Mcginness Way
McGinness Way is a winding street in the Pinehurst section near the Shawsheen River, running from Pines Road past Kenilworth, Moseley and Sachem Streets to a cul-de-sac. Its older part follows the street plan of The Pines, a riverside subdivision "owned by Frank W. Coughlin," drawn by H. A. Millhouse, civil engineer, of Boston in June 1912 and recorded in Plan Book 30 Plan 13. That plan laid out Sachem, Kenilworth, Mosley, Montrose, Topliff, Aberdeen, Endicott, Ordway, Carlton and Argyle Streets and Pines Road in narrow lots for summer cottages, and some of the houses now on McGinness Way date from that period. None of this land had a road before 1912.
The name McGinness Way is modern. Between 1988 and 1990 the Board of Selectmen renamed well over a hundred streets "in an effort to eliminate duplication of names," and gave separate names to streets built in disconnected pieces; in The Pines, for example, Argyle Street became Dustin Young Lane. McGinness Way is in use in the registry records by 1992, and on the Bearce Woods subdivision plan of March 1993, recorded in Plan Book 182 Plan 142, the existing McGinness Way was extended south of Sachem Street as a new 40-foot street curving to a cul-de-sac. The earlier name of the old section and the reason for the new one have not been found in the town reports. A McGinness family (also spelled McGuinness) lived in Billerica from the 1920s, and Private Edward E. McGinness is among the Billerica men of World War II named on the memorial on the Common, but no record yet connects either to the street.
McGinness Way remained a private way until the annual town meeting of May 6, 2025, which under Article 33 accepted the layouts of McGinness Way, "from Pines Road to cul-de-sac, approximate length 2,230' and 40' width right of way," together with MacDougall Street, Monson Street, Shelburne Avenue, Apollo Avenue and Ipswich Street. The Select Board took the easements for the accepted ways by an order of June 16, 2025, recorded July 14, 2025 in Middlesex North Book 39378 Page 171.