DCR's Spectacle Pond Abattoir Receives Paul & Niki Tsongas Award

Spectacle Pond Abattoir, Sandisfield

Preservation Mass is pleased to announce that DCR's Spectacle Pond Abattoir in Sandisfield received a 2025 Paul & Niki Tsongas Award.

The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s 1997 acquisition of Upper and Lower Spectacle Ponds represents one of the region’s most significant conservation efforts, protecting over 900 acres of pristine natural and cultural landscapes for perpetuity. Protected in partnership with Mass Audubon, the property includes old growth forest, multiple rare species habitats, and numerous indigenous and post contact cultural resources. It is a tranquil site for local citizens, wildlife, and park visitors.

The restoration of the Spectacle Pond Abattoir represents a rare preservation success story — one born from a proposed demolition. While the farm landscape will soon lose the buildings that helped illustrate the impact of centuries of agriculture on New England’s Appalachian foothills, the humble Abattoir, the complex’s stone foundations, and the open fields will remain.

In 2022 DCR hired Johnson Roberts Associates (designer) and Kronenberger and Sons (contractor) to restore the Abattoir. From the outset, the goal was to retain as much of the building’s original materials as feasible, however a new stable concrete foundation was constructed and surfaced with a field stone veneer to reflect the original foundation. Approximately 75% of the materials (siding, windows, doors, clapboards, sheathing, etc.) needed to rehabilitate the Abattoir was salvaged from the other farm buildings, ensuring that the materials — most likely from cut from trees felled at the same time on the property — provide a perpetual link to the past. All the windows were salvaged from the dismantled late 18th century Adams homestead (known as the “Blue Farmhouse”).