Eliot Street

Eliot Street runs from Manning Road north and northeast through the cottage colony on the south side of Nutting Lake to the lake shore at Lakeview Drive. It is a street of Nuttings Lake Park, the development of small summer lots laid out around the old Nutting's Pond from 1910. The northern part first appears on "Nuttings Lake Park Extension, Plan E," drawn in May 1915 by C. A. Thayer, an engineer of Providence, Rhode Island, and recorded April 14, 1916 (Plan Book 33, Plan 46), where Eliot Street runs south from Clifton Street on the shore, past Bolton Road and Cottage Street, and then southwest to a corner where Lenox Street and Beach Street branched off. The southern part, to Manning Road, is on Plan G of December 1916 (Plan Book 35, Plan 76), which labels it "Eliot St." No record explains the name, and the town reports spell it Eliot, Elliot and Elliott interchangeably.

The town was slow to take the street over. A warrant article of 1920 asked it to accept "Elliott Street, beginning at a point on the westerly side of Manning Road and running northerly, a distance of about 1100 feet to the boat house of the Nuttings Lake South Side Improvement Association," and the annual meeting of 1921 dismissed it. The warrant of 1928 asked again to "accept Elliott Street in the Nuttings Pond Section as a Town way," and the finance committee recommended it. The printed proceedings of that meeting pass over Article 33, but the town's list of accepted streets, printed in 1956, gives "Eliot St. (N. L.) 2-11-28," with a second date of October 28, 1946, when a special town meeting accepted the laying out of "Elliot Street, School Street, Winter Street" and the other Nutting Lake streets "in accordance with the report of the Selectmen." Eliot Street is not one of the roads of the 1831 map accepted in 2016.

Eliot Street was a class 3 road in the ten-year highway program that the state district engineer prepared for the town in 1930, with $1,000 allotted for 1931, and $974.21 was spent on it that year. Washouts damaged it in 1932, and in 1934 an article "to repair and resurface Elliott Street" was referred to the Board of Public Works "with instructions to fix this year." In 1935 and 1936 it was "scraped, raked, oiled and sanded," the first oiling on record, and in 1937 "tar patched, oiled, and sanded." The town accepted Marshall Street "from the Middlesex Turnpike to Elliott Street" in 1935. Water came in 1939, when a W.P.A. project laid an 8 inch main from the turnpike "via Pine Road, Thayer Street, Marshall Street, and Eliot Street, to Main Street," and in 1946 the town voted $75,000 from its Post-War Rehabilitation Fund for mains on Eliot Street and its side streets. It was repaved under the town's pavement management program in fiscal 2003.

The present street joins three pieces of the old plans: the Eliot Street of Plan E from the lake to the Lenox Street corner, a short piece from there southwest to the meeting of Main, School and Winter Streets, and the "Eliot St." of Plan G from that meeting to Manning Road. The directory of 1931 already treated them as one street, describing Lenox Street as running "from Cottage to Eliot" and Wilson Street "from Eliot to Cottage." Several of the side streets were later renamed, Main Street becoming Mallard Street, School Street Reardon Road and Lenox Street Fuller Road, and Clifton Avenue, which the town accepted in 1946 as running "from Main to Elliot 750 feet," is evidently today's Lakeview Drive. Eliot Street kept its name.

References

1. Billerica annual report 1921: article to accept Elliot Street from Manning Road about 1100 feet to the boat house of the Nuttings Lake South Side Improvement Association dismissed
2. Billerica annual report 1928 warrant: Article 33, accept Elliott Street in the Nuttings Pond Section as a Town way
3. Billerica annual report 1931: $974.21 spent on Eliot Street under the highway reconstruction program
4. Billerica annual report 1934: article to repair and resurface Elliot Street referred to the Board of Public Works
5. Billerica annual report 1935: Elliot Street scraped, raked, oiled and sanded
6. Billerica annual report 1939: W.P.A. water main via Pine Road, Thayer Street, Marshall Street and Eliot Street to Main Street
7. Billerica annual report 1946: special town meeting of Oct. 28 accepts the laying out of Elliot, School, Winter, Cottage, Lenox and Main Streets and votes $75,000 for water mains
8. Billerica annual report 1956: streets accepted by the town, Eliot St. (N. L.) 2-11-28 and 10-28-46
9. Billerica annual report FY2003: Elliot St. and other Nutting Lake streets repaved under the pavement management program