Photo by Juliet Jacobson. Image courtesy of Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum.
Click and hold down the modern image and move it back and forth over the historical image beneath to see how the same view has changed over time.
The bottom image is a c. 1850 lithograph of Deerfield Academy, where Edward Hitchcock and Orra White Hitchcock (before her marriage to Edward) both taught. The academy opened in 1799, and by 1811, the third floor, visible in this image, had been added to accommodate male boarding students. The buildings behind the academy are a small residence, carriage shed, and barn. The academy outgrew this building and moved around the corner to its new campus in 1878. The old academy building was renovated and opened in 1880 as the Memorial Hall Museum of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, displaying a collection of objects gathered by antiquarian George Sheldon. Memorial Hall continues today as a museum of Deerfield, Massachusetts and the New England region's history. The adjacent building on the right houses the libraries of the PVMA and Historic Deerfield, Inc.