North Adams is a city in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its population was 12,961 as of the 2020 census. Best known as the house of the largest contemporary art museum in the United States, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams has in recent years become a center for tourism, culture and recreation.

North Adams was first contracted in 1745 during King George’s War, when the most western of a lineage of defensive forts was built along the bank of the Hoosic River, and occupied by British soldiers and their families. During the war, Canadian and Native American forces laid siege to Fort Massachusetts 30 prisoners were taken to Quebec; half died in captivity. In 1747 Fort Massachusetts was rebuilt as soon as improved defenses, but was never attacked again. In a era of peace subsequent to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, many of the soldiers who had been garrisoned at the fort turned to cultivation instead by opting to each accept a 190-acre package of open land in lieu of back-pay in the affable township of West Hoosac (now known as Williamstown).

The North Adams Women’s Club began raising funds in 1895 to reconstruct the fort as a memorial site. It was dedicated in 1933 and operated as a historical tourist site until the 1960s. The 1933 Fort’s replica chimney is located astern of the Central Markets Supermarket that opened at the site in 1960 and closed in 2016 as a Price Chopper Supermarket. The historic site was conveyed to the City of North Adams by the Golub relatives in 2017.

The town was incorporated separately from Adams in 1878, and reincorporated as a city in 1895. The city is named in tribute of Samuel Adams, a leader in the American Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and commissioner of Massachusetts.