Olga L. Greenwood House

The Olga L. Greenwood House stood on the south side of Boston Road near the corner of Shawsheen Road, on Lot 280 of Edgar P. Sellew's Land Court subdivision of 1910, the beginning of Shawsheen Acres. It belonged to Olga L. Greenwood, whose husband Albert E. Greenwood kept The Branch Bakery at the front of the same lot.

The land was part of the seventy acres on the south side of the Boston and Lowell road that Josiah Rogers sold in 1836 to Samuel A. Rogers of Tewksbury, that Rogers sold in 1847 to Robert Kershaw, a safe maker, and that Kershaw sold in 1851 to Josiah B. Gleason "with the privileges and appurtenances". After Gleason's death his heirs conveyed it in 1896 to Frederic E. Gleason of Lexington, who sold it to Sellew in December 1909. Sellew registered the tract in the Land Court, and the original certificate of title was issued to him in January 1911.

On February 6, 1911 Sellew sold Lot 280 to Olga L. Greenwood of Boston, "married to Albert E. Greenwood". The lot had 140 feet on Boston Road and ran back 100 feet, bounded on the other three sides by Sellew's land, and the deed barred any house costing less than $250 or standing within twenty feet of the road. Earlier she had bought a camp lot and two lots at Hillside and Allen Roads in Riverdale, and in 1919 the family lived on Arcadia Road. The 1916 county plan of the widened Boston Road shows the house on Lot 280, set well back from the road, with the bakery in front of it, and the road taking cost the lot about 400 square feet, for which the town paid her $25.

After Olga Greenwood's death on November 9, 1919, the lot was conveyed in March 1920 to Sellew and in April 1920 to her widower, Albert E. Greenwood, who mortgaged it in 1921. In 1926 he sold it, as Lot 280A on a new Sellew plan, to the Riverdale Improvement Association, Inc. Isaac Bernstein of Burlington bought it in 1930 together with the corner lots on Shawsheen Road. The town took the three lots for unpaid taxes in the 1930s.

From about 1940 the place was probably The Hofbrau, a roadside restaurant and nightclub on what was then Route 3. Its keepers and performers match the owners of this lot. Grace A. O'Connell of Billerica owned the lot from 1937, and The Hofbrau was run in 1940 and 1941 by John C. "Jack" O'Connell. The lot passed in 1941 to Zella Lehr and Winifred Mae Turnbull of Wilmington, and in 1942 the club, as the American Hofbrau, advertised the entertainers Raynor Lehr and Mae Wynn. A state building-inspection card dated October 9, 1941 records a one-story building with a basement on Boston Road, owned by Winifred Mae Turnbull and Zella Lehr, to be used for dining and entertainment. David Gladstone of Pinehurst, who owned the lot from 1946, was president of the Club Hofbrau in 1949. After a mortgagee's sale the lot went in 1949 to Earl Shindell and then to Sumner Gladstone, whose family ran the Gladstone Bros. gas station at 737 Boston Road. The Club Hofbrau was run in 1951 by Edward Gange and Michael J. Gangi of Woburn, who advertised floor shows on Friday and Saturday nights, and in 1952 The Copa advertised from Boston Road with the club's telephone number. From 1950 the lot belonged to three Woburn men. The Copa's 1952 advertisement is the last found for the club, and older residents remember that the building burned in the 1950s; no record of the fire has been found. Residents also remember that about 1956 a Richardson Root Beer stand from Burlington was moved onto the lot, and that it was later moved to North Billerica, where with an addition it became the building at 176 Boston Road, later known as Mac's Two Lounge; that building is dated 1959 in the assessor's records, and Mack's Drive-In advertised there in 1959. The card does not say whether the club building was new in 1941 or an older building refitted.

The old buildings were gone by the mid-1950s. In May 1957 the land was bought by the Pinehurst Miniature Golf Course, Inc., and the 1957 directory lists the Pinehurst Miniature Golf Course on Boston Road, run by Warren P. Snyder of Old Turnpike Road and Carlton R. Traywick of Wilmington. The company sold the land in 1963 to Timco, Inc. of Medford, and from 1964 it belonged to the Pinehurst Recreation Corp.. In the 1960s the course was Marvel Soft Ice-Cream and Miniature Golf, which advertised in the 1965 high school yearbook; residents remember it on this lot. From 1970 the land belonged to the Sure Oil and Chemical Corporation of Worcester, which leased it to the Power Center Petroleum company in 1976. In 1986 the Shawmut Worcester County Bank sold it to Donut Maker, Inc., and the present brick store building went up in 1989. The house was probably taken down in the mid-1950s, before the golf course was laid out.

References

1. Massachusetts Archives, building inspection index cards, Billerica: Hofbrau, Boston Road, Oct. 9, 1941 (Turnbull and Lehr, dining and entertainment)
2. Billerica assessor, 729 Boston Rd (parcel 90-92-0): Land Court plan 3095-P lots 280A, 294, 295; store built about 1989

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.