Gardner Parker Hall Fire of 1940

On February 26, 1940, on a cold winter night, fire leveled Gardner Parker Hall, the meeting hall at the corner of River Street and Boston Road in Billerica Centre. The building had a long public history. It stood on the foundation of the Universalist church of 1842, which had been moved to North Billerica in the late 1860s; the town built its Centre schoolhouse on the old foundation about 1870 and used it until the Pollard School opened in 1892. That year the Billerica Building Association bought it and made it over into a public hall, Gardner Parker Hall. When the Old Town Hall burned in 1893, Gardner Parker Hall became the town's meeting place until the new town hall was finished in 1895, and the Billerica Historical Society was organized there on October 16, 1894.

By the twentieth century it was known as the Odd Fellows Hall. In 1913 Shawsheen Lodge No. 64 and Winning Rebekah Lodge No. 108 of the Odd Fellows and the Ladies of the G.A.R. held their meetings in the I.O.O.F. Hall, and in the 1930s the hall was also home to the Thomas Talbot Lodge of Masons and the Eastern Star, the 1900 Club, the Garden Club and the Billerica Grange.

The Billerica Fire Department under Chief Ernest N. Bartlett had four permanent men and nine call men at the Central Station, with a 1937 Mack 750-gallon pumper and a 1939 Mack combination engine. Apparatus came from Lowell, Burlington, Tewksbury, Wilmington and Bedford to help hold the fire. Embers set other buildings alight, among them a tenement owned by the Masonic lodge, which was only slightly damaged, and a tenant's car was burned. The chief listed the fire as the first of the year's mutual aid calls ("February 26, Odd Fellows Hall, Lowell"), and the water department recorded February 26, 1940 as the day of the largest pumping of the year, 536,400 gallons, against an average of about 322,000 gallons a day.

The hall was not rebuilt. Later in 1940 the Billerica Building Association sold the lot to Dr. A. Warren Stearns, the deed describing it "together with the remains of the old district school building standing thereon." The fire left the lodges and clubs that met there without a home. On May 5, 1941 the trustees of the Masonic property voted to transfer the old Morey store on Concord Road to the Billerica Masonic Association, Inc., and the store was remodeled and dedicated early in 1942 as the Billerica Masonic Temple, which it has remained.

People

• Ernest N. Bartlett: Fire Chief who commanded the Billerica department at the fire and reported it among the year's mutual aid calls.
• Albert W. Stearns: Bought the burned lot from the Billerica Building Association later in 1940, with the remains of the old district school building.

References

1. Billerica Annual Report for 1940 (in the 1940-1944 volume): Chief Ernest N. Bartlett's fire department report, force and apparatus, mutual aid "February 26, Odd Fellows Hall, Lowell"; water report p. 112, largest pumping Feb. 26, 1940.
2. Billerica Annual Report, year ending Feb. 1895, p. 51 and warrants: Billerica Historical Society organized at Gardner Parker Hall Oct. 16, 1894; town meetings warned to Gardner Parker Hall.
3. Billerica (monthly), vol. 1, 1912-13: list of societies, Shawsheen Lodge No. 64 and Winning Rebekah Lodge No. 108, I.O.O.F., and the Ladies of the G.A.R. meeting in I.O.O.F. Hall.