Franklin Street

Franklin Street is a residential street in the Colson Heights neighborhood of North Billerica. It leaves Lowell Street about 450 feet east of Boston Road and winds southeast to end at Old Elm Street near Nussey Terrace, with Warren Street branching from it; it is about 2,150 feet long. The name goes back to "Colson Heights, North Billerica Mass., owned by the Heirs of George F. Colson," the plan of the Colson farm by the landscape designer Warren H. Manning, with Fred W. Stowers, surveyor, recorded on July 13, 1914 (Plan Book 31, Plan 88). On it Franklin Street was one of six parallel streets, with Holt, Hood, Brown, Lawrence and Warren Streets, running south from Lowell Street to Elm Street, between Brown and Lawrence Streets. It was never built on that line; it does not appear in the town directories, and the origin of its name has not been found.

The present street was laid out on the "Definitive Subdivision Plan of Yorkshire Estates, Billerica, Mass.," drawn by the K. J. Miller Company of Wilmington for the Mac-Bro Construction Corp. of Groton, dated June 1, 1970, endorsed by the Planning Board on April 27, 1971 and recorded on May 4, 1971 (Plan Book 112, Plan 57). The plan divided the unbuilt western part of Colson Heights into 55 house lots and laid out a new, curving Franklin Street, with an inner loop named Elm Street and short pieces of Warren and Lawrence Streets; the straight Franklin Street of 1914 appears on it as a private way at the edge of the tract. In 1976 and 1977 the town laid a twelve-inch water main in the street as a reinforcing extension "parallel to Boston Road." The assessors date nearly all the houses on Franklin Street to 1977 through 1979, when Yorkshire Estates was among the Planning Board's most active subdivisions; the developer's Planning Board bond of $530.60 was forfeited to the town in 1978.

At the annual town meeting of April 24, 1980 the town accepted "the laying out of Franklin Street from a beginning at the southerly line of Lowell Street approximately 450 ft. east of Boston Road to the end on Elm Street near Brown Street with a length of about 2130 ft.," a way 50 feet wide except for the last 150 feet, which are 40 feet wide, and accepted the 1,000-foot Elm Street loop at the same session. In the selectmen's renaming of duplicate street names of 1988, Elm Street and Elm Street Extension, "From westerly end of Franklin Street across Colson Street to Faulkner St.," became Old Elm Street, and Brown Street became Nussey Terrace. Franklin Street was crack sealed in 2017 and repaved in fiscal 2023.

References

1. Annual Report 1976: reinforcing 12-inch water main in Franklin Street parallel to Boston Road
2. Annual Report 1977: 12-inch water main on Franklin Street completed
3. Annual Report 1978: town accounts, Planning Board bond forfeiture, Mac Bro, $530.60
4. Annual Report 1980: spring town meeting warrant, street acceptance list incl. Elm Street and Franklin Street
5. Annual Report 1980: April 24, 1980, Elm Street and Franklin Street accepted
6. Annual Report 1988: selectmen's renaming, Elm Street to Old Elm Street, from the westerly end of Franklin Street
7. Annual Report 2017: roads crack sealed incl. Franklin Street