Birch Street
Birch Street
| Location | Map |
| Neighborhood | Billerica Terrace |
| Laid Out | 1913 |
| Right of Way | 34 ft |
| Pavement | 16 ft |
Birch Street is a short dead end street running west from Concord Road (Route 4) in South Billerica near the Bedford line, one of a small group of side streets there with Apple Street and Dean Street. No recorded plan of it has been found. In April 1911 the land on the west side of the road at the Bedford line, about 31 acres partly in Bedford and partly in Billerica, was conveyed by Tabitha F. Griffin to Edith Noyes Kimball as a single tract bounded by the Bedford and Billerica road, the "Chelmsford road" and neighbors' land, with no streets. The Billerica part of that land, about 17 acres, was described in 1987 as bounded by Elm Street, Dean Street and Apple Street, so the side streets were laid out across it after 1911.
The earliest record of Birch Street is the street list of the 1919 directory, which gives "Birch from Concord rd n Bedford line" and "Apple Road from Concord rd n Bedford line"; neither appears in the directory of 1916. The assessors date the oldest house on the street to 1917. The name is not explained, but Birch, Apple and Elm, the three streets of the group named in the early records, are all tree names, and they were presumably given together when the land was divided into house lots. Elm Street, "first right off Concord Road beyond Dudley Road near Bedford town line," was renamed Black Raven Road in 1988 because the town had several Elm Streets.
Birch Street stayed a private way for more than a century. At the annual spring town meeting of 2023 (session of May 4, 2023), under Article 33, the town voted 148 to 3 to accept as public ways fifteen private streets, among them "Birch Street, from Concord Road to dead end, approximate length 590' and 40' width right of way," as shown on a "Plan & Profile, Birch Street" of Aug. 11, 2021 by Lighthouse Land Surveying (Engineering Division Plan B-5-199). The Select Board's order of taking of the easements, adopted Aug. 14, 2023, was recorded on Aug. 31, 2023 (Book 38047, Page 181). Birch Street is not among the roads of the 1831 town map accepted in October 2016.
The town had other Birch Streets, in the Pinedale Park development of 1908 off Boston Road and in Billerica Farms (1913) near Cook Street, and town reports of 1971 to 1992 that mention a Birch Street, among them a water main in 1978, an article of 1990 to discontinue Birch Street and a petition of 1992 to accept it, do not say which one is meant.