Billerica Town Hall (1895)

The Billerica Town Hall of 1895 is the brick building with the gilded cupola on the west side of Concord Road, facing the Common between the Billerica Masonic Temple and Blanchard Avenue. It was the town's third town hall, built on the site of the Old Town Hall of 1845 after that building burned on November 3, 1893. It held the town offices for more than ninety years, until they moved to the former Howe High School at 365 Boston Road in January 1989, and since May 2000 it has been the front of the Billerica Public Library.

At the annual meeting of March 19, 1894, the committee chosen the year before to report on a new town hall, J. Nelson Parker, Frederic S. Clark and Joseph Jaquith, said they had "visited various towns, talked with numerous architects" and wanted "a well-equipped modern building": a hall to seat 500 people with a stage and dressing rooms, a supper room for 150, a Selectmen's room that would also serve the assessors and overseers of the poor, a room for the Town Clerk and Treasurer with a fire-proof vault, cloak rooms, toilet rooms, a kitchen with a pump from a well on the premises, "a lockup with two cells," and furnaces. Of the many architects who asked to furnish drawings they had chosen four to submit competitive plans. The meeting gave them $750 for working plans and asked the Legislature for leave to borrow outside the debt limit, which came as Chapter 310 of the Acts of 1894, approved April 26, 1894, allowing up to $30,000 for twenty-five years.

The decisive meeting was held at Gardner Parker Hall on July 16, 1894. The committee recommended the plan of Warren and Bacon of Boston, the partnership of Herbert Langford Warren and Lewis H. Bacon: "The colonial style of building is appropriate, simple yet substantial, and sightly, giving the room required with neither waste nor apparent stint." Their estimate provided "granite under-pinning and steps, walls of red brick with light limestone trimmings, pale green slate roof with heavy copper flashings and gutters, and roof trusses of iron," with lighting by gasoline. Bids from six contractors showed that a brick building could be put under contract for not more than $32,000. Wood would have saved about $5,200, but the committee argued that if the town built of brick "it is not likely that the youngest voter in Town will ever be called upon to build or pay for another Town Hall," and closed, "so that ourselves and those who come after us may say, 'We builded well.'" The town voted unanimously to build of brick, accepted the special act 73 to 0, borrowed $30,000 on four per cent bonds dated April 1, 1894 and due in 1919 (they sold for $31,840.67), put the $1,500 of insurance on the old hall toward the new one, and named Parker, Clark and Jaquith the building committee.

The same meeting took two pieces of land "for the enlargement of the Town Hall lot, and for a site for a new Town Hall": a lot of the heirs of Mary B. Parker on the south, 100 feet along the highway and 150 feet back, and a strip of Frederic A. Morey's land behind the old lot, so that the back line would run parallel with the road. Smith and Brooks of Lowell surveyed them on July 26, 1894 as Lot I, 13,570 square feet, and Lot II, 3,574 square feet. On September 24, 1894 the Baldwin, Parker, Morey and Reed heirs, who all claimed through John Baldwin, released both lots to the town for one dollar "upon the express condition that the said town of Billerica shall maintain a town hall building thereon and shall not erect any other buildings for other purposes. This is not intended to limit the purposes for which the town hall may be used." The selectmen paid $75 to Morey and $1,100 to the Parker heirs, a settlement they reported as "unsatisfactory to all parties." The front of the enlarged lot was still the 7,000 square foot schoolhouse lot that John Baldwin had sold the town in 1845.

The contractor was C. H. Nelson. The building committee's final account showed $1,204 for land and surveying, $30,358.26 for the building, $1,590.78 for the architects, $2,342.86 for furnishing and $1,666.25 for grading and draining, $37,162.15 in all, with $48.52 returned to the treasury. They reported the building finished "with no accident to any workman, with no friction or quarrels between architects, contractors, or anyone engaged upon the work." The town clerk's record of the year says that "on November 8th, the new Town Hall, finished at a cost of $37,190, was dedicated with appropriate ceremonies." The Rev. Minot J. Savage of Boston gave the address before a full hall, and "a dinner served in the banquet hall and a ball in the evening pleasantly closed the exercises." Later accounts give November 7 and November 14, 1895. In 1897 the town voted thanks to the committee and ordered a bronze tablet for the lower corridor recording the town halls since the founding of the town and the names of the building committee.

The hall is laid out on an H plan, a long central block under a high hipped slate roof between two narrower end pavilions that project toward the road. The front has an arched loggia with Doric columns, a Palladian window above it, and a cupola modeled on the work of Christopher Wren with a gilded dome and weathervane. The selectmen, town clerk, treasurer, assessors and school committee had their offices in the building, which also held the town lockup. The second-floor hall seated 500 for town meetings, which met there until 1953 before moving to the Parker School, and it was the town's place for dances, concerts, suppers and other public gatherings; the selectmen wrote in 1896 that with Union Hall and the Talbot Memorial Building the town would "compare very favorably with other county towns in regard to public halls." The building also served as a polling place into the 1950s.

The offices were crowded within twenty years. In 1917 and 1918 a committee worked out with Lewis H. Bacon an addition at the rear corners for a new Selectmen's room, vault, kitchen and toilets, at about $15,000, but because of the war it recommended no spending, and the town report of 1921 again declined to recommend an addition. Instead the lot grew behind the hall. In 1942 the town meeting raised $1,000 to buy from Bessie C. Buck Lot 2C on Blanchard Avenue, 8,044 square feet "in the rear of the Town Hall." At the annual meeting of February 9, 1946 the town voted to give the Billerica Masonic Association, Inc. a strip on the north side of the hall in exchange for land on the west, and on November 7, 1946 it deeded the Association an 898 square foot triangle between the hall and the temple, 10.80 feet on Concord Road, while the Association gave the town about 5,725 square feet "in the rear of the Town Hall property," both shown on a plan by E. P. Simpson. The roof was repaired in 1953, and after a $45,000 remodeling plan failed in 1959 the town voted $15,000 for repairs and remodeling in 1960. In 1959 the police department moved out of the hall into a new Billerica Police Station built on the land behind it, and the board of health took over its old rooms.

In June 1985 a special town meeting created a committee to study converting the Howe High School on Boston Road into a town hall, and in 1986 the town voted the bonds for the work. In the last week of January 1989 the town clerk, the engineers and the other offices packed up "years' accumulation of records at the old Town Hall" and moved into the new Town Hall at 365 Boston Road, which was dedicated on September 30, 1989. The old hall stood empty. A plan to turn it into housing for the elderly was turned down in 1988 because the conversion could not be done "without serious damage to the exterior of the building," and the Historical Commission warned that "the old Town Hall is at least as important to the Billerica Common District as was the Walnuts. It is also equally vulnerable." The town spent insurance money in 1992 to secure the building and repair the cupola and roof, but in 1993 a fire caused by lightning badly damaged the cupola, which had to be taken down. In 1994 the town leased the old hall and the old police station to the Billerica Historic Preservation Corporation, and in 1995 the town meeting directed the selectmen to end the lease.

That year the Library Building Committee chose the old hall as the site of a new public library. On May 6, 1996 the town meeting voted unanimously to borrow $5,500,000 to convert "the Billerica Old Town Hall for use as the Town Library," and the Massachusetts Historical Commission gave a $100,000 matching grant to restore the slate roof and replace the cupola. In return the town placed a preservation restriction on the building in favor of the Commission, signed May 21, 1998. The Board of Appeal granted the variance and special permit "to add and alter a pre-existing non-conforming structure" on April 15, 1998, the groundbreaking was held on June 18, 1998, and in October 1998 the town voted $300,000 to remove contaminated soil from behind the hall. The old police station was torn down and a large addition was built behind the hall, and the restored building reopened as the Billerica Public Library on May 8, 2000.

The Town Hall is a contributing building of the Billerica Town Common District, listed in the National Register of Historic Places on August 14, 1973, and it stands in the local Billerica Center Historic District created in 1990.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.5
2. Billerica town report 1895: committee reports of March 19 and July 16, 1894 on a new town hall, Warren and Bacon plans, Chapter 310 of 1894, the land taking and the building committee
3. Billerica town report 1896: dedication "on November 8th" 1895, address by Rev. Minot J. Savage; final report of the Town Hall committee, total cost $37,162.15
4. Billerica town report 1897: vote of thanks to the building committee and order for a bronze tablet in the lower corridor
5. Billerica town reports 1915-1919: 1918 report of the committee on enlarging the Town Hall, plans by L. H. Bacon, about $15,000, deferred because of the war
6. Billerica town reports 1940-1944: 1942 Article 8, purchase of 8,044 square feet behind the Town Hall from Mrs. Bessie C. Buck for $1,000
7. Billerica town reports 1955-1959: 1959 votes locating the police station 65 feet behind the Town Hall; the $45,000 remodeling plan lost
8. Billerica town report 1989: town offices move in January 1989 to the new Town Hall, the former Howe High School, dedicated September 30, 1989
9. Billerica town report 1988: Historical Commission on the elderly-housing plan for the old Town Hall, "at least as important to the Billerica Common District as was the Walnuts"
10. Billerica town report 1993: lightning fire severely damages the Old Town Hall cupola
11. Billerica town report 1996: May 6, 1996 vote of $5.5 million to convert the Old Town Hall for the library; $100,000 Historical Commission grant for the roof and cupola
12. Billerica town report FY2000: the new Billerica Public Library in the former Town Hall dedicated May 8, 2000
13. Billerica Town Common District, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.