The Wherehouse? in Holyoke is James A. Curran's lifetime collection of Paper City memorabilia

Officially a banquet and function facility, The Wherehouse? is somewhat of an unofficial museum for Holyoke.

HOLYOKE –Visitors to James A. Curran's The Wherehouse? will find a veritable feast of Holyoke—peppered with memorabilia from other local municipalities.

Officially a banquet and function facility, The Wherehouse? is somewhat of an unofficial museum—four floors filled from floor to ceiling—literally--with relics of Holyoke's past.

A former warehouse for Spaulding sporting equipment, the brick building along the city's first-level canal was the answer for Curran when he wondered where to house his growing collection that now includes artifacts from Holyoke’s industrial past, firefighting apparatus, appliances, airplane fuselages, a caboose, political memorabilia, church accouterments, municipal infrastructure cast-offs, school signs, business and memorial plaques, maps and historical photographs.

“I’m a lifeguard of junk,” the 79-year-old founder and treasurer of James A. Curran General Contractor Inc. said with a smile.

Others would disagree and call him a caretaker of history.

“They know we’ll take care of it,” he acknowledged, noting that sometimes people don’t know what to do with an item so they give it to him.

A life-long Holyoke resident, Curran is one of the six children of Francis—a lawyer—and Anna Curran. He remembers sorting soda bottles at Luchini’s store on Northampton Street when he was seven as well as the Holyoke Transcript paper route he had for years as a boy.

In 1950 he graduated from Holyoke Trade School and worked for Daniel O’Connell’s Sons contractors before enlisting in the Army and serving at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Discharged as a specialist 2, he returned to the construction business, which was building Providence Hospital. Unfortunately, he was laid off, but fortunately, the next day Joe Conway hired him to build his liquor store on the corner of Pine and Suffolk streets.

So began Curran’s career as an independent contractor.

He has worked on a variety of small building construction projects and on many telephone, gas and utility jobs.

He and his wife, Joyce E., have been married for 50 years; they have a daughter, a son and four grandchildren.

Sporting a lined, green hooded jacket over a blue zipper jacket and flannel shirt with brown pants and brown work boots, Curran showed a visitor around The Wherehouse?.

His collecting began even before he was married; he keeps his collection out of the house and admits he doesn’t have a favorite item.

And there are so many items—from the clever to the mundane, the simple to the complicated, the beautiful to the not-so-beautiful, the small to the huge, the delicate to the sturdy.

One of the largest things in Curran’s collection is a Piper Cherokee 6 airplane, turned into a weather vane outside The Wherehouse?. He was piloting it when it crashed in 1972 in West Springfield; he was not hurt.

There’s also a World War II air raid siren that goes off for two minutes every day at noon and a C123 cargo plane nose protruding from the side of the brick building.

Curran—who likes to work hard and wiggles his fingers to show their lack of arthritis, has salvaged architectural elements that he has built into The Wherehouse? like the stone arch from Sacred Heart School, flooring from a nearby mill and cypress doors from Mater Dolorosa Church.

“There’s a lot of history here,” he said.

Most of the collection comes from Holyoke “because that’s where we are, and you start where you are,” Curran said.

He’s got some of the first paper made at the Crocker McElwine Paper Company, a ticket pulverizor from a local movie theater, a red hand-crank gasoline pump, porcelain street signs going up the risers on a stair case, portraits of Catholic bishops and bank presidents, a bronze bell from a textile mill across the street, a folding grocery delivery box from the Howes Market on Hampden Street, old WHYN-TV news cameras, store signs, paper rollers from the Whiting Paper Mill, church and store signs, an old voting booth, a stuffing machine from the Reilly Sausage Company on Hampden Street, the Highland Fire Station Bell that can be rung from all four floors, a 1918 Kaplan silent film projector from the soldiers’ home, a soap box derby car and the Station of the Cross in which Veronica wipes the face of Jesus and a baptismal font from Holy Rosary Church.

“Why do you collect all this?” a visitor asked. “Why do you breathe?” he quickly responded.

There are no sections or departments; “it’s collages,” Curran said. His method of placement “is in the computer, my head,” he said, tapping his temple. “It’s random.”

Curran says he has “always” been collecting--salvaging what he can, buying sometimes at auctions and sales. He doesn’t remember his first acquisition. “I just collect,” he said.

And he simply cannot quantify the collection.

But it is massive.

He has manhole covers and parking meters imbedded into the brick work below a bar, marble-top barbershop cabinets in front of a 20-foot mirror, adding machines and push lawn mowers attached to the ceiling in a banquet hall and four display cases from Whiting Paper Company filled with local, state and national political memorabilia like pins and signs.

He has calendars, sports memorabilia, a circa 1930 mailbox from High Street, a Draper silk loom from the Clinton silk mill and a framed 1960 school safety ad featuring a boy in a suit holding hands with a girl in a dress.

“See how nice they dressed,” Curran said.

Asked where that came from, Curran quipped, “I don’t have a log of where I get stuff.”

But he knows the story behind most of the items, even showing a visitor how the first coke gas distribution controls from the Holyoke Gas Works operated and how hats were made on the sewing machines from Bay State Hat Company.

Though he enjoys collecting, “It’s still work,” he said, noting that he does some restoration work on some of the items he brings to The Wherehouse?.

Rarely does he consider anything junk. “I collect anything,” he said, though he did admit that occasionally he has to scrap something. “It’s really scrap when I scrap it.”

Curran acquired a smaller brick building in 1957 and The Wherehouse? building next door a few years later. The owner of the larger building said Curran’s trucks were getting in his way. “I told him, ‘You buy me out or I’ll buy you out.’ That’s how I ended up with this building.”

The Wherehouse? has about 100,000 square feet of space, and that includes the banquet and function facilities and storage for the general contracting business.

Curran’s company employees did much of the work on the building during slow times for several years.

Curran has a massive paper cutter from the Hampden County Registry of Deeds, a bird cage shaped the Holyoke City Hall, a full-sized 1863 wooden Morgan horse that had been used for fitting and displaying harnesses and railroad track along a copper-covered bar.

There is fencing from St. Jerome’s Cemetery, bread pans and baking racks from the oven at the Wonder Bread bakery, a Fairbanks scale from Citizens Coal and Wood Company on Commercial Street and the wooden sign from Kirtland School on Sargent Street, which Curran attended.

And the way to see all this is to attend an event at The Wherehouse?.

Those who do might notice a walnut plaque with a carved floral design. The late Frank Delcroix Sr. carved it for Curran from a design on a paper towel. The inscription reads, “To Jimmy Curran, a man I am glad to know.”

A member of Our Lady of the Cross Church in Holyoke, Curran has the oak icebox façade and doors from St. Jerome rectory and stained glass windows from Our Lady of the Rosary Church.

One of the banquet rooms on the second floor of The Wherehouse? is called “Brud’s Room,” in honor of Curran’s late brother, Francis Curran. The maple floor came from the Whiting Paper Mill building—which Curran owns.

When Curran added an elevator to the outside of the building, he turned it into a one-third size replica of the Highland Fire Station tower on Hampden Street and capped it with the original bell tower.

He’s an independent collector, he said, “always have been.”

Asked if he can ever have too much stuff, Curran was quick to reply, “No!”

Carl J. Theriault of West Springfield and Philip R. Theriault of Holyoke recently stopped by The Wherehouse? to work on one of the banquet facility’s washing machines. “Every time I come in here, I see something new,” Philip said. “It’s gorgeous from top to bottom…. I just love it.”

Carl was seeing the place for the first time. “It’s phenomenal. It’s unbelievable,” he enthused. “It’s filled with history. This is a treasure trove of antiquities.”

Curran’s collection is not a passion, he said, but a way of doing things. “I can take it or leave it. I do other work,” he said.

Besides his work with the general contractors, Curran is a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians James A. Curran (yes, named after him) Division One of Hampden-Hampshire Counties.

The Wherehouse? is also the repository for myriad Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade memorabilia from portraits of the colleens and other dignitaries and the grand colleen’s throne-like chair, all in the Emerald Room.

A friend of the late Irish comedian Hal Roach — who performed at The Wherehouse a half dozen times — Curran was amused by the way Roach would tell a joke and then instruct his audience, “Write it down” so they would remember it.

One hundred percent Irish, Curran — the 2002 Holyoke parade grand marshal and 1971 Rohan Award recipient — has never been to Ireland. “I got enough here,” he said.

Does he consider his collection his legacy? “I don’t have one (a legacy). I’m not going any place,” he said with a smile.