Myrtle Street

Myrtle Street is a short street in North Billerica running off Call Street toward the Concord River. It was laid out on the "Plan of Concord River Park Annex, North Billerica, Mass.," drawn by Whitman & Howard, civil engineers, of Boston, dated March 25, 1911, though the plan was not recorded until November 25, 1913 (Plan Book 31 Plan 10). The Annex was the ten acres off Call Street that Owen Murningham had bought from Robert Call in 1880, and his heirs divided it at the same time as Concord River Park on Pollard Street. The plan shows three parallel forty-foot streets running from Call Street, Wedgemere Street, Glendale Street and Myrtle Street, with Woodland Road across their far ends; Myrtle Street has house lots on one side only, with an older house on the other. Like its neighbors it carries an ornamental plan name, here that of the evergreen myrtle, and it has never been renamed.

The town meeting of 1913 was asked for two lights on Call Street, "one to be at the corner of Myrtle and Call Streets, the other one to be half way between the car line and Myrtle Street," and the lights were put up in 1915. The directories of 1916 and 1919 list "Myrtle from Call easterly" and "Myrtle from Call n Pollard easterly," with Westland Road (the Woodland Road of the plan) running "from Myrtle." The water department's accounts carry a main for "Call and Myrtle Streets" and, by 1923, a separate one on Myrtle Street.

For many years the town only scraped and raked the street. The annual meeting of 1947 voted a street light on it, and on Oct. 27, 1947 the town accepted Myrtle Street as a town way "from Call Street to end, a distance of approximately 710 feet." An article of 1948 for $400 to gravel and tar it was dismissed, the selectmen "to take recognition of the fact that the people on Myrtle Street desire to have this street graveled and tarred," and that year tar penetration was applied to 400 feet; in 1949 the whole street was asphalt sealed.

In 1992 a petition asked the town to discontinue as a public way the part of Myrtle Street between Call Street and Fordway Avenue, toward the river, where it met a discontinued way that had been Concord Avenue. The Planning Board voted 0 to 7 against it, the Finance Committee did not recommend it, and the motion lost on a rising vote, 19 to 119, at the third session of the annual spring town meeting on May 12, 1992. The street is not one of the roads of the 1831 town map accepted in 2016, and it came too late for the street lists of 1897 and 1899.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1956: list of streets accepted by the town, with Myrtle St. from Call to end, about 710 ft., 10-27-47
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1992: annual spring town meeting, third session May 12, 1992, rejects the discontinuance of part of Myrtle Street between Call Street and Fordway Avenue, 19 to 119