North Adams, Massachusetts 01247

At the dawn of the new millennium, the City of North Adams is undergoing a most improbable renaissance. Long an industrial and manufacturing center and home of the only marble bridge in North America, North Adams now houses the world's largest museum of contemporary art - MASSMoCA, which opened on Memorial Day, 1999.

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Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Also the site of the newly re-named Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams is poised to move into the vanguard as the cultural tourism-driven Berkshires enters the 21st century.

... originally part of East Hoosuck township

"North Adams was originally part of East Hoosuck township, laid out in 1762. Berkshire natives are used to the various ways of spelling Hoosic, and will explain without so much as the bat of an eyelash that the Hoosic River flows through the Hoosac Valley at the foot of the Hoosac Mountain Range through which the Hoosac Tunnel runs; but the Hoosic River becomes the Hoosick River when it flows into New York State where the town is called Hoosick Falls.

"The original towns in the area, predecessors of Adams, North Adams and Williamstown, were called East and West Hoosick, East and West Hoosuck, and East and West Hoosac, apparently depending on the idiosyncracies of eighteenth century spelling. It is all very confusing to anyone wishing to spell Hoosic, for to be certain one must know whether the reference is to a mountain, a river, or a town. The origin of the name is simpler; in the Indian language it means 'a stony place'." (The Berkshire Hills, by Federal Writers' Project, © 1939, Berkshire Hills Conference, Inc.)

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