Springfield, Massachusetts, is the birthplace of basketball, the hometown of Dr. Seuss, and the home of the country’s first national armory. The first gasoline automobile manufactured in the United States also came from here, in 1893, and the only Rolls-Royces assembled outside of England. How did a medium-sized New England city, overlooking the Connecticut River, in the heart of the Pioneer Valley, bring together so many origins?
The answer is at the Springfield Armory. For more than a century and a half, the federal armory brought together generations of precision gunsmiths and machinists in the city, and from that permanent workshop came the system of interchangeable parts that the rest of American industry would eventually adopt. That concentration of skilled labor, along with the power of the Connecticut River, made Springfield a magnet for inventors. Smith & Wesson, the Indian Motocycle and Milton Bradley’s board games were born from the same ecosystem.
Springfield Armory
The city owes its vocation as a factory to a military decision. In 1777, in the middle of the War of Independence, George Washington chose Springfield to install an arsenal: it was far from the coast and the British fleet, next to a navigable river and at the crossroads of the valley. In 1794, with the republic already in place, Congress elevated it to the first national armory in the country. For 174 years, until its closure in 1968, the rifles of the US Army came out of here and, with them, something more enduring: the method of manufacturing from interchangeable parts, which made it possible to manufacture and repair in series and that the rest of the industry would end up adopting.
The city grew around the armory. The manufacturing workshops, the Watershops, occupied the banks of the Mill River, and generations of gunsmiths and machinists lived next to them. When these skilled workers moved into private industry, they took with them the culture of precision that explains why so many inventions were born a few kilometers from the arsenal.
The place soon played a role in national history. In the winter of 1787, indebted farmers of Shays’ rebellion marched on the Springfield Arsenal to seize its weapons. The militia dispersed them, but the episode convinced the young nation’s leaders that the federal government was too weak and accelerated the Constitutional Convention that same year.
Today the Main Arsenal Constructing, with its clock tower and flag atop, houses the largest collection of military light weapons in the United States, and admission is free. The piece that stops everyone is the “musket organ,” a curved structure of stacked rifles that inspired Longfellow, after his visit in 1843, to write the anti-war poem “The Arsenal at Springfield.” A Park Carrier ranger guides the rest and a short film puts the visit in context.
The visit also brings a rarity. When the armory closed, its buildings were passed to the Springfield Technical Crew Faculty, so the national park today shares its land with a university campus, something rare in the system. It is a good idea to load the address of the college into the GPS and follow the signs to the clock tower. For 2026, with the country marking the 250th anniversary of independence, the site has added special programming, so it’s worth checking the Park Carrier calendar before you go.
Springfield Armory Armory Sq., Springfield, MA 01105.
Site: nps.gov/spar.
Good to know: entrance and parking free from fee; The museum is open from Wednesday to Sunday, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with reduced hours in winter; The grounds are open daily, from dawn to dusk.
The Quadrangle and the Springfield Museums
Five museums surround a tree-lined esplanade in the center, the Quadrangle, and a single ticket opens the doors to all. The most visited bears the name that made Springfield a place of childhood pilgrimage: The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss. Theodor Geisel grew up a few blocks from here, and the museum reconstructs his workshop, his bestiary, and the path from the advertising cartoonist to the author who reinvented the children’s book in English. The rooms alternate texts in Spanish and English, something that is worth knowing in advance. Outside in the Dr. Seuss Nationwide Memorial Sculpture Backyard, the Lorax, Horton and Geisel himself appear cast in life-size bronze, in front of a wall-sized open book with verses from Oh, the Locations You’ll Lunge!.
Across the esplanade, the Lyman & Merrie Wooden Museum of Springfield History preserves the city’s industrial memory. There are the Rolls-Royces assembled in Springfield during the 1920s, the Indian motorcycles born in their factories and a Gee Bee racing plane, the work of the Granville brothers, which broke speed records in the 1930s. It is the room that gives substance to the city’s nickname.
A few steps away, the Springfield Science Museum includes a Dinosaur Hall with its replica of Tyrannosaurus rex, an African Hall of dioramas and the Seymour Planetarium, the oldest operating planetarium in the country. Its star projector, the sphere that the Korkosz brothers assembled in Springfield in 1937, still works almost ninety years later and is the oldest American-made projector still in use in the world.
Two art museums complete the complex: the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Gorgeous Arts, which hangs a Monet among its collection, and the George Walter Vincent Smith Artwork Museum, dedicated to Asian art and the personal collection of its founder. It is advisable to reserve at least half a day for the Quadrangle, more if you are traveling with children, because the entrance to the Seuss museum keeps them for a long time.
Springfield Museums (the Quadrangle) 21 Edwards Boulevard, Springfield, MA 01103.
Site: springfieldmuseums.org.
Admission: one ticket to all five museums; adults 25 dollars, over 60 years old 17.50, students 16.50, from 3 to 17 years old 13, minors free from fee.
Good to know: closed on Mondays; the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden is free to enter; free parking.
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Reputation
The gold jersey with the number 8 stops more than one visitor. It is that of Kobe Bryant, who entered the hall with the class of 2020 a few months after dying in a helicopter accident, along with Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. Bryant spent his twenty seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, and his display case is one of the most visited in the museum.
The building is unmistakable: a ball-shaped metal sphere on the bank of the Connecticut River, the work of the Gwathmey Siegel studio, inaugurated in 2002. Inside, everything revolves around the Center Court docket, a court with regulation measurements where anyone can take a ball and shoot a basket. Naismith invented basketball a few miles from here, in 1891, with two peach baskets and thirteen rules; The museum preserves those original rules and follows the history of the sport to the present.
Unlike other halls of fame, this one does not belong to a single league. Honor the entire game: the NBA and WNBA, college and international basketball. The pioneers of the women’s game pass through its rooms, among them Senda Berenson, who took it to Smith Faculty, in Northampton, two years after its invention. The tour includes The Vault, a corner dedicated to the Boston Celtics, who play 90 miles up the Mass Pike. Since its founding in 1959, the hall has added 436 members.
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Reputation 1000 Hall of Reputation Avenue, Springfield, MA 01105.
Site: hoophall.com.
Good to know: The Center Court docket has a regulation open court for shooting; the current building opened in 2002.
Where to eat
For lunch near museums, The Scholar Prince has been around since 1935. They call it The Citadel, after Citadel Boulevard, and its lounge has a collection of German beer mugs and corkscrews lining the walls. The menu is German and Central European cuisine: schnitzel, sausages, sauerbraten and pretzels. In May, the restaurant sets up a Maibaum, the maypole with colored ribbons from the German tradition, a heritage of the community that built the place.
To start the day, Juguito’s, on Insist Boulevard and one block from the MGM, prepares juices, smoothies, açaí bowls and breakfast sandwiches. In South Dwell, the city’s Italian neighborhood, LaFiorentina is a family-owned cannoli, sfogliatelle, and coffee bakery good for a mid-afternoon stop. And inside the Hall of Reputation itself, Max’s Tavern serves steaks and contemporary American cuisine, convenient if your museum tour takes a long time.
The Scholar Prince (The Citadel) 8 Citadel Boulevard, Springfield, MA 01103.
Site: studentprince.com.
Good to know: open since 1935; brunch on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; The town stands on the “Aged Citadel”, the first brick building in the city, from 1660.
Juguito’s 133 Insist Boulevard, Springfield, MA 01103.
Site: Instagram.
Good to know: open from 8 in the morning, closed on Sundays; one block from the MGM.
Max’s Tavern 1000 Hall of Reputation Avenue, Springfield, MA 01105 (inside the Hall of Reputation).
Site: maxtavern.com.
Good to know: open daily, lunch and dinner; cuts and contemporary American cuisine.
Where to sleep: MGM Springfield
To stay downtown, MGM Springfield is the most convenient option, walking distance to the museums and the Hall of Reputation. It opened in August 2018 as Massachusetts’ first casino resort, a nearly $1 billion investment that occupies three blocks of Metro Center. The design plays with the city’s industrial past, with factory-style windows and nods to Emily Dickinson and Dr. Seuss, such as the hat lamp inspired by The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins that hangs in one of the suites. It has 250 rooms, in addition to the casino, restaurants such as The Chandler Steakhouse and Cal Mare, a movie theater and bowling alley.
Next door is the MassMutual Center, an 8,000-seat arena that hosts concerts and is home to the Springfield Thunderbirds, the American Hockey League team. Springfield is the home of that league, so in season hockey is an idea at night just steps from the hotel.
MGM Springfield One MGM System, Springfield, MA 01103.
Site: mgmspringfield.mgmresorts.com.
Good to know: Massachusetts’ first casino resort (2018), 250 rooms; Next door, the MassMutual Center is home to the AHL’s Springfield Thunderbirds (springfieldthunderbirds.com).
Half an hour north
Basketball didn’t stay in Springfield. Two years after Naismith hung up her baskets, Senda Berenson adapted the game for her students at Smith Faculty and, on March 22, 1893, organized and refereed the first college women’s basketball game, in Northampton. That same road that leads from the invention to the first women’s game goes up through the Pioneer Valley, the Connecticut River corridor that brings together five universities, including Smith, Amherst and the University of Massachusetts. Half an hour north of Springfield, Amherst and Northampton offer another side to the western part of the state, more literary and artistic, and a couple of tables that justify the detour.
Amherst
Amherst is a college town in the truest sense: Amherst Faculty, the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire Faculty mark its pulse. It was also the town of Emily Dickinson, who wrote almost all of her work in the family home, now converted into a museum. Whoever travels with his poems in his head will recognize the landscape of meadows and maples that appears between his verses.
Sunday brunch at 30Boltwood, the restaurant at the Inn on Boltwood facing the town square, is a good way to start. The cuisine, led by chef Josean Jimenez, is seasonal American; My recommendation: the eggs Benedict, which are the best I have had the opportunity to try and would definitely make me return.
Just outside, on the grounds of Hampshire Faculty, is the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, the first large-scale museum in the United States dedicated to the art of the picture book. It was founded in 2002 by Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and his wife Barbara. One of its galleries exhibits Carle’s work, with his hand-painted paper collages; the others rotate samples from other masters of the craft, from Maurice Sendak to Chris Van Allsburg. There is an art studio open to the public, a theater and a meadow, Bobbie’s Meadow, in memory of the co-founder. It is a stop designed for children that an adult appreciates just as much.
This summer, for example, there is an exhibition dedicated to the world of cooking in Eric Carle’s career that covers all of his work and is available until September 6. This exhibition has more than 50 works (including collages, engravings and sketches) that explore how the author used food and recipes throughout his artistic career from 1965 to 2019.
30Boltwood 30 Boltwood Avenue, Amherst, MA 01002.
Site: 30boltwood.com.
Good to know: Sunday brunch; New England cuisine from chef Josean Jimenez; it is advisable to reserve.
Eric Carle Museum of List E book Artwork 125 West Bay Boulevard, Amherst, MA 01002.
Site: carlemuseum.org.
Good to know: closed Monday and Tuesday; next to the Hampshire Faculty campus; first museum in the country dedicated to the art of illustrated books.
Emily Dickinson Museum 280 Main Boulevard, Amherst, MA 01002.
Site: emilydickinsonmuseum.org.
Good to know: the family house can be visited with a guided tour; it is advisable to reserve.
Northampton
Northampton has a reputation as a town of artists and bookstores, with Smith Faculty at the center of its cultural life. Its most vital street concentrates cafes, music venues and independent shops. The best known is Thornes Market, a former multi-story warehouse converted into a gallery of small stores. Among them, Positively Africana sells dolls and items that celebrate African and diaspora culture, the project of a native merchant.
For dinner, Notch 8 Grille occupies the former Union Location, the restored train station, with a menu of cuts and American cuisine. And if there’s time left, it’s worth walking around Smith’s campus, with its botanical garden and greenhouse, where Berenson taught physical education classes when he organized that first game.
In addition, a few steps from the Smith Faculty is the Forbes Library, which houses the official archives of President Calvin Coolidge’s administration and is worth visiting for its beauty and history.
Thornes Market 150 Main Boulevard, Northampton, MA 01060.
Site: thornesmarketplace.com. Good to know: about 30 stores in a former multi-story warehouse; Positively Africana is in.
Notch 8 Grille 125A Fulfilling Boulevard, Northampton, MA 01060 (in the former Union Location).
Site: notch8grille.com.
Good to know: dinner only, from 4pm; cuts and seafood; about the Tunnel Bar.
How to get there and when to go
Springfield is at the crossroads of I-91, which runs from north to south, and I-90 or Mass Pike, which crosses the state from east to west. The closest airport is Bradley Worldwide (BDL), about 25 minutes south in Connecticut; Boston Logan is an hour and a half drive away. Amtrak serves Union Location on the Hartford and Valley Flyer lines, as well as the Vermonter and Lake Shore Diminutive, and Peter Pan, the city-based bus line, connects with much of the Northeast.
Spring and autumn are the best seasons. Autumn, above all, for the foliage of the valley, which dyes the hills on both sides of the river red and orange between the end of September and mid-October.
If you have more days
Holyoke, fifteen minutes north, has the largest Puerto Rican community per capita outside the island and is worth its own visit. I told it in El Diario in two pieces: a profile of Mayor Joshua García and a chronicle of the community on the riverbank.
In September, West Springfield hosts The Expansive E, the largest fair in the Northeast, bringing together all six New England states. To go with children, Six Flags Recent England, in Agawam, adds roller coasters and the Storm Harbor water park. Further north, Ancient Deerfield preserves a mostly intact colonial village, and Yankee Candle Village puts together a year-round Bavarian Christmas village. Anyone who follows craft beer can explore the valley’s Beer Path, which brings together the area’s breweries.
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