Springfield is a city in, and the county seat of, Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States.
In the 2000 census, the city population was 154,082. It is the third largest city in Massachusetts and fourth largest in New England (behind Boston, Providence, and Worcester). Springfield holds two nicknames — The City of Homes and The City of Firsts.
Historically the first Springfield in the United States, it is also the largest city with the name of Springfield. It is also the largest city on the Connecticut River (and the largest city in Western Massachusetts and the Pioneer Valley).
Springfield has a notable history as the home to Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, and as the birthplace of basketball, invented by James Naismith at Springfield College. It is home to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Springfield Falcons AHL hockey team. It also holds the western world's largest collection of Chinese cloisonné at the G.W. Vincent Smith Art Museum.
Springfield is part of a larger northeastern metropolitan area known as the Megalopolis.
In an economic and cultural partnership with Hartford, Connecticut, the Springfield-Hartford region constitutes New England's Knowledge Corridor - the second-largest concentration of institutions of higher learning in New England, after Greater Boston.
