Neiss Store

The Neiss Store was a store and Gulf gasoline station on Boston Road at Riverdale, opposite the junction of Allen Road, kept by George B. and Nellie R. Neiss. According to the caption of a 1925 photograph of the family in front of the store (courtesy of Helen Bunney), the Neisses moved to Billerica in 1922 and opened the business, living in the house just behind it; the store sold college ices, cigars, small wares, groceries, Moxie and candies and was a favorite stop of summer tourists. In the photograph the store is a small hip-roofed front with brick piers and a gable, signed "N. Neiss" between Moxie signs, with "Cigars" and "Candy" on the fascia and "Groceries and Notions" below, joined at the side to a one-story bungalow with a screened porch; two gasoline pumps stand in the dirt forecourt by the road. The "N." of the sign is presumably Nellie, in whose name the business ran. The only lot opposite Allen Road with a roadside shop and a house behind it was the Greenwood lot, where the baker Albert E. Greenwood had kept his shop "opp Allen rd" until about 1921 and which he sold in 1926, so the store was probably in that building, rented from Greenwood. The Neisses, "of Medford" in their deed, bought land with buildings on Riverdale and Hillside Roads in June 1924 and sold it in July 1929. The store, as N. Neiss' Store at Riverdale, advertised groceries, lunches, ice cream and cold tonics in The Torch in 1929.