Holt Street

Holt Street is a short street in North Billerica running south from Lowell Street, a little west of Colson Street, to Elm Street. It was laid out in 1914 as one of the streets of Colson Heights, the subdivision of about sixty acres of the farm of George F. Colson (1839-1914) planned for his heirs by the landscape designer Warren H. Manning, with Fred W. Stowers as surveyor. The plan, "Colson Heights, North Billerica Mass., owned by the Heirs of George F. Colson," was recorded in July 1914 (Plan Book 31, Plan 88). It shows Holt Street between Section 8 and Section 9 of the house lots, running from Lowell Street, with the "Old Middlesex Canal" and the electric car tracks on its far side, down to Elm Street, parallel to the plan's Hood, Brown, Franklin, Lawrence and Warren Streets. The estate was administered and the lots marketed by Edgar F. Twombly.

The plan gives no reason for the name. Several Colson Heights streets carry personal first or family names (George, Warren, Franklin, Lawrence, Kohlrausch Avenue, Twombly Avenue), but no record found connects Holt with a Colson heir, a planner or a local family, and the name is best left unexplained. It does not appear in the street lists of 1897 and 1899 or in the directories of 1901 and 1912; the 1919 directory lists "Holt from Lowell n Colson to Elm N B."

The street existed on the ground by early 1915, when the town meeting was asked to extend the water main "from the corner of Colson Street along Lowell Street to Holt Street 300 feet, then through Holt Street 800 feet"; the main was laid under the general water extension vote of that year. The town accepted Holt Street as a town way at the annual meeting of February 11, 1922. In 1930 an article to gravel and tar it "from Elm Street to Lowell Street" was referred to the highway surveyor; it was oiled for its whole length in 1933, and in 1935 it was "widened, excavated, gravelled, rolled, tarred, sanded, and walks graded." A tar seal coat was applied to its entire length in 1943.

Holt Street was not on the official map of 1831 and was not among the roads accepted in 2016. Its name has not changed.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1915: Article 13, water main along Lowell Street to Holt Street and through Holt Street 800 feet
2. Annual Report 1922: Article 14, town votes to accept Holt Street as a town way
3. Annual Report 1930: article to gravel and tar Holt Street from Elm Street to Lowell Street referred to the highway surveyor
4. Annual Report 1933: Holt Street scraped, raked and oiled the entire length
5. Annual Report 1935: Holt Street widened, excavated, gravelled, rolled, tarred, sanded, and walks graded
6. Annual Report 1956: list of accepted streets, Holt St. 2-11-22
7. Annual Report 1943: Holt Street tar-patched, boulders removed, tar seal coat applied entire length