Mechanics Way

Mechanics Way is a short street in North Billerica running east and then north from Pollard Street, a little beyond Call Street. Until about 1990 it was Beacon Street. It began as a street on a plan of house lots made for J. W. Wilber & Co., land dealers, a few years after 1900. On March 17, 1904 the selectmen, "after giving proper notice to the owners of the land, J. W. Wilber & Co.," went upon "the road known as Beacon street, upon the plan of the said J. W. Wilber & Co." and laid it out forty feet wide, "beginning at Fordway road and extending easterly one hundred thirty feet." Fordway Road was then the common name of Pollard Street, the road to The Fordway. The annual meeting of March 1904 accepted the layout and raised $50 to build it; the work, which needed drilling and blasting of ledge, was charged to "Beacon Street, New Street."

The street was carried farther in two more steps. The annual meeting of March 30, 1907 accepted "the extension of Beacon Street as laid out by the Selectmen" and voted $150 for work on it, and in August 1922 the town accepted Beacon Street "from a point where said street was accepted by the Town in 1907, in a northerly direction, a distance of approximately three hundred fifty (350) feet." The directory of 1912 describes it as running "from Pollard between Call and Maple easterly to woods," and those of 1916 and 1919 "from Pollard byd Call northerly." An article for three street lights on it was referred to the selectmen in 1923. The highway department oiled it in the early 1930s ("Scraped, raked, rolled and oiled" in 1935), tarred its whole length in 1939, and a 6-inch water main was laid along it from Pollard Street with W.P.A. help in 1937.

Billerica had more than one Beacon Street by the 1980s, and the street was renamed during the selectmen's campaign of 1988 to 1991 to rid the town of duplicate street names, which changed 214 names in all. The change itself does not appear in the printed annual reports; the earliest deed recorded under the new name, in November 1990, describes the property as "once Beacon St." No record explains the choice of Mechanics Way. The street has no known connection with Mechanics' Park, the 1913 house lot development of Frank W. Coughlin on the Tewksbury line.

Beacon Street was not one of the roads on the 1831 town map that the town accepted in 2016, and it is not in the street lists of 1897 and 1899. The town's 1956 list of accepted streets gives its three acceptances as March 24, 1904, March 30, 1907 and Aug. 21, 1922.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1904-05: town accepts Beacon street as laid out by the Selectmen and raises $50 to build it
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1904-05: Selectmen's layout of Beacon street, 40 feet wide from Fordway road, on the plan of J. W. Wilber and Co., March 17, 1904
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1907-08: town accepts the extension of Beacon Street and votes $150
4. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1922: Beacon street accepted 350 feet northerly from the 1907 acceptance
5. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1935: Beacon Street scraped, raked, rolled and oiled
6. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1956: list of accepted streets with the three acceptances of Beacon Street (1904, 1907, 1922)