MassachusettsThe former Hampden County Training School in Agawam is a multi-story, symmetrical Classical Revival-style brick-and-concrete building erected in 1916 as a reform school for truant and disorderly juvenile boys from Hampden County's cities and towns and nearby counties. It was designed by noted western Massachusetts architect George Perkins Bissell Alderman (1862-1929), whose refined design softened the institution's prison-like character, and it unusually incorporated dormitories, medical facilities, and educational spaces. Significant under Criterion A in education, politics/government, and social history as an expression of state and county efforts to educate and reform young boys, the school was dogged by controversy and closed in 1972 amid accusations of political patronage, child abuse, and neglect. It later served as a State Police training facility from 1985 to 2005 and was rehabilitated in 2017 for veterans' housing; its period of significance is 1916-1972.
Hampden County Training School
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Hampden County Training School is a landmark in Agawam, Hampden County. It is one of 3,654 landmarks documented in Hampden County, among 3,815 historic sites cataloged across the county on MassRoam.
The site sits at 42.0442, -72.6735 near Agawam. The nearest cataloged historic site is Smith, Thomas and Esther House (landmark), about 2.4 miles away. Others within a short drive include Agawam Company Woolen Mill Worker Housing, Agawan Woolen Mill Storage Building, and Purchase - Ferre House.
This record is drawn from public historical records. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.
Hampden County had run a school for delinquent and truant boys in Springfield since 1880, but the city grew up around it, so in 1916 the county rebuilt on farmland in southern Agawam to a design by George P. B. Alderman. Critics judged the plan, with dormitories on the top floor, obsolete the day it opened, and conditions there were never good; the school taught agriculture and trades until it closed in 1972. The campus served as a police training academy from 1984 to 2005, and in 2010 the state conveyed it to a veterans organization, which opened housing there in 2017.
Sources: en.wikipedia.orgmass.gov
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