Town of NORTHFIELD

Northfield is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. Northfield was first settled in 1673. The population was 2,866 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Connecticut River runs through the town, dividing West Northfield from East Northfield (the village)where the town hall is located. Part of the town is included in the census-designated place of Northfield.

In 1971 the Northfield Mount Hermon School was formed by the merger of the Northfield Seminary and the Mount Hermon School for boys, which Moody had founded in 1881 in nearby Gill. The school continued to operate as one school with two campuses some 4 miles apart on opposite banks of the Connecticut River until 2005 when the school consolidated its operations on the Mount Hermon campus in Gill. The school's former campus in Northfield was purchased by Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based chain of arts and crafts stores, as of December 2009 to be used as the campus for the new C.S. Lewis College, run by the California-based C.S. Lewis Foundation. Renovation began on the disused buildings in summer 2010, and the college expected to open for instruction in fall 2012, pending accreditation, but failed to meet the necessary funding threshold.

Moody's birthplace and grave site, located on the Northfield campus, remain as a historic site. In December 2013, Hobby Lobby donated the auditorium, used for Moody's religious conventions, and the school's original Romanesque Revival buildings and grounds to the National Christian Foundation, which is responsible for identifying a viable owner for the property. In 2017 the NFC agreed with Thomas Aquinas College of Santa Paula, California on a plan for TAC to open a second campus on the Northfield site. The first TAC classes began in August 2019.

Source: Wikipedia