The Laurel Park Association (LPA) is the direct descendant of the Springfield District Camp Meeting Association, which created Laurel Park in the 1870s as a place to hold religious revivals and a Methodist summer camp.
Since then, there have been continual programs on the Laurel Park grounds, including religious services, Chautauqua celebrations, concerts, theater and talks.
The Laurel Park Association is a
non profit organization based in Laurel Park, Northampton MA.
Our Mission
The Laurel Park Association's constitution defines our purpose:
"To provide opportunities for religious, cultural, and educational activities for the residents of Laurel Park and the surrounding communities of Western Massachusetts."
Our current goals:
- Finding the means to preserve several of the Park's common buildings as public meeting spaces, and for use in our programs
- Researching and preserving historical information and artifacts pertaining to Laurel Park and its significance in local history
- Bringing our 9 acre wooded lot into active use for programs that relate to our mission
- Offering programs that are exciting, fun, and relevant to Laurel Park and the surrounding communities
- Expanding our membership and volunteer base
***********************************************************************************
Cottage Tour Press release:
The
public is invited to tour select cottages in historic Laurel Park, a
century-old neighborhood that was originally built as a Methodist summer
camp and is now a condominium community. The neighborhood contains more
than 100 wooden cottages; some that look the same as they did when they
were built, some that are completely modern, with the rest a mixture of
old and new. Each home displays unique, quirky, ingenious ways of
dealing with small, idiosyncratic spaces.
"Like
most of the folks who now live here, I used to merely glimpse Laurel
Park from the road and wonder how this neighborhood came to be. This
tour gives the public a chance to enter the gates and take a look
around,” said Laurel Park Association Chair Deborah Way. “We're excited
to share our historic ‘park’ with the rest of our community."
About Laurel Park:
Laurel
Park got its start in the 1870s as a Methodist camp meeting site. From
that time through the 1930s, it was a popular summer destination as
thousands of people came to religious services and to hear the
best-known speakers and entertainers of the day. But as other kinds of
entertainment became more popular, interest in camp meetings waned. In
1968 the Springfield Camp Meeting Association turned ownership over to
the cottage owners as the Laurel Park Association, which maintained the
Park as a religious community. Around the same time, homeowners began
winterizing their cottages as affordable year-round homes.
In
1985, the Homeowners at Laurel Park Condominium Trust was formed, and
purchased the land on which the units now stand from the Laurel Park
Association. This freed the non-profit Laurel Park Association to focus
on its mission of providing entertaining, enlightening,
thought-provoking, and fun events for the public, in the spirit of the
camp and the Chautauqua movement that originally inspired the founding
of Laurel Park. |
|
