Westfield Historical Commission plans to add more self–guided walking tours

Sept. 3, 2019 | Dennis Hackett

The Old Burying Ground in Westfield is one of the sites on the Historical Commission’s self-guided walking tour app, Pocket Sights.
Reminder Publishing photo by Dennis Hackett

WESTFIELD – After starting its first self-guided walking tour back in 2016, the Westfield Historical Commission wants to add more, according to its treasurer.

Downloading the app is easy. It’s as simple as booting up the App Store or Google Play Store on your smart phone and searching for the Pocket Sights App. From there the app offers tours all across the country, but if you are in the area it will list the Whipping Around Westfield tour right when you open the app.

The tour itself takes users all around downtown Westfield, starting at the Westfield Athenaeum and all the way around to the Gillet Block. One of the highlights of the tour is the Old Burying Ground, one of the oldest cemeteries in the country still in its original location, where some of Westfield’s most famous residents were laid to rest.

Currently the Historical Commission wants to restore the gravestones and the whole burying ground according to the Commission’s treasurer, Carly Bannish. She explained money made from the tours throughout the year goes directly back into restoring the historic graveyard.     Despite their efforts, the graveyard initially had about 3,000 gravestones but now only about 1,200 line the graveyard.

Bannish said her end goal is to get the Old Burying Ground open to residents year round. Currently the gate stays locked after the graveyard fell into disrepair and was vandalized but anyone along the tour can enter the graveyard by going to the Westfield Library for the key.

She said she was inspired to create the tour after visiting her father down in Florida back in 2015 when she and her husband wanted to take a tour around Fort Meyers and found the app.     “Wherever I am I like to take a look at someone else’s tour because we get ideas from those tours,” she said.

When coming up with where the tour should be Bannish said she thought it would be a good idea to do a square around downtown Westfield. “How wonderful it would be to draw people on the bike trail downtown. As a commission we were thinking of how we could support the community in that regard too,” she said.

With the Pocket Sights app, anyone is able to take the tour at any time which is good for the Historical Commission because they work most days Bannish explained.

However, this tour may just be the beginning with the Historical Commission starting to talk about adding more tours in the future. On Monday the Commission began discussing adding a tour around Westfield’s different immigrant neighborhoods to showcase the city’s diversity, Bannish explained.

As of right now the Commission cannot track how many people are using the app for the guided tour. However, Bannish expressed that she wants to see who is taking the tour. “I would love to know how many people have used it and what their responses are. We are thinking of creating some others but I want to know what is important to the community,” she said.

While the mobile tour has been around for three years, the Commission started organizing historic tours seven years ago.             One of the tours the Commission organizes is the annual historical walk in the graveyard. Bannish said it has sold out almost every year since its inception.

To commemorate Westfield’s 350th anniversary, this year the Commission is hosting a tour of the Old Burying ground all about some of the city’s founding families. Interested parties can purchase tickets at the Athenaeum in Westfield and the tour itself takes place during the last weekend of September.

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