Blackstone Road

Blackstone Road is a short street in North Billerica running northeast from Pollard Street between Mechanics Way and Horman Road. Until about 1989 it was Maple Street, one of the streets of Fordway Park, a tract of house lots in North Billerica between Fordway Road (now Pollard Street) and a parallel street called Broadway, laid out for the J. W. Wilbur Co. on a plan dated May 1897 by Frederic R. Page, civil engineer, of Boston (Plan Book 13 Plan 5). The plan's cross streets, beginning at the end nearest The Fordway, were Beacon, Maple, Walnut, Chestnut, Oak and Hawthorne Streets, with Lee and Sheldon Streets crossing the last three. A deed of 1991 for a house on Blackstone Road still describes its lots as "situated on the southerly side of Maple Street as shown on plan of land entitled 'Fordway Park.'"

Maple Street was the first Fordway Park street taken over by the town. The warrant for the annual meeting of 1901 asked $200 "to build a street the distance of 600 feet on land known as Maple street, Fordway park, North Billerica," and on March 25, 1901, on motion of P. J. Sexton, the town voted "to accept the road known as Maple Street, in Fordway Park, North Billerica, as laid out by the selectmen, and to raise and appropriate the sum of two hundred dollars to build and prepare the same for public travel." The work was done by town teams in 1901 and 1902, and $87 more was spent on it in 1903. The directories of 1916 and 1919 describe it as running "from Pollard byd Beacon northerly."

The highway reports of the 1930s distinguish it from the Maple Street at the Centre: "Maple Street (N. B.)" was "scraped, rolled and oiled" in 1936, and "Maple Street (North)" was tar patched in 1937. The town's 1956 list of accepted streets gives "Maple St. (N. B.) 3-25-01."

Billerica had several Maples by the 1980s, among them Maple Avenue near the Centre, which became Wedgewood Avenue. Maple Street in North Billerica is not among the renamings printed in the 1988 town report, and the change to Blackstone Road was evidently made early in 1989 by the selectmen's committee on duplicate street names, which worked from 1988 to January 1991: the registry of deeds indexes property under Blackstone Road from July 1989. No record of the reason for the name has been found. The street is not one of the roads of the 1831 town map accepted in 2016, and it came too late for the street lists of 1897 and 1899.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1901: warrant article to build a street 600 feet on land known as Maple street, Fordway park, North Billerica
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1902: town accepts the road known as Maple Street, in Fordway Park, North Billerica, as laid out by the selectmen, and raises $200 (March 25, 1901)
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1956: list of streets accepted by the town, with Maple St. (N. B.) 3-25-01
4. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1990: Street Renaming Committee report; 214 street names changed between 1988 and January 1991