Woodlawn Avenue

Woodlawn Avenue runs about 1,350 feet west from Bridle Road in the River Pines section north of the Centre, across New Foster Avenue to a dead end. Its line continues east of Bridle Road toward the Concord River as Olde Hillside Avenue.

The street comes from the subdivision called Rivermere on the Concord. The "Rivermere on the Concord at North Billerica, Mass., belonging to Charles Bruce, 1911," drawn by O. M. Snell, civil engineer, of Lowell, and offered for sale by the Edward T. Harrington Company of Boston as exclusive agents, was recorded on December 5, 1913 (Plan Book 31, Plan 16). It shows "Woodlawn Avenue" along the south side of the tract, crossed by Foster Avenue, with Elmwood Avenue, Park Avenue, Rivermere Avenue, Magnolia Avenue and Fairview Avenue to the north, and Hillside Avenue, Hancock Street, Central Avenue and Atherton Avenue on the river side of Bridle Road. The plan gives no reason for the name. Woodlawn was a common name for suburban streets and cemeteries of the period, and here it belongs with other pleasant descriptive names on the plan, such as Fairview, Hillside and Rivermere.

The directory of 1919 lists "Woodlawn Avenue from Bridle rd northerly." Cottages came slowly. In 1926 and 1927 town meeting was asked to extend the street lights on Bridle Road "as far as the Woodlawn Ave." and referred the matter to the selectmen, and in 1945 it voted to light Bridle Road "from Woodlawn Avenue to River Street." An article of 1949 sought an extension of the fire alarm system to "Woodlawn Avenue, River Pines." The town accepted the street at the annual town meeting of April 27, 1978, which voted to accept "the laying out of Woodlawn Ave. from Bridle Rd. to a dead end west of Foster Avenue ... a way 40 ft. wide and 1356 ft. more or less long." At the same session the town discontinued the paper Rivermere Avenue "from Woodlawn Avenue 1100 ft. to Magnolia Avenue." Woodlawn Avenue was paved with bituminous concrete in 1980.

References

1. Annual Report 1927: article to extend street lighting on Bridle Road as far as Woodlawn Avenue referred to the Selectmen
2. Annual Report 1945: voted to install street lights on Bridle Road from Woodlawn Avenue to River Street
3. Annual Report 1978: April 27, 1978, Article 23, town accepts the laying out of Woodlawn Avenue, 40 feet wide and 1,356 feet long
4. Annual Report 1978: Rivermere Avenue discontinued from Woodlawn Avenue to Magnolia Avenue