets encircles the Hall. Although the impression given is that of a nearly square building, the side facades are two bays wide and the main facade is five, with a three-bay pavilion centered on it. The middle bay of this pavilion projects slightly to form a two-story entrance tower which rises through the roof of the building. The tower walls are topped by a bracketed cornice identical to that below the main roof. The uppermost member of this cornice extends to form part of the curb between the two slopes of the main roof. The straight sides of the tower's roof taper and culminate in a simple cornice. Above this rises the crown of the tower, a lacy, ornamental iron balustrade.

The imposing main entrance in the tower is topped by a broken round-headed pediment which is supported on each side of the door by a single elongated pilaster with ornamented capital. Beneath the pediment, the elaborately decorated entablature is broken by a semi-circular light over the door. The shape of this light echoes the curves of the round-headed dormer windows. Above the entrance, an elongated triple window, with round heads and outlined by slender and delicate moldings, rests on a thin sill which runs around the projecting tower as a narrow course. An oval, louvered opening with Baroque surrounds is set in the tower roof just above the cornice.

The rest of the openings are symmetrically placed on the wall surfaces of the building. On the first story, the sharp, straight lines and simple flat heads of the tall rectangular windows reflect the formality of the Italian Renaissance and contrast with the dormer windows which break through the main cornice. This interruption of the cornice, and the robust curved and scrolled decoration around the window openings, produce an undulating movement and an interplay of light and shade. These features and the effects they produce create the characteristic exuberance of the Victorian period.

The building as a whole is severely symmetrical, and the masses are clearly articulated by the flat planes produced by the horizontal board siding and the quoins that define the corners. The characteristic features of the Second Empire (Mansard) style are not fully developed here. The three-dimensional effect is reflected by the series of projecting masses on the main facade, while the decorative elements of the style are displayed only in the tower and roof.

East facade (1968)