New Salem Town Hall was built in 1938 to replace a smaller one that they had out grown. The basement floor has a dining room, kitchen and heating plant. The upper floor contains an auditorium and stage. There are also offices on the first floor.
The Town Hall is the center for various town activities such as Old Home Day, Town Meetings and Community Christmas Parties, Pot Luck Dinners.
It is a simple white wood structure. There is a long rectangular section with a T coming from the center which contains the entrance. There is a windowed cupola on top of the building.
New Salem was first settled in 1737 and was officially incorporated in 1775, named for the settlers from Salem that founded the town. New Salem benefited greatly by the building of the Quabbin Reservoir - though mostly geographically. Prior to its building, New Salem, which has always been the southeast corner of Franklin County, did not extend much further south than the village of Cooleyville, now along U.S. Route 202. However, with the forming of the reservoir, the town received all lands above the water line between the two forks of the reservoir, as it was the only land connection to the peninsula. With its southern borders now following former branches of the Swift River, New Salem now includes most of the former town of Prescott (except for a small corner east of the Middle Branch of the Swift River, which is now in Petersham), and parts of Greenwich and Enfield. (All of the northern half of Prescott had once belonged to New Salem; the southern half was originally part of Pelham, but was annexed to Prescott in the latter nineteenth century.) All the lands gained by the annexation were once part of Hampshire County.
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