I Seek Newton, Part IX: Nonantum (Section 1)

From Dave Brigham:

As the blog's sole contributor these days, I think I'm doing a pretty good job filling the pages. Up until the pandemic, I ventured out most weekends with my son and took pictures of just about anything in Boston that caught my eye. A quick bit of research and BOOM! I've got another post. I've also gotten wrapped up in longer pieces, covering topics such as the Encore Boston Harbor casino (see May 4, 2019, "Roll the Dice: Encore!"), the city of Marlborough, Mass. (see May 19, 2019, "Marlborough Melange" and April 27, 2019, "On the Brigham Trail"); an area of Boston's South End that's exploding with development (see June 29, 2019, "Back Streets, Oh Boy"); and the fascinating Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston (see Part I, Part II and Part III).

But I've neglected my series about my adopted hometown of Newton, Mass., that I began more than five years ago. The last Newton village I wrote about, Upper Falls, was such a beast that it required three posts (see bottom of this post for links to all the installments). Today I present the first of three parts about Nonantum, the most blue-collar neighborhood in this well-to-do city and one with a great nickname -- The Lake. While there are three installments for Nonantum, they won't be as long and involved as Upper Falls.

Known for a long time as North Village, this area eventually adopted the name Nonantum, after the Nonantum Worsted Company. The word "Nonantum" "is Algonkian for 'the place of rejoicing,' and was what the first band of 'Praying Indians' converted to Christianity by the Reverend John Eliot chose to call their village in the vicinity of the Chestnut Hill Golf course," per Historic Newton. "Though the settlement was there for less than half a dozen years, the name persisted, and became attached, at various times, to what is now Farlow Hill, to an early commercial block on Washington Street in Newton Corner, and to a textile manufacturing concern."

OK, let's get started with this first installment, in which I'll cover historic plaques, statues, parks, murals, former mills/current industrial spaces and more.

When most people think of Newton, they think of capacious mansions, pricey restaurants, super-liberal politicians, a certain delectable fruit-filled cookie and Heartbreak Hill. And that includes folks who live in the city. I doubt most locals would put "old mills," "industrial zones" or "historic factories" on that list. But Nonantum has some, so let's start there.

Located along California Street near Forte Park and a McDonald's, the former Davidson Fan Company building dates to at least 1900 (this date seems to be a popular default in local assessor databases). I have found very little online about the fan company, other than several obituaries of former employees. The company was acquired by Lytron at some point, and that company was purchased by Boyd Corp. in 2019. The complex is now home to, among other businesses, Turtle Studios, an artist-run educational and cultural arts community.

Just around the corner, at the intersection of Los Angeles Street and Riverdale Avenue, is a former industrial site slated for redevelopment.

Most recently used as a distribution facility for The Boston Globe, 15 Riverdale Avenue backs up to a bike path along the Charles River, and is next to Forte Park, where there are soccer and baseball fields and a small playground. There are many other light industrial and landscaping businesses in this horseshoe-shaped neighborhood on the Watertown line. There are also a few homes. Criterion Development Partners plans to build a mixed-use project featuring roughly 200 apartments, including 51 that are classified as “affordable,” along with office/innovation space and retail space.

(Another view of 15 Riverdale Avenue.)

Across California Street is another apartment buiding under construction.

The building, known as LA@CA on documents submitted to the City of Newton, is located at the corner of California and Los Angeles streets. There will be 20 condo units, including a handful of affordable units, built over a parking garage. Newton, like many neighboring towns including Watertown and Waltham, is experiencing a bit of an apartment buliding boom, as places like Cambridge, Somerville and Boston have seen available building lots filled in.

On the same side of California Street, across a small driveway leading to a grocery store and other retailers, sits a large former mill complex that is now home to, among other businesses, My Salon Suite, which leases space for, well, salons.

"The mill building...was built in 1916 by the Saxony Mills, which was located on Chapel Street in Nonantum," per MACRIS. "It was taken over in 1920 by the Earnshaw Mill Company, which relocated a part of its manufacturing activities from Chicago to Newton at that time. Earnshaw, which made a popular brand of knitted baby garments, became one of the largest employers in Nonantum, with over 600 workers in 1926. Earnshaw continued at that site well into the fourties (sic). The buildings have also been used by Rohmer Wool Scouring, Raytheon, and other concerns."

Let's check out Saxony Mills' Chapel Street location.

I was excited to stumble across this old sign carved in stone a few years back, along Chapel Street in what is now known as Chapel Bridge Park, which comprises eight buildings on the former mill complex site. The buildings were constructed between the 1860s and the 1940s, per MACRIS. "The history of this site as an industrial center dates to 1852," per MACRIS, "when Thomas Dalby, an Englishman, began a hosiery factory here. The building below at 57 Chapel Street is the oldest on the site.

"Nonantum Worsted...bought the former Dalby Mills Co. property and moved its operations to Nonantum. The complex was greatly expanded under Nonantum Worsted....Crippled by an economic depression, the company went out of business in 1896," per MACRIS. "The complex, which had been built for the textile manufacturing process, broke up after the demise of Nonantum Worsted. Between 1900 and 1920 various tenants were housed at the plant, including the George Hall Piano Co., L.C. Chase Co. (horse blankets), and J.A. Dunn Co. (chairs)....This pattern of multi-use continued through the post-World War II period. Raytheon moved its radio operations to Nonantum around 1930, becoming a primary tenant. Several small textile and machine companies also occupied space in the various mills."

(Paytronix, above, is one of numerous companies located in the former mill complex.)

The artsy shot below is of the former Silver Lake Cordage Company building on Nevada Street.

Built in 1867, this amazing property was used in its first years to manufacture sash rope, trolley and bell pulls and clothesline, among other products, per MACRIS. "For much of the 20th century, the building was owned by the National Packaging Machinery Company, which moved its operations from Jamaica Plain," per MACRIS. "Organized in 1909 as the U.S. Automatic Box Machine Company, the firm expanded its line from simple box and carton-forming machinery to elaborate packaging equipment, capable of weiging packing, and sealing a variety of products. The building underwent a rehab in 1986, and is now home to business consultant firm IEC Partners and equipment rental and tech support company Rule Boston Camera, among others.

There's another nice old mill complex at the corner of Bridge and California streets.

Known as the Bemis Mill, this property dates to, well, the first half of the 19th century. There were mills here and across the Charles River in Watertown dating back to the late 1700s, but I haven't found any source that has put an exact date on this complex. MACRIS says "early-mid 19th century." The buildings are the oldest of Nonantum's mills. An addition dates to the 1920s.

As you can see, the place has been upgraded for modern office space. Let's take a brief look at the property's industrial history. "The earliest dam at this location is thought to have been built by David Bemis in 1778," per MACRIS, "with a paper mill constructed the following year, probably on the site of the existing mill." Bemis also owned snuff and grist mills on the Watertown side of the river.

His sons, Luke and Seth, took over the business after David's death in 1790, per this Historic Newton document. Luke controlled the Newton paper mill, while Seth owned the Watertown operations. Seth is known for several "firsts" both locally and nationally. He "started extracting gas from coal and using it to light his Watertown factory," per the Historic Newton document. "The experiment was short-lived. Because the 'unsavory material' leaked out of the tin pipes, the method had to be abandoned. Nevertheless, while it lasted, many of the curious visited the factory to inspect the first illumination by gas in this country, two years ahead of the first use of carbureted hydrogen for lighting in England."

Nearby on California Street is a plaque commemorating this "first."

Another one of Seth Bemis's innovations was something called a rolling dam. "In 1821, Seth bought the paper mill from Luke. Soon after, he built the rolling stone-dam, unique in this country (the only other known example anywhere is near Warwick Castle in England). Precisely how it worked is not clear, but it seems that the height of the dam was controlled by a mechanically-operated drum that could be rolled up and down the inclined face of the stone dam. Soon after the dam was installed, Seth's upstream neighbor, the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, complaining that the river was backing up to its waterwheels and impeding their operation, paid him $12,000 to reduce the height of the dam by a foot."

You can see remnants of the dam to the right of the building in the photo below.

While the Bemis mills relied on water from the adjacent Charles River, there was once another body of water in Nonantum, the one that gave the village its nickname. Silver Lake holds a somewhat murky place in Newton's history. It wasn't formed by a flowing stream or a retreating glacier, wasn't used by nearby industries and doesn't exist anymore.

"At the heart of Nonantum lay Silver Lake. Two descriptions from the 1880s attest to its charm, mention the absence of a 'visible outlet' and comment on the cutting of ice. More recently, local residents have remembered skating in winter and at least one drowning in summer," per this Historic Newton article.

So how did the lake form? One theory holds that Irish immigrants removed several layers of peat to use for fuel, thereby allowing water to pool. "So far the earliest known mention of 'the pond' is in a deed of 1853, two years before H. F. Wallings' map of Newton, the first to resemble those we know today and the first to show Silver Lake east of Nevada Street, extending from Watertown Street almost to California Street," per the Historic Newton article.

"At its greatest extent, Silver Lake covered a little more than nine acres, just short of the ten that would have qualified it for protection under state law as a Great Pond," the article continues. "...[T]he bed of the pond had multiple owners who were not legally obliged to refrain from dumping on the shoreline or in the water that belonged to them. There is no record of major pollution by the Silver Lake Cordage Company or its successors, or of any official decision to fill the lake, but debris from the 1938 hurricane, spoil from the construction of Storrow Drive, and private dumping all contributed to the Lake's demise. Its loss was one of the most potent arguments put forward in favor of the citys first Flood Plain and Watershed Protection Ordinance, passed in 1971."

The heart of the lake was between present-day Silver Lake Avenue, Adams Street and Nevada Street, I believe. In this area are several industrial concerns, including the above-referenced Silver Lake Cordage Company building, as well as several construction-related operations. Below is the view from Silver Lake Avenue east toward Adams Street. The office building to the left dates to 1940; the white building is now home to the Nonantum Boxing Club, among other businesses. That building dates to 1930 and was at one time used as a factory or warehouse, I believe.

The photo below is from the same vantage point, looking slightly more to the south.

The body of water may be gone, but "The Lake" has more than a physical meaning to those born in this village. It's an identity tied to Italian heritage and a special lingo with mysterious origins. The lingo's dictionary is colorful, with words such as "moosh" (often spelled "mush"), which means a man or boy from The Lake; "jivel," a woman or girl from the village; "ovahchey," which means to lie; "earey," which means listening; and "jawl," which means sex. So where the hell did this language -- said to be influenced by a European Gypsy dialect -- come from?!

"The most consistent theory was that a local joined the carnival or circus and upon return taught the language to the locals," per the Lake Lingo web site. "Lake talk" lives on in the daily lives of what is unfortunately a shrinking population of those who grew up in Nonantum and surrounding vilages..

Moving on....

Pellegrini Park (originally Hawthorn Park) along Hawthorn Street is a great place, with a large field for baseball, soccer and other sports, tennis courts, a playground and a fieldhouse. Created in 1922 and expanded in 1931, the park is located on the site of former landfill. The fieldhouse was erected in 1950.

(Named after Dr. Anthony Minichiello - a dentist and longtime member of the Boston Badminton & Tennis Club -- the courts were once home to the Newtonville Racquet Club.)

But the most colorful element of the park -- the Elvis Presley mural -- is long gone.

The mural was painted by Joanne Pellegrini, namesake of the park, many years ago. I believe this mural was done as a backdrop for Elvis Presley tribute concerts done in the park each summer by a native son whose stage name is Monk Pelly. The video below was shot in 2014 at the Regent Theatre in nearby Arlington.

I missed my chance to see Pelly's show. Probably 20 years ago I went with my then-girlfriend (now wife) to the park in hopes of catching the tribute. But we were there in late afternoon, and didn't want to wait until later that night, so we bailed. I don't know how long ago Pelly stopped doing shows in Nonantum. The wall came down a few years ago, due to instability. Below is a video clip from 1987 featuring an interview with Pelly.

There are other murals in the park, although they've faded a bit in the years since I shot these photos.

(On a back wall of the recreation center in the park is a fantastic depiction of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops playing at the Hatch Shell for July 4th.)

(On another wall of the building is a tribute to cartoon characters and the Marx brothers.)

Along Watertown Street, next to Dunkin' Donuts, is another important Lake landmark, Coletti-Magni Park.

Home to the annual holiday lighting ceremony (aka Big Santa night), the small park is named after a member of each family who passed away in service to the nation in World War II. The Coletti family owned a contracting compamy; the Magni family perates the funeral home two doors down from the park. In these coronavirus days, the city has installed a few picnic tables in the park, so patrons of nearby locally owned restaurants can eat food they've ordered.

Go a little east on Watertown Street and walk (or drive or bike or scooter) down Faxon Street to Jasset Street and you'll find the wonderful Stearns Park.

Located, as the plaque below indicates, on the site of the former Stearns School, the park was dedicated in 1979. It features a baseball field, tennis courts, a basketball court and plenty of shaded spots for just hanging out. The school was open from 1927-1978.

Finally, a plaque memorializing "our deceased comrades" in front of Nonantum Post 440 of the American Legion.

Chartered in 1952, the post welcomes veterans from all branches of the U.S. military. I've been in the building many times for events such as elementary school auctions and wedding receptions.

In the second post in this series, I'll cover funky buildings, bars, restaurants, stores, backside elements and much more.

Links to previous posts about Newton's villages are below:

I Seek Newton, Part VIII: Upper Falls (Section 3)

I Seek Newton, Part VIII: Upper Falls (Section 2)

I Seek Newton, Part VIII: Upper Falls (Section 1)

I Seek Newton, Part VII: Thompsonville

I Seek Newton, Part VI: Chestnut Hill

I Seek Newton, Part V: Oak Hill

I Seek Newton, Part IV: Waban

I Seek Newton, Part III: Highlands

I Seek Newton, Part II: Auburndale

I Seek Newton, Part I: Lower Falls