Pershing Street

Pershing Street runs west from Boston Road to the Concord River, north of Billerica Centre. It was laid out in September 1917 by Clarence E. Carter, civil engineer, for the Suburban Land Company, Inc., a Boston house-lot developer, which that year had bought the registered riverside tract of Dennis J. Ring. Carter's "Subdivision of land shown on plan filed with Cert. of Title No. 185 ... Land in Billerica, Sept. 1917" was filed with the Land Court as Plan 3024-G and received for registration on October 10, 1923. It cut the land between Boston Road and the river into lots 25 feet wide, most of them 100 feet deep, on Hadley Street, Center Street, Phiney Street, Lombard Street, Riverview Street (now Stoney Drive) and Pershing Street. Pershing Street, 40 feet wide, ran from Boston Road along the southern edge of the tract, beside the land of Leonard Blood, and then turned along the river past the land of James P. Robinson.

The plan does not explain its street names. Pershing Street was named in the autumn of 1917, months after the United States entered the First World War, when General John J. Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Forces; no record found states that the street was named for him.

The lots sold slowly. The Boston Road corner lots passed through several hands before Thomas J. and Helen T. Hayes bought them in 1933, the site of Hayes' Restaurant. The oldest houses on the street date from about 1930 by the assessor's records. Warrant articles of 1948 and 1949 asked for "700 feet of water main on Pershing Street from Boston Road," and 774 feet of main were laid there in 1950. In 1977 town meeting refused to accept Pershing, Lombard, Riverview and other streets because "no maps are on file with the Town Clerk," but at the session of April 27, 1978 it voted "to accept the laying out of Pershing Street from Boston Road to the Concord River ... a way 40 ft. wide and 1167 ft. more or less long," together with Lombard and Riverview Streets. Pershing Street was graded in 1980. In 1985 the town discontinued Center Street between Pershing and Phiney Streets, keeping it as a drain and utility easement. As the only street of the name, Pershing Street kept it through the renaming of duplicate street names in 1988 to 1991.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1950: water main extensions, Pershing Street 774 feet
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1977: Article 11 to accept Pershing, Lombard, Riverview and other streets lost, no maps on file
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1978: town accepts Pershing Street from Boston Road to the Concord River, 40 ft. wide, 1167 ft.

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.