42 Summer Street, Maynard, MA - before demolition. |
Maps from 1875 and 1889 show the Summer Street property with
no house on it, owned by Mrs. T. Brooks. Adjacent property shown as owned by T.
Brooks. The same map shows L. Brooks and S.P. Brooks owning land across Summer
Street, including a cider mill. Those people were Rebecca Brooks, wife of
Thomas Brooks, Luke, their son, and Silas, brother of Thomas. The Brooks clan
were early settlers and extensive land owners on the north side of what would
become Maynard.
The building itself dates to only 1948. The property may
have been unattractive to earlier development because it was adjacent to the
coal yard and fuel oil tanks owned by the United Co-operative Society. Warren A.
Twombly purchased the property for a relocation of the W.A. Twombly Funeral
Home, which had been on Main Street, near the Methodist Church. Twombly’s was
one of four funeral homes in Maynard, and was in business into the late 1960s.
From records in the collection of the Maynard Historical Society, it is
apparent that Twombly’s handled many of the burials of people of Finnish
descent – at one time a very significant portion of Maynard’s population.
The next occupant of the house was Century 21 Classic
Properties, a real estate business owned and operated by Paul Boothroyd. This
business was replaced by Call-A-Copy Inc (later renamed CAC Digital Copy &
Print Center). Over time, the copying and printing business shrank, to be
gradually replaced by Summer Street Fine Consignment, under the same
management. The property was purchased in 2018 by James MacDonald, a
developer/operator of several apartment buildings scattered about Maynard. The
consignment business wound down operations in 2019 as preparations for the
demolition took shape.
The building, scheduled to be demolished soon, sits on a bit
more than half an acre of land that slopes from 190 feet elevation above sea
level on the north (street) side to 175 feet on the south side. The shape is
odd. To fit in a 24-unit apartment building, the narrow end of the rectangle
will face Summer Street, but at an angle. The driveway, on the west side, will
run the length of the property, to enter underground parking from the south
end. The three-story building will have siding and a peaked roof rather than be
brick with a flat roof. The smallest units will be studio apartments of 500 square
feet, the largest, duplexes with two bedrooms.
The Maynard Historical Commission has identified a “List of
Historically Significant Properties in Maynard” that encompasses about 60
buildings. The Demolition Delay Bylaw (2017) provides for up to a 12-month
delay of the demolition of buildings or the exterior façades of buildings
deemed historic. (Interior demolition and subsequent construction not affected.)
Some buildings, while parts are old, have been modified so
extensively as to be not historic enough, an example being the Gruber Bros.
Furniture building at 117 Main Street. The original building dated to 1868,
built by Amory Maynard, called the Riverside Block. It hosted the first town
meeting, April 1871. A severe fire in 1934 destroyed the second and third floors;
what remained went through several remodelings during the Gruber family tenure.
This building is fated to be demolished and replaced by an apartment building
with commercial businesses on the first floor.
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