Willis Block at the Lyonsville Mill

Willis Block brick tenement in Lyonsville

If you were living in Colrain in the early 1950s, you remember this massive brick tenement on Route 112 in Lyonsville about where Matt Slowinski’s pallet shop is now.

Known as the Willis Block when it was built after the Civil War by Joseph Griswold, it was one of the largest tenements in Franklin County. The five-story center portion, known as the Boarding House, held 111 single rooms. In the two wings there were 21 apartments, each with six rooms on three floors, plus an attic and cellar. Some of these were later subdivided. 

Rents in 1877, probably for the single rooms, were 65 cents per week. Some of the workers then made only $2 per week at the Upper Mill next door. Families began to move out in the 1940s, and the building was razed in 1955. 

 

Moses Supprise was born there in 1893 and lived there all his life until 1954. He is buried in Colrain’s West Branch Cemetery.