Billerica Centre
Billerica Centre
| Location | Map |
| Established | 1655 |
| Area | About 131 acres |
| Roads |
Andover Road Boston Road Charnstaffe Lane Concord Road Cummings Street Farmers Lane Pages Court Pond Street River Street |
Billerica Centre is the old village of the town, gathered around the Town Common on the rise where Boston Road, Concord Road, Andover Road and River Street meet. In the early records these were Long Street, the road to Concord, East Street or Sheldon's Lane, and West Street. It holds the town's meetinghouses, town halls, academies and library, with the houses, taverns and stores that grew up beside them.
The village began with the settlement of Shawshin, which the General Court enlarged and named Billerica in May 1655; Henry A. Hazen thought May 30 had the best claim to be "the natal day of Billerica." Hazen wrote that "the location of the succeeding families, and of the future village, was determined by a grant made 'by the Church of Cambridge for a Towneship,'" four hundred acres bounded south by Charnstaffe Lane and west by the Concord River, where most of the first settlers had their house lots. Jonathan Danforth, the town's surveyor, built on the north side of West Street, "perhaps the first house in the village" (the Jonathan Danforth House, taken down in 1878). The Billerica Historical Commission's survey of 1973 found that "in the original settlement, Concord Road was the center of population," with the house lots of John Rogers, Jacob Browne, Daniel Shed and the Rev. Samuel Whiting running south from the Common. The late seventeenth century John Sheldon House on Andover Road is among the oldest houses still standing.
On November 9, 1659 the town voted to build a meetinghouse "this winter folling," with John Parker as its principal builder. The First Meetinghouse stood "south of the centre of the present common." The Second Meetinghouse was raised in July 1694, and the Third Meetinghouse was raised on May 24, 1738, thirty feet to the north. In 1797 the town built a larger house on half an acre it bought from the housewright Reuben Duren on the west side of the Common, and the old meetinghouse was taken down; timber from it is said to have gone into the new Town House across the road, where town meetings and the centre school were held for almost fifty years. Moved and "turned half around to face the east" in 1844, it is now the Billerica First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church, rebuilt as a replica after the fire of 1967 to 1968. Other congregations followed as the First Parish became Unitarian: the Orthodox First Congregational Church of Billerica built on Sheldon's Lane in 1829, beside the Sabbath Day House, a noon house of the 1760s; the First Baptist Church was hauled from the Middle Bridge to Concord Road in 1844, and new houses went up around it on Concord Road and Pages Court; and the Universalist Church stood on River Street from 1842 until it was sold to the Roman Catholics and moved to North Billerica in 1868.
In 1845 the town built a new town hall on a lot bought from John Baldwin on the west side of the Common. That Old Town Hall burned on November 3, 1893, and the brick Billerica Town Hall (1895) was dedicated on the same site in November 1895. It held the town offices until January 1989, when they moved into the former Howe High School on Boston Road, and since 2000 it has been the front of the Billerica Public Library.
The 1973 survey noted that until after the Revolution only four houses faced the Common, and "the center of secular activity was the tavern" kept in the house of Jonathan Danforth Jr. north of the Common, where the selectmen met. That was the Ensign Jonathan Danforth Jr. House, which the innholder David Osgood bought in 1760; under Solomon Pollard it "was a tavern in the Revolution." After the war, in the survey's words, "so many square Federals were built around the common," among them the Old Providence House of about 1804, built for Dr. William Bowers, and the Joseph Locke House of 1811, built for the lawyer Joseph Locke, later a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Before the railroad "from twelve to sixteen stages passed daily through Billerica," with "two, and sometimes three" taverns in the village. The largest stood at the corner of Boston and Andover roads in front of the meetinghouse, a tavern and stage stand from 1817 and later the Fletcher Hotel, until it burned in 1877 (Hazen gives 1876); Moses C. Mitchell then kept his boys' school on the corner until it burned in 1888 (see Mitchell Boys' School). Stores and the post office clustered around the Common, in the old academy building and in the store that Frederic A. Morey built on its site after the fire of 1873 (since 1921 the Billerica Masonic Temple).
The Centre was also the town's place of learning. Ebenezer Pemberton kept the Pemberton Academy on Boston Road north of the meetinghouse from 1797 to 1808. The Billerica Academy opened in 1820 and from 1821 had its building on the lot just south of the meetinghouse, until it closed in 1836. The will of Dr. Zadok Howe founded the Howe School, a brick academy on Boston Road dedicated in 1852, which became the town's free high school in 1891. In 1880 and 1881 Eleanor Bennett built the Bennett Public Library facing the Common beside the First Parish church.
The village did not grow as fast as the rest of the town. The Middlesex Turnpike was first meant to pass the Billerica meetinghouse, but in 1806 its route was changed to a straight line that left "the village as far one side." The Boston and Lowell Railroad of 1835 took a northern route, and Hazen wrote in 1883 that "the growth of the village has been hindered by its distance from the stations." The two-foot gauge Billerica and Bedford Railroad gave the Centre trains for a few months in 1877 and 1878, and from 1885 the standard-gauge branch to Bedford, built largely on its roadbed, had a Billerica station on River Street west of the Common.
On the Common the town dedicated the Soldiers' Monument on October 8, 1873, built the Town Bandstand in 1890 and voted the Meeting House Site Memorial in 1901 (the 1973 survey thought it "apparently placed on the wrong site"). In 1973 the Billerica Historical Commission, under its chairman Charles E. Stearns, surveyed the village as a set of areas around the Common, north along Boston Road, south along Concord Road to Charnstaffe Lane, and east on Andover Road to the Sheldon house. The Common and the buildings around it were listed on the National Register as the Billerica Town Common District on August 14, 1973. In 1989 the Massachusetts Historical Commission found an extended district eligible for the Register. The town created its local Billerica Center Historic District in 1990.
Historic Buildings
| Name | Alternate | Address | Built | Moved | Demolished |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Danforth House | River St | 1655 | 1879 | ||
| Rev. John Chandler House (original house) | 411 Boston Rd | 1656 | 1800 | ||
| Golden More House | Boston Rd | 1658 | 1873 | ||
| Shedd Family Homestead (original house) | Daniel Shed House | 38 Concord Rd | 1658 | 1750 | |
| Samuel Manning Homestead | 349 Boston Rd | 1660 | 1886 | ||
| Ensign Jonathan Danforth Jr. House (original house) | 396 Boston Rd | 1682 | 1760 | ||
| John Sheldon House | 28 Andover Rd | 1698 | |||
| John Baldwin House (Boston Road) | Albert Stearns House | 376 Boston Rd | 1700 | ||
| Joshua Abbott House | 357 Boston Rd | 1701 | 1869 | ||
| Ensign Jonathan Danforth Jr. House | Solomon Pollard Tavern | 396 Boston Rd | 1709 | 1980 | |
| Samuel Ruggles House | John Parker House | 5 River St | 1710 | 1972 | |
| Nathaniel Davidson House | William Hardy's Inn | 419 Boston Rd | 1720 | ||
| Thomas Kidder Farmhouse | 17 Farmers Ln | 1720 | |||
| Clara E. Sexton House | Billerica Historical Society Museum | 36 Concord Rd | 1723 | ||
| Nathaniel Davidson Barn | 415 Boston Rd | 1750 | |||
| Shedd Family Homestead | 38 Concord Rd | 1750 | 2019 | ||
| Sabbath Day House | 20 Andover Rd | 1765 | |||
| Fletcher Hotel | Richardson Tavern Stand | 420 Boston Rd | 1795 | 1877 | |
| James Abbott House | Jonathan Bowers' House | 432 Boston Rd | 1796 | ||
| Billerica First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church | 7 Concord Rd | 1797 | 1844 | ||
| Jonathan Prince Pollard House | 409 Boston Rd | 1797 | 1822 | ||
| Pemberton Academy | 349 Boston Rd | 1797 | 1808 | ||
| Blodgett Homestead | 10 Andover Rd | 1800 | |||
| Rev. John Chandler House | David Parker House | 411 Boston Rd | 1800 | 1984 | |
| Samuel Foster House | 373 Boston Rd | 1800 | 1899 | ||
| Old Providence House | Dr. Bower's House | 1 Concord Rd | 1804 | ||
| John Nelson - Stephen Parker House | 16 River St | 1805 | |||
| John Baldwin House (Andover Road) | 14-16 Andover Rd | 1810 | |||
| Joseph Locke House | Hillhurst Hotel | 381 Boston Rd | 1811 | ||
| Samuel G. Tucker House | 13 Andover Rd | 1815 | |||
| Billerica Academy | 11 Concord Rd | 1821 | 1873 | ||
| Capt. William Richardson House | 409 Boston Rd | 1822 | |||
| Marshall Preston House | Unitarian Church Parsonage | 404 Boston Rd | 1827 | ||
| First Congregational Church of Billerica | Dale Parish Hall | 18 Andover Rd | 1829 | ||
| First Baptist Church | 29 Concord Rd | 1830 | 1844 | ||
| Luther W. Faulkner House | Dr. Thaddeus Brown House | 2 Andover Rd | 1833 | ||
| Jenkins House | 17 Andover Rd | 1837 | 1986 | ||
| Sarah Blanchard House | 421 Boston Rd | 1837 | 1965 | ||
| Dudley Foster House | 377 Boston Rd | 1838 | |||
| Deacon Edward Wright House | Billerica Poorhouse | 57 Andover Rd | 1840 | ||
| John Richardson Mills House | 32 Concord Rd | 1840 | 2020 | ||
| Universalist Church | Saint Andrew's Church on Rogers Street | 5 River St | 1842 | 1868 | 1945 |
| Amos Warren Proctor House | 367 Boston Rd | 1843 | |||
| Albert Marshall House | William S. Gleason House | 9 Andover Rd | 1845 | 1967 | |
| Centre Schoolhouse (Pages Court) | District Number 1 Schoolhouse | 5 Pages Ct | 1845 | 1888 | |
| Elijah Bacon Hill Central House | 55 57 Concord Rd | 1845 | |||
| George H. Whitman House | 33 Concord Rd | 1845 | |||
| Hannaford House | 30 Concord Rd | 1845 | 1997 | ||
| Old Town Hall | 15 Concord Rd | 1845 | 1893 | ||
| Thomas Shedd House | 23 Andover Rd | 1845 | |||
| William Mann House | 39 Concord Rd | 1845 | |||
| Benjamin F. Gilbert House | 5 Pages Ct | 1846 | |||
| George Bacon House | 27 Andover Rd | 1846 | |||
| John Brown House | 6 Pages Ct | 1846 | |||
| John H. Parker Store | Central Post Office | 464 Boston Rd | 1846 | 1963 | |
| Jackson Wright House | 6 Cummings St | 1847 | |||
| Alley's Blacksmith Shop | 474 Boston Rd | 1849 | 1919 | ||
| Fitch Tufts House | Fitch Tufts House | 460 Boston Rd | 1850 | 1965 | |
| Josiah B. Richardson House | 9 River St | 1850 | |||
| Widow Martha Baldwin House | J. Baker Cottage | 45 Andover Rd | 1850 | 2016 | |
| Sewall & Lucretia Stearns House | 46 Concord Rd | 1851 | |||
| Wayside Farm | Imperial Fur & Breeding Company | 466 Boston Rd | 1851 | 1953 | |
| Howe School | BATV | 390 Boston Rd | 1852 | ||
| Baker House | 4 Pond St | 1860 | |||
| Dwight H. Dimmock House | 49-51 Andover Rd | 1860 | |||
| William F. Sanborn House | 357 Boston Rd | 1869 | |||
| Centre Schoolhouse (River Street) | District Number 1 Schoolhouse | 5 River St | 1870 | 1892 | |
| Eleanor Bennett House | 382 Boston Rd | 1872 | |||
| Cook House | 42 Andover Rd | 1873 | |||
| Paul Hill House | Sidney Bull House | 446 Boston Rd | 1873 | 1986 | |
| Casey Tailor Shop | 7 Andover Rd | 1874 | 1894 | ||
| Hannah Patten Chandler House | 371 Boston Rd | 1874 | |||
| Billerica Masonic Temple | Morey, Frederick A. General Store | 11 Concord Rd | 1875 | ||
| Martin's Block | 405 Boston Rd | 1875 | 1987 | ||
| Rufus Kitteredge Underhill House | 67 Andover Rd | 1875 | |||
| Loring G. Bryant House | 10 River St | 1876 | |||
| Charles Lund House | 433 Boston Rd | 1877 | |||
| Gerrit H. Bennink House | 41 Andover Rd | 1877 | |||
| Lewis Johnson House | 43 Andover Rd | 1877 | |||
| Watts House | 39 Andover Rd | 1878 | 1995 | ||
| Mitchell Boys' School | 420 Boston Rd | 1879 | 1888 | ||
| Bennett Public Library | 3 Concord Rd | 1880 | |||
| L. A. Monroe House | 388 Boston Rd | 1880 | |||
| Martin Lane House | River St | 1880 | 1967 | ||
| Richardson Cottage | 37 Andover Rd | 1880 | |||
| Oliver P. Greenwood House | 24 Andover Rd | 1884 | |||
| John A. Richardson House | 398 Boston Rd | 1885 | |||
| John O. Richardson House | 400 Boston Rd | 1885 | |||
| Dr. Harlin Pillsbury House | 349 Boston Rd | 1886 | |||
| Elmer E. Cole House | Arthur E. Allen House | 345 Boston Rd | 1886 | ||
| Elmore A. Grimes House | 358 Boston Rd | 1886 | |||
| Matthew McElman House | 362 Boston Rd | 1887 | |||
| Dr. Albert C. Lane House | 420 Boston Rd | 1889 | 1926 | 1970 | |
| Charles E. Morris House | 364 Boston Rd | 1890 | |||
| David W. Fitch House | 341 Boston Rd | 1890 | |||
| Douglas E. Turner House | 55 Andover Rd | 1890 | |||
| Fannie Blanchard House | 8 Cummings St | 1890 | |||
| Greenwood Building | 462 Boston Rd | 1890 | 1965 | ||
| Livingston House | 40 Andover Rd | 1890 | |||
| Annie Dodge House | 386 Boston Rd | 1892 | |||
| Deacon John E. Bull House | 38 Andover Rd | 1892 | |||
| Gardner Parker Hall | Odd Fellows Hall | 5 River St | 1892 | 1940 | |
| Jennie Blodgett House | 12 Andover Rd | 1892 | 1973 | ||
| Central Block | 438 Boston Rd | 1894 | 1987 | ||
| Edward Dickinson House | 1 Cummings St | 1894 | |||
| Billerica Town Hall (1895) | Billerica Public Library | 15 Concord Rd | 1895 | ||
| E. N. Ray House | 7 Andover Rd | 1895 | |||
| W. B. Stearns House | 29 Andover Rd | 1898 | 2019 | ||
| Herbert & Mary Jacobs House | 15 Andover Rd | 1900 | |||
| John D. Foster House | 373 Boston Rd | 1900 | |||
| Marcus M. Cowdrey House | 52 Concord Rd | 1900 | |||
| Richardson Cottage #2 | 33 Andover Rd | 1900 | |||
| T.F. Lyons Post Office | Jasper F. Bruce Building | 430 Boston Rd | 1900 | ||
| Sarah Lilla Fletcher Murphy House | 372 Boston Rd | 1902 | |||
| The Waiting Room | 381 Boston Rd | 1902 | 1930 | ||
| Spaulding House | 34 Andover Rd | 1911 | |||
| Frederick A. Morey Block | 8 Andover Rd | 1914 | |||
| Howe High School | Billerica Town Hall | 365 Boston Rd | 1915 | ||
| Thomas F. Lyons Building | Tony's Gun Shop | 406 408 Boston Rd | 1915 | ||
| Center Fire Station | 407 Boston Rd | 1917 | 1987 | ||
| Michael Hayes House | 380 Boston Rd | 1919 | |||
| Billerica Center Shops | 420 428 Boston Rd | 1927 | |||
| Billerica Diner | 416 Boston Rd | 1928 | 1961 | ||
| Austin Perry Funeral Home | Burns Funeral Home | 354 Boston Rd | 1939 | ||
| Old BATV Building | 430 Boston Rd | 1950 | |||
| Dale Parish Hall | First Congregational Church of Billerica | 18 Andover Rd | 1955 | ||
| St. Theresa's Catholic Church | 466 Boston Rd | 1959 | |||
| New England Telephone & Telegraph Company | 9 Andover Rd | 1968 | |||
| Hallenborg Ice Rink | 365 Boston Rd | 1972 | |||
| Graham Building | 12 Andover Rd | 1973 | |||
| O'Connor Hardware Plaza | 446 Boston Rd | 1987 |
Points of Interest
- Town Common (1655)
- Patterson Garrison (1675)
- Town Pump and Water Trough (1881)
- Town Bandstand (1890)
- Meeting House Site Memorial (1901)
- Charles Kohlrausch Memorial Fountain (1912)
- World War Memorials (1948)
- BMHS Stadium (2020)
References
- Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the 1655 enlargement and name, pp. 18-20; the Township and first house lots, pp. 24-26; the meeting-houses, pp. 154-155, 168, 175-176, 263, 269; academies and schools, pp. 256-259
- Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 273-277: Middlesex Turnpike route changed away from the meeting-house, the stages and village taverns, the Boston and Lowell Railroad, and the narrow-gauge railroad
- Wikipedia: Billerica Town Common District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 14, 1973 (Billerica Historical Commission survey of the Common and village, 1973)
- Wikipedia: Billerica and Bedford Railroad, the two-foot gauge line through Billerica Centre, 1877 to 1878
- Billerica town report 1896: dedication of the new Town Hall in November 1895 and the final report of the building committee
- Wikipedia: Billerica Public Library, from the Bennett Library of 1880 to the former Town Hall on Concord Road