Kohlrausch Avenue

Kohlrausch Avenue is a short residential street in the Colson Heights neighborhood of North Billerica, running northeast from the junction of Sprague Street and Boston Road for about 940 feet to a dead end, with Lawrence Street joining it. It was laid out on "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). The plan draws Kohlrausch Avenue from Sprague Street east and then northeast along the edge of the picnic grounds of the "Charles H. Kohlrausch Jr. Memorial Playground," the six acres on the west side of Colson Street that Lillian V. Kohlrausch had given the town in 1913 in memory of her husband, Charles H. Kohlrausch Jr., chemical manufacturer and longtime moderator of the town meeting, who died on April 9, 1912. The avenue, which led to the playground, bears his name; its neighbor Twombly Avenue was named for Edgar F. Twombly, the administrator of the Colson estate.

The avenue remained a paper street for more than sixty years. The "Definitive Subdivision Plan of Yorkshire Estates," drawn by the K. J. Miller Company for the Mac-Bro Construction Corp. of Groton, dated June 1, 1970 and recorded on May 4, 1971 (Plan Book 112, Plan 57), shows "Kohlrausch Ave." as a private way on the east edge of the subdivision, with three of its lots fronting on it at the corner of Lawrence Street. A plan of November 27, 1979 for the Jac-Mar Construction Corp. (Plan Book 130, Plan 7) shows houses standing on those three lots, and the assessors date the houses on the avenue to 1978 through 1982, with one of 1989. In 1986 the Conservation Commission accepted the gift of a 1.1-acre parcel off Kohlrausch Avenue as open space. No vote accepting Kohlrausch Avenue as a public way has been found. Its name has not changed.

References

1. Annual Report 1986: Conservation Commission accepts a 1.1-acre parcel off Kohlrausch Avenue