Historic Exchange Hall at 2 School St., South Acton was sold on August 6 to the Anointed Worship Center, a Christian church currently located on Trapelo Road in Belmont. The sale price was $1,070,000. Glenn Berger, former owner of the building and owner of Acton Woodworks, a remodeling and cabinet supply business, has moved out of his office and showroom on the first floor. He had owned the Hall since the mid 1980s.
Exchange Hall has been a landmark in South Acton since it was built in the 1860s by James Tuttle for his dry goods retail business. The bracketed Italianate structure is painted a sunny yellow with white trim and has porticos on the first and second floors and a two-level cupola on the slate roof. Railroads were increasing their reach into the suburbs and the new building was located yards from the South Acton station. In 1986, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The website for Exchange Hall states:
“Exchange Hall provided a meetinghouse for South Acton’s first religious society from 1861-1878, and hosted lectures by Henry David Thoreau in the 1860s and Henry Ward Beecher in the 1870s. In the late 1880s it was the site of many visits of John ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, mayor of Boston, congressman and grandfather of President John F. Kennedy. Honey Fitz sang ‘Sweet Adeline’ from the Hall stage on several occasions. He and Mary Josephine “Josie” Hannon, from Acton, were the parents of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
In addition to hosting lectures, the ballroom on the top floor was used for all types of dancing starting in the 1860s and continuing into the 1960s. A sprung dance floor was installed in the late 1800s and is one of very few remaining in New England. That tradition continued when the Magenta Dance Place opened in September of 2021. The new owners of the building did not respond to questions regarding their intended use of the spaces in Exchange Hall.
Jeff Brown is the Acton Exchange’s beat reporter for business.