Vines strangle the walls, roofs are buckling and foundations decaying at properties in Somerville that nurtured industries, survived gang takeovers and housed waves of Irish, Italian and Brazilian immigrants. Demolition requests to the Historic Preservation Commission on July 21 reminded members how much of Somerville’s past is in properties that were left to crumble.
The commission approved the demolition of properties at 60-64 Medford St., 9 Norwood Ave. and 282-284 McGrath Highway that are more than 75 years old but now beyond repair or reuse for developments.
“This happens every time we hear about a project in this general neighborhood. A lot of them are in rough shape or are not super remarkable. Still, the history of that area is really interesting,” chair Eric Parks said during discussion of the Medford Street properties in Ward 2. “I wish somebody could have a museum or something up there that has some really detailed stuff, because it’s really interesting. A lot of life, for better or worse, was happening.”
60 and 64 Medford St.
Sixty Medford was most recently the single-story brick warehouse for Carrol Sons Roofing; 64 Medford St., the one-and-a-half-story vinyl-sided house next door, was used as its office. But the area was known for its meatpacking plants from the 1800s to 1925, served by the Fitchburg Railroad, and 60 Medford was first home to a poultry warehouse.
It was easy to dump waste into Millers River in that era, and the butchery gave the neighborhood a putrid smell and look, attracting the newest immigrants who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Conditions in the early 1900s are captured in a photograph taken at 64 Medford St. that is in the National Child Labor Committee Collection of the Library of Congress – part of an investigation of child labor by Lewis Hine. He also took photos on South, Ward and Horace streets.
By 1933, 60 Medford St. had become a laundry steamer with a boiler house on the left. It remained a laundromat until the property, with 64 Medford St., was sold to Paul and Paula Carroll in 1985, according to Somerville’s determination of significance report. Ownership continues under the P&P Carroll Realty Trust.
Commission members agreed that the property is not “significantly associated with any individuals or architectural styles or cultural aspects of the city. ”
“We think it’s sad, and it does not contribute to the streetscape in any way. It’s sort of untethered from what had been,” vice chair Robin Kelly said. “I loved seeing the old photograph of the two houses side by side, with all of their original proportions and fenestration intact and whatnot, but this is a very sad shadow of its original self.”
The property will be divided into four lots for residential or other development, said Paul O’Connell, of Well Built Construction.
9 Norwood Ave.
Kevin Emery of Emery Boy Builders and a business partner bought the two-family, double-decker home built sometime between 1884 and 1895 and empty land next door April 28 to build two homes.
Emery bought the Magoun Square property from the estate of the Arnold family, which had lived there for almost 40 years. It’s been vacant for the past three to four years, Emery said.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years. This house is probably in the worst condition of any house I’ve ever knocked down,” Emery said.
The area was farmland, then welcomed Irish, Canadian and Italian immigrants, but its historical fame begins in 1966, when the Irish American Winter Hill Gang began taking over the neighborhood; exasperated neighbors formed the Magoun Square Revitalization Group in 1999 to take back the area.
Commission members were struck by the expanse of open space that is part of Emery’s plans. “It is amazing that it exists still, and that you have this modest little structure that’s lasted this long, which we all know pulls at my heartstrings,” member Denise Price said.
282-284 McGrath Highway
The Florentine Gardens Building on McGrath Highway once bore a sign claiming it to be “Somerville’s first pizzeria,” established in 1934 by Italian immigrants Raymondo and Rosa Cangiano.
Not true, said attorney Mike LaRosa, at the meeting for applicant Properties by JD and owners Walter Tauro and the Brant Realty Trust. “I have it on a very good source that the sign that said it was the first pizzeria in Somerville was a fake marketing tactic by a former occupant and owner,” he said.
The commission seemed to agree, with one member joking about putting up a plaque to “explain to people how history can be rewritten.”
The one-story concrete commercial structure, likely built circa 1910, has true elements of interest from before it was abandoned in 2024, according to Somerville’s determination of significance report:
Though the first recorded use of the property on a 1925 map indicates it was used for “storage of goods,” between then and 1969, the property was acquired by Pasquale, Assunta and Cosmo Reale, members of an Italian immigrant family, and became a restaurant.
From 1998 to 2019, the building was the Núcleo Sportinguista da Área de Boston, hosting music, food, sports and cultural events under Paulo Bizarria. It served as an “important cultural and social gathering space for Portuguese and Brazilian communities in Somerville and the surrounding areas,” according to the report. The club closed due to financial problems and parking restrictions.
There’s interest in “the history of the property and how it reflects the development patterns,” said commission member Denis Chagnon when the project was brought to the committee June 2, citing its two decades as an immigrant social gathering space. “Still, there’s no denying that it’s in tough shape.”
The commission declared in June that the building was “historically significant” and needed more discussion. In the end, demolition was approved with an order to memorialize the history of the property – “a nice modest plaque that might be noticed now and then by a passerby to say what was there,” Parks said.
Developers seek to split the lot and build six homes.
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