Two metalworkers with Greenfield roots are restoring the town’s original blacksmith’s shop to its original purpose. Owner Ray Cilley and master blacksmith Vincent Anfuso expect to open for blacksmithing lessons and local artisanal gift sales across from the Harvester Market in mid-August.
“I’ve been eyeballing this place forever. Being a blacksmith and this being an old blacksmith shop, it was like, you can feel it,” Anfuso said of 792 Forest Road, which most recently housed Greenfield Auto Services.
The building first caught Cilley’s attention a couple years ago while he was fundraising to install the last six street lights of the town’s sidewalk paving and lighting initiative, which started in 2002. He watched the former garage linger on the market as its price dropped year after year. Cilley, founder of Greenfield’s American Steel Properties, has been involved in discussions about the town’s economic development since he moved to town in the early 1980s. “The downtown really needs some revitalization,” he said, and saw an opportunity to purchase and convert the building into a destination attraction.
The building served as a blacksmith shop when it was built in 1820, but spent the last century as a car dealership, gas station, and auto shop, Cilley said. “This part had a pit,” he said, gesturing to the new concrete floor in a former auto repair bay at the end of June. Substantial renovations were necessary to bring the building back to its original function, plumbing needed to be installed, and brownfield remediation was necessary after years of automotive industry on site. “I had a pretty good sense there [were] going to be issues here,” Cilley said, but that the builders were trying to maintain as much of the original structure as they can. He has been conducting environmental remediations on the site with help from the Southwest Regional Planning Commission. The Planning Board granted conditional approval for the forge on June 23, and installations requested by the town’s building inspector are going in at the start of August. “He’s doing the right thing,” Planning Board Chair Mason Parker said. “His proposal is one that would involve a lot of community activity,” he said, and other things that are good for the town overall.
Anfuso founded the Greenfield Forge Blacksmithing Shop 20 years ago in town and currently operates out of Milford, where he teaches classes and hand-forges commissioned custom pieces. Cilley contacted him soon after deciding to purchase the property, after meeting him years ago when Anfuso completed some custom metalwork on Cilley’s farm. Anfuso envisions teaching one-time classes to visitors, including from nearby Greenfield State Park, and weekend intensives for bachelor parties and farther-flung visitors, who could create a piece or a knife over several days.
The forge area will stand right behind the shop’s double doors so passersby can watch, he said, and there will be space for a classroom area and a two-story gift shop, featuring a wrought iron staircase furnished by Anfuso himself. The pavement out front will disappear in favor of more inviting landscaping and sculpture paved area, Cilley said, and plans are still developing for the side of the building with the high bays. In late June, an anvil and two coal forges awaited installation, and the building’s original beams are featured prominently inside.
Cilley said his hope is that the forge operation sparks additional downtown enterprises, one building at a time. “We can turn downtown Greenfield into a great space,” he said, and that he and others are actively discussing their visions.