Billerica Center Shops

The corner of Boston Road and Andover Road, facing the Common, has been a public place since the eighteenth century. It was the site of the Fletcher Hotel, a tavern stand from the 1790s, and of the old Town House at its south edge, both lost in the fire of October 1877. The Mitchell Boys' School used the lot in the 1880s, and in 1889 Dr. Albert C. Lane built a house at the corner (the Dr. Albert C. Lane House). Eliphalet W. Tyler of New York bought the acre and a half from Lane in 1892, and it passed in 1905 to Dr. John Bennett Tyler and in 1907 to Dr. Tyler's wife, Jennie S. Tyler.

In December 1916, a year after Dr. Tyler's death, his widow sold the corner, "containing an acre of land, more or less, located in the centre of said Billerica nearly opposite the Unitarian Church", to J. Edward Allen. Allen put up a two-story building of stores and flats on the south part of the lot, next to the land of Jasper F. Bruce; local residents told the Billerica Historical Commission in 1983 that he built it after 1915, and it is drawn on a surveyor's plan of August 1922. After Allen's death his widow and executrix, Emily V. (E. Viola) Allen, sold that south lot, 44 feet on Boston Road and 108 feet deep, to Mabel O. McQuade of Lowell for $2,500 in October 1922, together with a 12-foot strip on its north side (Plan Book 41, Plan 78). The store lot stayed in McQuade's family, the Nortons of Lowell, until 1946. The Sanborn insurance map of December 1923 shows the two-story store building beside the Lane house, which still stood at the corner. A store of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) was listed opposite the Common from 1925 to 1949, and the Billerica Hardware Store, "located next to E. E. Gray Store", advertised in The Torch in 1928 and 1929.

On Oct. 7, 1924 Mrs. Allen sold the corner itself, 30,507 square feet "with the buildings thereon", to the Gray Realty Company, Inc., of Boston, the real estate arm of the E. E. Gray Company, a Boston grocer founded by Elmer E. Gray in 1885 that ran a chain of branch stores. The Lane house was moved back onto Andover Road (it stood at 3 Andover Road until about 1970), and a one-story block of stores with a curved front at the corner went up in its place. It was open by April 1925, with Edward A. Woodside's drugstore in the corner bay, a lunch room next to it and the E. E. Gray Co. grocery in the right-hand bay. Woodside's had a soda fountain and sold prescriptions, medicines and remedies, ice cream, candies and Tanglefoot fly spray. The Gray company filed for bankruptcy in December 1930 and its Billerica store is last listed in 1931, but Gray Realty kept the building until 1946. Gray's store was taken over by Economy Grocery Stores, the Boston chain later renamed Stop & Shop, which kept Gray's meat cutter, Paul J. LeLacheur, as its meat manager; its sign is on the block in a photograph of about 1940, with a cafe beside it and the A&P in the two-story building to the south. Woodside, who was also secretary of the Board of Health, ran the drugstore at the corner for twenty-two years; by 1947 it took up two adjoining stores with cellars under them.

Frank Cohen of Billerica brought the two parts together. He bought the south store lot from the Norton heirs in March 1946 and the Gray block from Gray Realty in November 1946, for about $40,000 judging by the revenue stamps, and in December 1946 deeded both, 35,715 square feet in all, to his company, Billerica Associates, Inc. He joined the two buildings with a new bay on the strip between them; the Historical Commission's form gives the date as about 1950, and the block was one building of stores by the late 1940s. Behind it, on Andover Road, Billerica Associates also built a concrete-block building of three small stores (1-A, 1-B and 1-C Andover Road) that housed a savings bank branch, a cleaners and professional offices. On Nov. 1, 1947 the corporation leased "the adjoining two stores, with cellars thereunder, situated on the corner of Boston Road and Andover Street ... now occupied by Edward A. Woodside & Lucy C. Woodside" to Henry J. McCormack of Winchester, for a retail drug store with soda, ice cream, candy, tobacco and a luncheonette. Cohen himself ran the Food Center grocery in the block in 1951, and in 1957 the corporation leased the store, back room, shed and basement at 426 Boston Road to Billerica Food Center, Inc. for ten years. The 1957 directory lists, from the corner south, McCormack's Drug Store at 418 Boston Road, the Billerica Market (David Gardner's meat and grocery store) at 420, Fermoyle's Cafe at 422, the Food Center at 424, flats at 426 and Fago Stores, a five-and-ten and department store, at 428.

McCormack, "your prescription store", bought the whole block from Billerica Associates in November 1961 for $80,000, taking over the corporation's mortgage. His surveyors, Emmons and Fleming, divided the corner in December 1961 into Lot A with the stores, Lot B with the old Lane house, then a two-family dwelling, and Lot C, the Andover Road building, which he sold in 1962 (Plan Book 97, Plan 42). The Board of Appeals that year described the Boston Road lot as "housing the drug store, market and cafe". In January 1962 McCormack placed the block in a family trust, the Ridgeway Real Estate Trust. He later moved his Rexall drugstore into the middle bay, and by 1973 the corner was the Gloria Food Store, "King of Cold Cuts". Other tenants of the 1960s and 1970s were Dave's Spaghetti House at 428 Boston Road (1963-1970), renamed Dave's Sub Shop in 1971 and there until 1976, Mack's Bakery (1965) and the Center Cafe, a bar and restaurant that followed Fermoyle's Cafe and was at 422 Boston Road in 1972. McCormack's Drug, Inc. is last on the town's bills in 1974, and in April 1975 McCormack sold Lots A and B to a private owner for $135,000.

In the photographs taken for the Historical Commission in 1983 the one-story block carries signs for the Cobbler Shop shoe repair and the Gloria Food Store, and the two-story south end holds the Center Cafe. The 1985 directory lists the Cobbler Shop at 420, the One Stop Market at 420A, the Merrimack Valley Insurance Agency and Buddy's Bakery at 420C, a post office substation at 420E and the Center Cafe at 428 Boston Road; in 1989 the units held a shoe repair, the One Stop Market, Checkmate Pizza and a post office box. Mangia Mangia Gourmet Pizza opened in 1993, and Athletic Sports, a sporting goods store at 420C, was there from 1993 to about 2011. The Center Cafe moved next door to the James Abbott House at 432 Boston Road by 1994.

MAD Realty Trust bought Lots A and B in April 1998 for $310,000 and still owns them. The Coffee Emporium, selling "upscale coffees, teas, baked goods", opened in 2000 in the corner unit, and in 2010 the Liberty Bell, a deli-style restaurant for roast beef and seafood, took its place; in 2021 the trust leased the 6,200-square-foot Unit B to the restaurant's operators for twenty years. Sweet Liberty, a self-serve ice cream shop, opened in the former sports store in 2012. Other tenants in the town's tax books since 2003 include Tri-Town Driver Education, the Natural Nail Salon, the shoe repair (the old Cobbler Shop, to 2013), Ridemakers Bike and Board, Peter's Hair Salon Tan & Spa, the Burns & Egan Realty Group office at 428 Boston Road, Beleza Studio, Queens Nails, DoggBoston, Laurie's Closet Boutique and The Shop Barbers.

In 2013 a due-diligence study found dry-cleaning solvents in the soil and groundwater, traced to a septic tank behind the block that had been abandoned in place around 1972. The 1962 deed of the Andover Road building gave it the right to drain into the sewage tank on the corner lot, and that building had housed Model Cleaners from 1957 to about 1973. The tank was cleaned and filled and the ground treated, and a notice of activity and use limitation recorded in April 2026 (Plan Book 254, Plan 94) bars residential use of the two corner units, 420A and 420B, whose basements connect. The plan of that year shows the building as it stands: the curved corner units 420A and 420B, then 420C, 420D and 420E, a stair to the flats above, and 420F at the south end, with 420R at the rear.

References

1. Billerica assessor, 420-428 Boston Rd (parcel 51-84-1): land, building and sales since 1987
2. Wakefield Digital Heritage: E. E. Gray Company branch store, founded by Elmer E. Gray in 1885, bankrupt December 1930

Deed References Expand all

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