Frank W. Coughlin

Frank W. Coughlin of Brookline was a real estate promoter who, between 1910 and 1913, laid out four of the small-lot subdivisions from which several of Billerica's twentieth-century neighborhoods grew, in Pinehurst, in the southeast corner of the town and on the Tewksbury line in North Billerica. His plans cut farms and woodland into thousands of lots, most of them 25 feet wide and 2,500 square feet, sold for summer cottages and small houses. Many of the streets he drew were built only decades later, and some never were.

On September 13, 1910 he bought from Clara N. Wonson, widow, a farm of about 100 acres on the east side of Boston Road, and that month had it laid out as Pinehurst Manor by H. A. Millhouse, civil engineer, of Boston (Plan Book 27, Plan 95). The plan made well over a thousand lots on a grid of 40-foot avenues with English-sounding names, among them Pinehurst Avenue, Cardington Avenue, Beaumont, Covington, Egmont and Chesterfield Avenues.

On May 18, 1912 he bought about seventy acres of woodland on the Shawsheen River, bounded by Cook Street, which Edwin A. Bennett had sold the same day to James E. Burke of Medford (Middlesex North Book 486, Page 563). Millhouse surveyed it in June as The Pines (Plan Book 30, Plan 13), with Pines Road running down to the river and cross streets with British names such as Kenilworth, Ivanhoe, Aberdeen and Edgbaston. The plan left the corner lot at Cook Street and Pines Road marked "School House", where the old Shawsheen Schoolhouse of School District No. 8 stood, and that small lot is still carried on the tax rolls in the name of his heirs. The fire department's report for 1913 records a brush fire on his land in June.

In April 1913 Millhouse drew Billerica Farms for him, between Cook Street and the Burlington line, around a small pond the plan called College Pond (Plan Book 30, Plan 75; see Garden Acres & Billerica Farms). In September 1913 he laid out Mechanics' Park, mostly in Tewksbury near the North Billerica line, with streets named for presidents of the United States. Its Billerica part, the Mechanics' Park Annex (Plan Book 30, Plan 61), carried South Madison Road and South Munroe Road from the Tewksbury road, now Sheldon Street, to Oak Street.

References

1. Billerica Town Report 1913, fire department: June alarm for brush land of F. W. Coughlin

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.