Shawsheen Pines

Shawsheen Pines is a neighborhood in the southeast corner of Billerica, on the east side of the Shawsheen River at the Wilmington line. In April 1927 Henry F. Bryant and Son, surveyors, of Brookline drew "Shawsheen Pines, Billerica - Wilmington - Mass." for the L. C. Morang Company, owners and developers (Plan Book 50, Plan 61). The plan covered 83 numbered blocks on both sides of the town line, from the Shawsheen River east to Aldrich Road in Wilmington, with lots 25 feet wide and 100 feet deep.

The streets formed a grid. First through Sixth Avenues ran parallel to the river, and the cross streets were named in alphabetical order: Arlington, Beverly, Columbia, Dorchester, Edgeworth, Fairview, Georgetown, Hamilton, Islington, Jefferson, Kingston, Lenox, Melrose and Newbury Streets. On the Billerica side, Second Avenue, Fourth Avenue, Edgeworth Street, Islington Street, Jefferson Street, Kingston Street and Newbury Street keep their plan names; Vincent Street, Bruning Road, Memory Lane and Woodcliff Drive run through the same blocks under later names, and many of the plan streets were never built.

Building came slowly. Most of the houses on Jefferson, Kingston and Edgeworth Streets and Fourth Avenue date from after 1945, and those on Newbury Street, Second Avenue, Woodcliff Drive and Bruning Road from the late 1980s.