Martin's Block

Martin's Block stood at 403-405 Boston Road, on the west side of the road just south of the Common in Billerica Center. It began as a cider mill, became a block of stores and tenements, and was taken down in 1987; the Brentwood Arms condominium building has stood on the lot since 1988.

The land was part of a half-acre corner lot on the Common, bounded by the road to Boston, the road to Concord and land of Joseph L. Low. In April 1812 Stephen Parker sold it "together with all the buildings thereon standing" to William Richardson for $1,500, and in 1814 Richardson sold it for $2,000 to his brother Francis Richardson, who kept it as part of his homestead until his death in 1860. In May 1861 his other heirs quitclaimed the homestead for $2,500 to his daughter Mary L. Dickinson, the wife of Frederic Dickinson.

The building does not appear on the 1853 map of the village, but it is drawn as a "cider mill" on the maps of 1875 and 1889, and photographs from about 1880 show the same building. It stood on Mary L. Dickinson's land, so it was probably a Dickinson enterprise, though no record names the miller. She mortgaged the half acre "with all the buildings thereon" in 1887 and again, as a widow, to the Central Savings Bank of Lowell in 1893. In 1894 she divided it: the corner went to her daughter-in-law Katie A. Dickinson (the lot of the Edward Dickinson House), and she mortgaged the 15,737 square feet to the south, "with the buildings thereon", to her son Edward F. Dickinson.

Mary L. Dickinson died on August 2, 1900, and left the land to her three sons. Frederick H. Dickinson quitclaimed his third to his brothers, and in December 1900 Edward F. and William H. Dickinson (of Yuma, Arizona) sold the whole lot to Edward A. King, a carpenter and builder, who borrowed $3,000 on it from the Trustees of the Howe School. King turned the old mill into a block of stores and apartments. In January 1903 a fire from a stove spark destroyed the "Dickenson Block, property of E. A. King" (a loss of $1,500 on the building) and spread to "King's Block", which escaped with $42.50 in damage. By 1912 King was listed as a contractor and builder also dealing in hardware, paints, glass and roofing on Boston Road north of the Common, and in 1921 E. A. King & Co. was a hardware dealer there. In the 1920s King's Hardware and Paint Co., run by Alexander P. Hallenborg, kept the name on Boston Road opposite the Common.

In October 1917, after the town voted to buy a site and build a fire station, King sold the town the south 8,260 square feet of his lot, shown on the plan "Fire Station Lot, Billerica Center, Mass." surveyed by Smith and Brooks, and the Center Fire Station was built there, crowded against the south side of the block. King kept the remaining 7,477 square feet with his block. He died on November 15, 1920, aged 72, without a will. His daughters Harriet A. Wheeler and Myrtle R. Pollard quitclaimed their two thirds to his widow Marion King, who mortgaged the block for $3,500 in 1921 and, then living in Needham, sold it in September 1927 to Valentine O. Martin and his wife Isabella M. Martin, whose farm was the old Bowman's Tavern place on Lexington Road.

The building was known from then on as Martin's Block. Valentine O. Martin died in 1936 and Isabella M. Martin held the block until her death; it passed under her will to her son Joseph W. Martin and his wife Annie. When the Billerica Historical Commission surveyed it in 1973 the owner was the estate of Isabella M. Martin. By then the stores were gone and the three-story gambrel-roofed clapboard building, enlarged in the twentieth century, had been converted entirely into apartments, so that, in the surveyor's words, it "has literally burst its seams". After Annie M. Martin's estate was settled, her son sold the lot in 1978 to the Crown Realty Trust for $45,000.

In July 1987 the trust sold the property for $250,000 to George Allen & Son Construction, Inc., which obtained a variance in September 1987 to put up a six-family building with its parking behind or beneath it. The old block was demolished that year. In April 1988 the builder recorded the master deed of the Brentwood Arms Condominium: a three-story building with a brick front and vinyl siding, six two-bedroom units and basement parking, on the same 7,477 square feet. The units were sold to private owners in 1988 and have changed hands since. The site lies within the local historic district designated around the Common in 1990.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.71
2. Billerica assessor: 405 Boston Rd, Brentwood Arms Condo Unit 1 (parcel 61-33-1), built 1988, sales history

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.