Vasa Street

Location	Map
Neighborhood	Berwick
Laid Out	1896
Right of Way	25 ft
Pavement	15 ft

Vasa Street runs east from Boston Road in North Billerica, a short distance south of the Chelmsford and Lowell line, toward the Concord River. It is one of the six streets of Berwick, a speculative house-lot development laid out in June 1896 by Walter C. Stevens, civil engineer and surveyor of Melrose, for the Wood, Harmon Real Estate Association, "Wood, Harmon & Co., Office 64 Central St., Room No. 1, Lowell, Mass." The plan, "Plan of Building Lots at Berwick situated in Billerica, Mass., between Lowell and North Billerica," was recorded on July 2, 1896 (Plan Book 12, Plan 10). Wood, Harmon and Company, founded in 1887 by William E. Harmon, his brother Clifford B. Harmon and their uncle Charles Wood, sold small suburban lots on easy monthly payments in many cities. Its Berwick plan shows 128 lots of about 3,500 to 5,000 square feet on the Concord River side of the "Billerica Road," along which ran the electric railroad "to North Billerica and Lynn," and six streets 40 feet wide: Amherst, Bristol, Casco, Vasa, Clifton and Winthrop, Vasa lying between Casco Street and Clifton Street (now Post Street).

The plan gives no reasons for its names. Berwick, Amherst, Bristol, Casco, Clifton and Winthrop are all New England place names, several of them in Maine. Vasa is the odd one: it is the name of the Swedish royal house of Gustav Vasa and was a common name of Swedish-American societies, but no record explains why it was used here. None of the Berwick streets is in the town's street lists of 1897 and 1899. The 1901 directory lists "Vasa (N. B.), from Boston rd. n. Chelmsford line easterly to Concord river," and the name Berwick was still used for the neighborhood in 1948.

Vasa Street stayed a gravel way for half a century. The water main was extended into it in 1934 with the help of the federal Emergency Relief Administration. At the annual meeting of February 8, 1947 the town accepted "the laying out of Casco and Vasa Streets as town ways in accordance with the report of the Selectmen"; the 1956 list gives the accepted length of Vasa Street as 480 feet. Through the early 1950s it was only scraped and graveled, and in 1974 it was hot topped with Type I bituminous concrete together with Amherst, Bristol, Casco and Clifton Streets.

Vasa Street was not on the official map of 1831 and was not among the roads accepted in 2016. Its name has not changed since 1896.

Vasa Street

Vasa Street

References