The post office (left) and the Housatonic fire station (right) combine as central sources of support for Housatonic. It’s safe to say most residents today cherish Housatonic while also allowing their minds to run on idle revelry for what could be. The five-and-dime is long gone, as are the tiny taverns and family-run shops. This village of former mills that once employed more than 500 people, most of whom lived within walking distance to work, was steadily discharged of its industrial purpose beginning more than six decades ago. Suzie Fowle, a former member of the Great Barrington Planning Board and an 18-year resident of Kirk Street, expresses her frustration in the form of a question: “Why have the potential opportunities remained ‘potential’ for so many decades?” There’s just a lot of untapped opportunities in Housatonic,” says Ellen Lahr of Pine Street, who raised two sons in the village and appreciates that Housatonic remains a place where the well off and those of middle and meager means coexist “and you can’t always discern the difference.”
“We need some vitality - that would be my wish,” says Helen Kuziemko, a town hall retiree who lives on Kirk Street in the home her husband, Matthew, grew up in. Down below, the train shakes the village’s old fieldstone foundations, and then everything goes quiet once again. The small town, sitting between Stockbridge and Great Barrington, is home to what many locals call “tremendous assets.” Photo provided by Felix Carrollįrom high atop Flag Rock, you can see twice daily the pug-nosed Housatonic Railroad train thump through town like a feral cat on padded paws. Beak clinched like a bent nail, the barrel-chested bird of prey conducts its errands above it all, stiff-winged and a bit jerky on the turns.
Roiling past the bruised brick, the river itself eventually slackens its sinews just north of the old Rising Paper Mill, as if rubber-necking to catch a glimpse of the village’s resident celebrity: a magnificent American Bald Eagle that dwells along the banks there in a nest the size of a kiddie pool. Arranged in proper order along the banks of a particularly spirited stretch of the Housatonic River, the village - Great Barrington’s northern precinct - holds what many frustrated townspeople term “tremendous assets.” That includes comparatively affordable housing, walkable streets, hiking trails, majestic old architecture, and not a single chain store within binocular view.įramed to the west by Tom Ball Mountain and to the east by Monument Mountain’s mighty derriere, known locally as Flag Rock, humble Housatonic cannot help but to measure itself first against its towering surroundings to the east and west rather than the monied inhabitants to its north and south.įrom high atop Flag Rock, the village resembles a miniature model railroad town, with its iconic old rusty water tower, its churches, fire house, library, pub, bakery, auto shop, post office and package store. Photo provided by Felix CarrollĪfter all, look at the place. The village of Housatonic sits alongside a stretch of the Housatonic River.
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