Dickinson Street

Dickinson Street is a short street west of Billerica Centre, running south from Richardson Street to Holden Street, between Parker Street and Whiting Street. It was laid out on the "Plan of Land in Billerica, Mass., Belonging to Edward F. Dickinson," surveyed in May 1927 by Brooks, Jordan and Graves, civil engineers, of Lowell, and recorded on May 16, 1927 (Plan Book 50, Plan 49). The plan shows "Dickinson St., 36 ft. wide" running about 314 feet from Richardson Street to Holden Street between Lot 5 (1.70 acres) and Lot 6 (0.87 acre), with Parker Street, 33 feet wide, beside Lot 5, land of S. Annah Holden and of Leonard A. and Ora Blood at the Holden Street end, and larger lots running east across the Boston and Maine railroad to the Concord River.

The street carries the name of the owner. Edward F. Dickinson was a Billerica farmer who was a regular speaker at town meetings from the 1890s to the 1910s; in 1900 it was on his motion that the street the naming committee had called "Common street" became Cummings Street. His land lay by the railroad, and in December 1912 the fire department answered a still alarm for "grass land of E. F. Dickinson. Caused by spark from locomotive."

Holden Street, at the south end, had been described to the town meeting of 1923 as "only a wagon rut across the fields"; 250 feet of it from Whiting Street were accepted in 1926. A water main of 425 feet was laid on Dickinson Street in 1951. The annual town meeting of March 13, 1954 accepted the laying out of Dickinson Street, "a distance of about 500 feet," and voted $475 to improve it, and drainage was put in in 1957. The assessors date the house at 9 Dickinson Street to about 1922 and the one at 4 Dickinson Street, on part of Lot 6, to about 1960. The street was crack sealed in 2009 and 2010. Dickinson Street is not among the roads of the 1831 town map accepted by the town in 2016.

References

1. Annual Report 1953: warrant Article 101, accept the laying out of Dickinson Street, about 500 feet, as a town way
2. Annual Report 1954: appropriations voted, Article 102 Dickinson Street $475
3. Annual Report 1954: highway accounts, additional roads, Dickinson Street $470
4. Annual Report 1956: list of streets accepted by the town, "Dickenson St. 500 ft. 3-13-54"
5. Annual Report 1957: Board of Public Works, drainage on Dickinson Street