Friendship Street

Location	Map
Neighborhood	Nuttings Lake Park
Laid Out	1914
Right of Way	30 - 35 ft
Pavement	18 - 20 ft

Friendship Street runs east from the Middlesex Turnpike along the north side of Nuttings Lake to Lexington Road, through the cottage lots laid out around the lake after 1910. Its western part was laid out on "Nuttings Lake Park Annex," Plan C, drawn in April 1910 by C. A. Thayer, engineer, of Providence, Rhode Island, and recorded May 6, 1910 (Plan Book 27, Plan 35). That plan shows Friendship Street running in from the turnpike across Plenty, Peace, Cady and Rhodes Streets to Everett Street at the edge of the development. Thayer's "Extension Plan D" of November 1914 (Plan Book 32, Plan 49) carried it east past Pine, Clinton and Chestnut Streets toward Lexington Road. The street directory of 1916 lists "Friendship from Old Middlesex turnpike n Nutting's Pond," and that of 1919 "from Old Middlesex turnpike n Nuttings Pond to Lexington rd."

Friendship, Peace and Plenty Streets were plainly named as a set, for ideals rather than for people. Thayer worked from Providence, where Friendship, Peace and Plenty Streets are all found on the city's South Side, and the Nuttings Lake names may have been borrowed from there, but no record states where the developers found them.

The warrant of 1917 asked that the water main be extended "from the Ring Farm to Friendship Street," and in 1940 and 1941 a 6-inch main was laid 775 feet west from Lexington Road with W.P.A. labor. The ten-year highway plan drawn up in 1930 by F. H. Sabin, district engineer, allotted $350 for reconstruction of Friendship Street in 1931. An article to accept it from Lexington Road to the turnpike was in the warrant of 1945, and at the annual meeting of February 9, 1946 the town voted to accept "Friendship Street from Turnpike to Rhodes Street 955 feet, Friendship Street from Lexington Road to Chestnut Street 733 feet," with other streets at the lake. The selectmen laid it out again for water mains in August 1946, and the special town meeting of October 28, 1946 accepted their layout. On October 14, 1947 the selectmen held a hearing on "laying out Friendship St. from Lexington Road to Everett Road as a Town way" on a plan by James B. Monahan, surveyor, and the special town meeting of October 27, 1947 took up an article to "accept the unaccepted portion of Friendship St."; the printed record gives only the motion, but the town's list of accepted streets records the "Remainder from Lexington Rd. to Everett St." as accepted on that day.

A water main was carried along the new part of the street in 1947 to 1949. In 1950 the street was graveled, given tar penetration, asphalt sealed and treated by the mix-in-place method, its first recorded paving, and the state aided reconstruction of the Middlesex Turnpike under Chapter 90 reached Friendship Street in 1955. The street was sewered in 1975. Friendship Street is not among the roads of the 1831 town map accepted by the town in 2016. In 1988 the duplicate name program renamed several of the side streets: Everett Street, "Fifth cross-road off Friendship Street from Middlesex Turnpike," became Rocky Ledge Lane, Chestnut Street became Country Lane, and the Pine Street south of Friendship Street became Swan Lane.

Friendship Street

Friendship Street

References