The Branch Bakery

The Branch Bakery was a small shop on the south side of Boston Road at the corner of Shawsheen Road, across from the foot of Allen Road, in the part of town that Edgar P. Sellew was then selling off as Riverdale and Shawsheen Acres. It stood at the road front of Lot 280, the lot of Olga L. Greenwood, whose house stood behind it, and it was run by her husband, the baker Albert E. Greenwood. The records found so far do not explain the name; the only bakery listed in Billerica in the 1917 and 1921 directories is "Greenwood Albert E Boston rd", and the 1919 directory gives "Greenwood Albert E (Olga L) baker Boston rd opp Allen rd h Arcadia rd".

The land was part of about seventy acres on the south side of the Boston and Lowell road, between the Baldwin land and the Shawsheen River meadows. It was part of the farm of Josiah Rogers, who died in 1822; his son Josiah held the farm by 1836, when he sold it with the rest of the farm to Samuel A. Rogers of Tewksbury for $5,000. Rogers sold the farm in 1847 to Robert Kershaw, a Billerica safe maker, and Kershaw in 1851 to Josiah B. Gleason for $4,500. The Gleasons kept the seventy acres for almost sixty years; in 1909 Frederick E. Gleason of Lexington sold them to Sellew, who registered the tract in the Land Court in 1910 and 1911 and cut it into house lots along Boston Road and the new Shawsheen Road.

On February 6, 1911 Sellew sold Lot 280, 140 feet on Boston Road and 100 feet deep, to Olga L. Greenwood of Boston, "married to Albert E. Greenwood", whose address was then 46 Eutaw Street in East Boston. Her deed carried Sellew's usual restrictions: no house costing less than $250 or within twenty feet of the road, and no slaughter house, piggery or "offensive, noxious or dangerous trade or business". When the county relocated and widened Boston Road in 1916, its plan of the new line showed the Greenwood lot with the house set back from the road and the small shop at the roadside by the Sellew line, partly inside the new line, with an arrow marking where it was to be moved back. About 400 square feet of the lot was taken, and the town paid Olga L. Greenwood $25 in damages.

Olga Greenwood died in November 1919. In 1920 her lot passed through Sellew to Albert E. Greenwood, who was still listed as the town's baker on Boston Road in 1921. In April 1926 he sold the lot, by then Lot 280A on Sellew's new plan, to the Riverdale Improvement Association, Inc., the neighborhood's improvement society, which mortgaged it to the Woburn Co-operative Bank. The association held it until 1930, when it went to Isaac Bernstein of Burlington, who also bought the corner lots on Shawsheen Road. The town took the three lots for unpaid taxes in the 1930s.

From about 1940 the place was probably The Hofbrau, a roadside restaurant and nightclub on what was then Route 3. Its keepers and performers match the owners of this lot. Grace A. O'Connell of Billerica owned the lot from 1937, and The Hofbrau was run in 1940 and 1941 by John C. "Jack" O'Connell. The lot passed in 1941 to Zella Lehr and Winifred Mae Turnbull of Wilmington, and in 1942 the club, as the American Hofbrau, advertised the entertainers Raynor Lehr and Mae Wynn. A state building-inspection card dated October 9, 1941 records a one-story building with a basement on Boston Road, owned by Winifred Mae Turnbull and Zella Lehr, to be used for dining and entertainment. David Gladstone of Pinehurst, who owned the lot from 1946, was president of the Club Hofbrau in 1949. After a mortgagee's sale the lot went in 1949 to Earl Shindell and then to Sumner Gladstone, whose family ran the Gladstone Bros. gas station at 737 Boston Road. The Club Hofbrau was run in 1951 by Edward Gange and Michael J. Gangi of Woburn, who advertised floor shows on Friday and Saturday nights, and in 1952 The Copa advertised from Boston Road with the club's telephone number. From 1950 the lot belonged to three Woburn men. The Copa's 1952 advertisement is the last found for the club, and older residents remember that the building burned in the 1950s; no record of the fire has been found. Residents also remember that about 1956 a Richardson Root Beer stand from Burlington was moved onto the lot, and that it was later moved to North Billerica, where with an addition it became the building at 176 Boston Road, later known as Mac's Two Lounge; that building is dated 1959 in the assessor's records, and Mack's Drive-In advertised there in 1959. The card does not say whether the club building was new in 1941 or an older building refitted.

The old buildings were gone by the mid-1950s. In May 1957 the land was bought by the Pinehurst Miniature Golf Course, Inc., and the 1957 directory lists the Pinehurst Miniature Golf Course on Boston Road, run by Warren P. Snyder of Old Turnpike Road and Carlton R. Traywick of Wilmington. The company sold the land in 1963 to Timco, Inc. of Medford, and from 1964 it belonged to the Pinehurst Recreation Corp.. In the 1960s the course was Marvel Soft Ice-Cream and Miniature Golf, which advertised in the 1965 high school yearbook; residents remember it on this lot. From 1970 it belonged to the Sure Oil and Chemical Corporation of Worcester, which obtained a zoning variance in 1971 and leased it to the Power Center Petroleum company in 1976. A bank took title in 1986 and sold the land the same day to Donut Maker, Inc., which built the present store block. The brick building put up in 1989 houses a Dunkin' Donuts shop and a Domino's Pizza. The land was sold in 1987 to a realty trust, and in 2015 the trust conveyed it to a company of the same name.

References

1. Massachusetts Archives, building inspection index cards, Billerica: Hofbrau, Boston Road, Oct. 9, 1941 (Turnbull and Lehr, dining and entertainment)
2. Billerica assessor, 729 Boston Rd (parcel 90-92-0): Land Court plan 3095-P lots 280A, 294, 295; store built about 1989

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.