Transcript and Bulletin.
When we
moved to Norwood in 2012, I was excited about owning a historic home that was
within walking distance to both my work at the library and the town’s center. I
wondered how many families had placed their hands on the sturdy wooden banister
leading from the second floor. I imagined other women lovingly serving meals
for family and guests in the spacious dining room. I was curious about the
children and adults who might have peeked out the windows to watch passersby or
wait for Halloween trick-or-treaters to knock on the distinctive double doors.
I wished
there were photographs hidden in far reaches under the eaves of the deep
closets, but there were not.
Working
as a librarian certainly has its benefits because I knew just where to look to
locate a bit of the house's history and inhabitants. All of this information
can be accessed by anyone who visits Norwood's history collection in the Cushing
Reading Room. Both the Annual Town Reports (now digitally available through the
Minuteman Library Network catalog) and Norwood Street Listings are there for
anyone to use to research.
Included
on those history shelves (while under lock and key, the Adult Information
Services librarians will be happy to help unlock them) are two volumes -
Norwood: A Home Town. They are rich in
architectural detail and structural information that was compiled by both the
Norwood Historical Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Commission in
the last two decades of the 20th Century. Hundreds of Norwood’s homes are
listed by street address; pages that begin with Atwood Avenue and end with
Winter Street. Most of the historical descriptions of the hundreds of homes were
written by researcher Edward Gordon.
Norwood:
A Home Town begins with details of the Town of Norwood’s districts and
commercial buildings. Norwood Center, or “the hook,” the F. Holland Day House,
the Winslow Brothers tannery complex are all described and illustrated. The town’s amazing presses, among them the
Norwood Press and the Plimpton Press, are included. Of particular interest to
me are the pages devoted to George H. Morrill & Co. Printing Ink Works. It
was George Morrill who built Norwood’s library with his own funds, in memory of
his daughter. Like Carnegie, of the same era, Morrill shared his wealth and
handed over the keys to the library to the town in 1898.
Morrill
eventually moved his ink company out of Norwood and consolidated with four
other ink companies. In 1945 the Geo. H Morrill Company Division of General
Printing Ink Corp was renamed Sun Chemical Corporation.
In 2012,
when I decided to research my new home on Prospect Street, I went to the
Norwood: A Home Town and the Norwood Street Lists. 305 Prospect Street is
listed merely as the Samuel Page House – named for its first owner. It was
built in either the 1870s or 1880s on land purchased from the Fairbanks family.
On a late 19th century map of Norwood (that can be found in the library’s map
drawers), everything north of Prospect Street from Winter to Nahattan streets
was illustrated as woods or farmland. This was truly the edge of Norwood’s town
center just south of Westwood.
In 1989
the home included a barn in the rear which was removed sometime in the late
20th century. The actual date the house was built is unknown; there was a
residence there in 1876, and Samuel Page was listed in the town’s Street
Listing as residing there in 1880. However, there is a period when he was listed
as living at 276 Prospect Street between 1897 and 1900. Whether mistakes were
made, or Samuel moved out to rebuild his home after a fire destroyed the
original one, is unknown.
The
architectural character of the house, however, was of the 1880s and today might
be thought of as hybrid – encompassing the Stick, Victorian and Queen Anne
styles. What we might call Gingerbread is a particular characteristic with
overlapping multiple-sided shingles and pretty trim. Perhaps Samuel built it
over the years, finally inhabiting it with a family in 1900.
From the
Town of Norwood’s Street Listings early in the 20th century, Lillian Page is
listed as the resident of the house between 1908 and 1922. She is presumably Samuel’s daughter, or
perhaps a younger wife. She left the home in 1922.
The
37-year period between 1922 and 1959 saw three families in the home, two of
them staying only ten or eleven years each.
Twenty-seven-year-old Joseph Youlden and his wife Dorothy, five years
younger, might have raised their family there. Children under twenty were not
listed in the Street Listings. In 1939 thirty-five-year-old Harry Fraser (a
landscape architect) and his wife, Helen moved to Prospect Street from Highland
Street – from perhaps a much smaller home that is not listed in the Norwood: A
Home Town. In 1949 Raymond and Grace Rafuse, both in their fifties, moved from
a house across from the Highland Cemetery on Winter Street. Their two working
daughters lived with them, Gladys was born in 1920, and Jean was born in 1925.
It was in 1959 that John Payne moved into
the home from Dedham and lived there for 41 years with his wife, Jeannette. For
a time, a young nurse named Mary Orphan lived with them. There were several
anecdotal stories about the Paynes – there were teenaged daughters who had
parties there. Jeannette died in 1988, and the home then lost its attentive
care. It was in particularly neglected shape when a young hockey-minded couple
from the area, Timothy and Anne Lovell, purchased it in 2001. They restored
much of its charm and character and added a long, brick walkway to the front
porch, and renovated the kitchen and baths. They lived there with their four
young children until 2012.
We loved living in such a sweet and gentle
home in one of Norwood’s lovely neighborhoods and will miss much about the
house, particularly its front and side porches. We watched lightning storms
travel south as we rocked on our glider on the left front porch, hidden by the
azaleas and Boxwood bushes. We admired joggers and dog walkers who took in their
exercise every morning and night. From the private side porch off the kitchen,
we sipped morning coffee, our feet propped on the white railing.
Approaching
cars shown lights in our dining room windows as they turned the corner from
Cottage Street heading east towards Dedham. Through open windows, we heard the
sirens of Norwood’s most exceptional fire and police departments and listened
to the faint sounds of concerts on the Town Common. In the wee morning hours near 4 am, we were
sometimes sleepily awakened by the sound of the commuter rail’s train whistle.
Lucky for
us, we will commute from our home on the South Coast to our jobs in Norwood, a
Town in which we truly feel “at home.” If you want to know more about the
houses in Norwood, visit the library’s historical collection in the Cushing
Reading Room.
