Broadleaf Street

Broadleaf Street is the cross street of the Central Park neighborhood in the eastern part of town. The part in use, about 1,250 feet long, runs northeast from Market Street across Bayberry Lane, Gove Road and Sequoia Street to Moosewood Street. It was laid out as Broad Street on the "Plan of Central Park, Billerica Mass," surveyed between November 1913 and March 1914 by John N. McClintock and Robert B. Bellamy, engineers, of Dorchester, for James E. Burke, owner, and recorded on April 27, 1914 (Plan Book 31, Plan 49). Broad Street was the one street that crossed all three sheets of the plan, cutting across the long streets that ran from Pond Street to Richardson Street; a note on the plan says the "streets are at right angles to Broad Street." The town directories of 1949 to 1957 describe it as running "From Salem rd nr Pond to across Canal."

After the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 1963 that Central Park was under the town's subdivision control, part of the tract was planned again on a "Definitive Subdivision of a Portion of Central Park," drawn by the K. J. Miller Company, civil engineers and land surveyors of Wilmington, and dated November 28, 1966, for M & T Constr. Corp. and Roger Toothaker, owners, approved by the Planning Board on December 6, 1966 and recorded on May 8, 1967 (Plan Book 105, Plan 48). That plan gave the streets it covered new names, mostly taken from trees: Broad Street became Broadleaf Street, Spruce Street became Sequoia Street, Ash Street became Moosewood Street and Richardson Street became Richards Street. A town meeting warrant of October 1969 still described the street as "Broad Street, also known as Broadleaf Street," and the M & T plan of 1969 for the canal section labeled it "Broad Leaf Street (Broad Street)." The assessors date the oldest houses on it to 1968.

Drainage was the street's chief problem. In 1963 the town meeting voted $21,200 to extend the drain in Broad Street about 4,000 feet "from the end of the existing pipe from Pond Street to the Middlesex Canal," which fits this street, although the report does not name the neighborhood. An article for a storm drain in the Central Park area with an outlet "at the corner of Broad and Vine Streets" was indefinitely postponed in 1967, and a $55,000 article for drainage on Chestnut, Broadleaf and Market Streets was lost on June 12, 1979, but on April 29, 1980 the town meeting voted $35,000 for the culverts of the Central Park area, and drainage work was done on Broadleaf Street in 1985. The street was graded in 1972 and 1982, and new water mains were laid in it in fiscal 2020. No vote accepting Broadleaf Street as a public way has been found.

References

1. Annual Report 1963: March 30, 1963, Art. 38, $21,200 to extend Broad Street drain from Pond Street to the Middlesex Canal
2. Annual Report 1963: Planning Board, Supreme Court decision placing Central Park under subdivision control
3. Annual Report 1966: warrant for 1967, Art. 61, Central Park storm drain to corner of Broad and Vine Streets
4. Annual Report 1967: Art. 61 (Central Park drain) indefinitely postponed
5. Annual Report 1969: Oct. 21, 1969 special town meeting warrant, Arts. 4-5, landfill, "Broad Street, also known as Broadleaf Street"
6. Annual Report 1969: Oct. 21, 1969 action, Arts. 4 and 5 (landfill) not voted
7. Annual Report 1972: Highway Department, streets graded incl. Broadleaf Street
8. Annual Report 1979: June 12, 1979, Art. 12, Central Park drainage (Chestnut, Broadleaf, Market) lost
9. Annual Report 1980: April 29, 1980, Art. 45, $35,000 for Central Park culverts incl. Broadleaf Street
10. Annual Report 1985: Highway drainage projects on Sequoia Street and Broadleaf Street