Tucked among traffic cones and crosswalk signs on the second floor of the Greenfield Department of Public Works’ Wells Street headquarters is a 157-year-old stagecoach. It has been stored there for more than a decade. Since the 1930s, the city has been unsure of where to house, or what to do with, the artifact.
The Historical Commission has intentions to restore the 1867 Abbot-Downing Company Concord stagecoach, which the city has owned for roughly a century. However, before the commission can undertake that project, member Sarah Bolduc said the antique first needs a suitable place to be stored.
“The problem is that we don’t want to put a bunch of money into repairing the stagecoach unless we have a good place to store it. Part of the problem is that right now, it’s been in possession of the DPW for a long time … we don’t have an appropriate home, and it needs to be in a protected, preferably in a public-facing space, before we can really apply for restoration grants,” Bolduc said. “We’re going to try and actually use it for its intended purpose and make it accessible to the public, but right now, it’s kind of hidden away, it’s vulnerable and it’s fairly inaccessible.”
Bolduc outlined the history of the stagecoach, which she said was believed to have been built for a man in Brattleboro, Vermont. According to archived editions of the Recorder, the stagecoach was functional in parades and festivals as recently as 1988. However, newspaper archives note that the city’s acquisition of the coach is shrouded in a bit of mystery.
Volume Four of Charles Severance’s “History of Greenfield,” published in 1953, states that the stagecoach might have been initially purchased to compete with steam railroad lines.
“Lost in the mists of time is the acquisition of the town’s Concord stage coach, built after the day of local stage lines, in 1867 for T.L. Minor of Brattleboro, Vt. Minor thought he could compete with the ‘steam railroad,'” Severance wrote. “Its number, 205, identified it as a sister of the one shipped to ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody at his Cody, Wyoming ranch the same year.”
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, numerous Recorder articles describe the coach’s need for repair, with one 1999 story stating that the Franklin County Agricultural Society donated $1,000 to repair the coach.
A Recorder article published in February, 1936 stated that Greenfield, then a town, planned to sell the stage coach, but faced significant community pushback.
In the weeks following Greenfield’s announcement that it would sell the 1936 antique coach, a significant flood covered the stagecoach with silt and damaged the interior, Bolduc explained.
“The flood damage obviously had a hand in holding the sale and after that, it was moved to the Wells Street Town Yard. From there, it kind of passed through the care of the DPW, where it remains today,” Bolduc said. “It was used in 1953 for the bicentennial of Greenfield, the coach was also used professionally in a historical film shot in Old Deerfield. So they had a professional actor come in and play George Washington riding inside the coach. It was filmed on the main street in Old Deerfield, and it was produced by Trident Film Company.”
Despite the stagecoach’s rich history, Bolduc explained that city buildings have limited space for the coach. She said Historical Commission members considered storing it at the Museum of Our Industrial Heritage or the Franklin County Fairgrounds, but they have been unable to find a public site that can properly house the stagecoach.
She added that she is even considering private options, such as forming a GoFundMe to raise money to have it temporarily stored for the winter.
“We’re looking for things like connections to regional museums, educational institutions —secure, public-facing facilities that might be good candidates for a long term or even an interim home,” Bolduc said. “I don’t think that it’s in any danger of getting hit by a forklift or anything like that [at the DPW], but it does face considerable risk; it’s not temperature-controlled and the wood swells. It’s vulnerable right now in ways that are not really appropriate for a 19th century artifact.”