Downtown Norwood Is Good

From Dave Brigham:

In recent posts about Norwood, Mass., I discussed a former mill that's been turned into a multi-purpose destination for antiquing, live music, artist studios and more (see October 29, 2022, "Bombing Around a Former Norwood Mill"); and several former printing factories and other industrial sites, including one that features yet another live entertainment venue, as well as a brewery and other cool small businesses (see November 5, 2022, "More Milling About in Norwood").

Today I present for your viewing and reading pleasure a review of downtown Norwood and other areas in this town about 20 miles southwest of Boston.

The eastern end of our tour is a commercial building at 481-489 Washington Street that dates to 1927.

I like the details on this building, which houses Oasis Caribbean Cuisine and Metalwork Antique Restoration, among other businesses.

Around the corner, on Railroad Avenue, is the former Shamrock Pub.

I'm not sure when the pub closed, but it was in business for many decades, I believe. It was located in an area of Norwood once known as Cork City, after the city in Ireland. "Railroad Ave. was the main street of Cork City," per MACRIS. "Settled by Irish immigrants during the 1850s, Cork City was developed by 'the Plymouth Rock lrish,' a term coined by local historian F. Holland Day. Many of the frst 22 Irish families were initially housed in Capt. Moses Guild's steam mill, which stood in what is now Guild Park. These first families came to Norwood to work on the construction of the Norfolk County Railroad and later the furniture factories, tanneries and ink mill that flourished in Norwood at mid century."

The area west of St. Catherine School along Railroad Avenue was known as Dublin.

Steps away, behind buildings on Central and Washington streets, I spied a gigantic dish that was a real mystery for me.

It turned out to be on the property of the Norwood Light & Broadband Department. The town service offers cable TV, high-speed internet and telephone service to residents and businesses in town, which seems very old-fashioned to me. Therefore, I like it.

Back on Washington Street, I noticed Kappy's Coins & Stamps, which was founded in 1971.

(The sign for Dandy Donuts turns out to be a ghost, as that business is gone.)

Back on Central Street, which runs parallel to Washington, I spotted a building that I knew was "something," but I had no idea what.

Any guesses?

This stucco building dates to the 1880s and served as the town's jail until the 1960s (!). This is where Norwood's version of Otis the Drunk would have spent some time.

I've never come across a former jail before, not knowingly anyway. "The interior of the 'lock up' has been completely gutted, its interior currently used by the Town as a garage and storage facility," according to a National Register of Historic Places registration form for the adjacent Norwood Memorial Municipal Building. "Norwood's 'lock-up' is evidently a unique structure within the town and possibly within Norfolk County. Indeed, few examples of this building type survive in Massachusetts."

Very cool!

On Cottage Street, west of Washington Street, I liked the mural below, which depicts people hard at work.

It is located on the former home of Babel's Paint & Decorating.

Back on Washington Street, heading south-southwest, is Limey's Pub.

The building rose in 1926. There are many buildings like this one along Norwood's main commercial drag.

Next door is the Odd Fellows Hall, which was built in 1912 and featured at the time a meeting space for the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), and retail space on the ground floor. The building is also known as the Hanlon's Shoes building, per MACRIS.

"The Odd Fellows Block in a certain sense, symbolizes the prosperity of Norwood during the early 20th century," MACRIS continues. "During the 1890's, Norwood came into its own as an important New England industrial center with the construction of the Norwood Press facilities and the expansion of existing industries. Increased industrial activity triggered a major building boom in Norwood which continued almost unabated from the 1890's to the (sic) through the 1920's. Commercial construction activity and civic beautification projects were the order of the day in and around Norwood Center. Once a mixed use area with several substantial homes, Norwood Center acquired a more urban, commercial look during the teens and 20's - the Odd Fellow's block was a relatively early harbinger of these changes."

On the east side of Washington Street is the W.T. Grant Co. building.

Currently home to Iglesia Pentecostal Monte de Sion Church and a Burn Boot Camp fitness facility, this building was originally the home of a Grant's department store. Built in the late 1920s, the store was part of retail chain founded by William T. Grant in 1906 in Lynn, Massachusetts. I have written about other former Grant's stores, here and here.

Around the corner on Day Street is Eagle Shoe Repair, which has been in business since 1936.

I love the folksy displays that old-school shoe stores/cobblers sometimes feature in their windows. I've seen a few over the years, including one in Newton Corner that I wrote about here.

Next door is Day Street Sports, which was founded in 1972.

Yeah, you know me: I'm more interested in a sign on the ground than one on a building.

Across from the sports shop is the wonderfully named Napper Tandy's Pub.

One of four outlets in this local chain, it was named for James Napper Tandy, an Irishman "who experienced exile, first in the United States and then in France, for his role in attempting to advance a republican insurrection in Ireland with French assistance," per Wikipedia.

Next is Conrad's Restaurant, which opened on Washington Street in 1999 (two other eateries have since opened in Walpole and Foxborough). Located in an old theater that was built in 1911, the restaurant features a function room and offers catering. Oh, did you want to know more about the old theater?

"Built by Norwood entrepreneur Charles Hubbard, the old Premier [T]heatre is said to have been the first theatre built with a pitched floor between Boston and Providence," according to MACRIS. "It is difficult to determine how much, if any portion, of the...theatre is still extant after at least three later remodelings. In 1931, it was renamed the Guild Theatre." I'm not sure when it went out of business, and what was located here before Conrad's opened at the end of last century.

We're going to travel south along Washington Street, away from downtown, before making our way back to the center. I made two trips to Norwood. On my first, I saw the building below, figured it had a story, but opted not to make a photo. After doing some research, I realized I needed to get back to shoot it.

Currently home to a chiropractor's office, and at some point before that, a tool and industrial supply company, 935 Washington Street was built in 1924 as Temple Shaare Tefilah (Gates of Prayer Synagogue). The congregation moved to a new temple in the 1960s.

At the intersection of Washington and Dean streets is Nick's Package Store.

The Better Business Bureau says this place has been in business since 1894. That sign appears to be nearly that old.

Across Washington Street is the Italian Social Club...I think.

This appears to be a bricked-up entrance. The only other access point I noticed was in the back parking lot.

Heading east on Dean Street, I spied a great bridge.

Built in 1891, this stone bridge carries (or carried) railroad tracks that split off the main line that runs through Norwood. "The railroad that built the bridge was the Walpole and Wrentham Railroad, which built its line from 1890 to 1903," per this Waymarking article. "The rails branched off at Norwood Central on the Norfolk County Railroad and continued on to Wrentham and North Attleboro and ended at another railroad at Adamsdale Junction, along the same railroad. Sections were abandoned, little by little, starting with the westernmost sections in 1963. Sections up to East Walpole were abandoned by 1973."

Just before Washington Street crosses into Walpole, I checked out the Hawes Brook Walkway.

Hawes Brook runs just to the north of a town pool, a middle school, a baseball complex and a community garden.

The brook was dammed up to form two ponds, which were used in the olden times as "his" and "hers" swimming holes, according, once again, to a Waymarking post.

"At least part of the land once belonged to the Bird family, who were owners of a paper making company just over the border in Walpole," per the Waymarking article.

Heading back toward downtown, along Broadway, is the Norwood Central train station, which I actually photographed from the parking lot on Lenox Street.

Built in 1899, the building is owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) but is used for commercial purposes. There is a platform for commuter trains here.

The station replaced on older, wooden one, and served a variety of railroads as consolidation of that business went forward, including the Norfolk County Railroad; the New York and New England Railroad (NY&NE), which built its main shops adjacent to Norwood Central; the Old Colony Railroad; and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. The MBTA purchased the line in 1973 for its Franklin commuter rail line.

Along Lenox Street, near Nahatan Street, the former Norwood Tire complex backs up to the commuter train tracks.

The tire shop closed at end of June this year; prior to that it was Goodyear Tire & Rubber. The site is on the market. I'm sensing new apartments going up here.

The next building, and the three Norwood icons that follow, are all in the main downtown area, a stone's throw from the town square.

Located at 91 Central Street, this place was erected around 1940. It's home to an eye clinic and a realtor's office. I like the design -- is it Art Deco? -- and the contrast between the blue details and the red street number. It looks to me like it was a theater or maybe even an auto dealership, but I've been unable to find out any details about this place.

I've saved the best for last, and frankly I'm not sure in what order to put these final buildings. I'll start with the diner, because even though I love diners, this place just didn't please me as much as the other two buildings.

Located on Nahatan Street, the Town Square Diner is what's called an "on-site" diner, which means it was built here, as opposed to being construced by the Worcester Lunch Car Company or another manufacturer and delivered to this location.

I'm not sure how long the diner has been in business, or whether it was known by any other names. The Norwood assessor's office says the building dates to 1935. To see other photos of this place from over the years, check out this Flickr gallery.

At the corner of Cottage Street and Broadway is the Norwood Sport Center.

Offering a place for keglers to get their game on since 1940, the sport center is a locally owned business that claims on its web site to be "the first building built as a candlepin bowling alley." I just love the colors and the symmetry and the function of this place. You don't see many bowling alleys anymore, especially ones as wonderful as this one.

When I posted this photo on Instagram, one of my followers tagged it with "AccidentallyWesAnderson," a web site and Instagram account I'd never heard of. With a goal to "explore the unique, the symmetrical, the atypical, the distinctive design and amazing architecture that inspires us all," AWA - named in honor of the filmmaker with the eccentric asthetic -- is similar in scope and feel to Atlas Obscura.

I submitted the photo to the web site.

The last place on our tour is a theater the likes of which I've never seen in a small town or a big city.

The Norwood Theatre was built in 1927 and restored in 2012, after being altered by what MACRIS calls "innapropriate (sic) commercial surface treatments, to wit, a billboard-sized plastic marquee sign." This Spanish Romanesque-style building hosts concerts, musicals, comedy shows, ballet performances and more.

The theater was designed to look similar to Boston's long-gone Lowe's State Theatre, per MACRIS. Over the years it was a movie house and, I assume, a vaudeville performance venue. Originally built to hold 1,200 attendees, in its renovated form it can accommodate 731 audience members in the auditorium and balcony.

I hope you enjoyed this trek through Norwood!

More Milling About in Norwood

From Dave Brigham:

As often happens with me, I've had Norwood, Mass., in the back of my head for a long time, since driving through the town of roughly 31,000 residents once many years ago. I wrote recently about a former mill in the town that's been transformed for a variety of uses, from antique stores and a performance venue, to recording and artist studios (see October 29, 2022, "Bombing Around a Former Norwood Mill").

Officially formed in 1833 once it split off from the "mother town" of Dedham, Norwood was for many years a printing industry town. With that in mind, in this post I will look at the remnants of those factories. In a subsequent post, I will review downtown Norwood and other areas, discussing a cool diner and other restaurants/bars; an amazing theater; a fantastic bowling center; a former jail; a riverside walk; a one-time synagogue and much more.

I continue to be amazed by just how many old mill towns there are in eastern Massachusetts, never mind the entire state. As for Norwood, "[b]y the early 1900s [it] was come to be thought of as the 'printing center of the United States,'" according to the Norwood Historical Society. "Not only did they have two large printing companies and a small printing firm, but there was also a tannery that supplied leather for book covers and a company that made printing ink for newspapers and a company that manufactured cloth for book covers."

The old Norwood Press complex is located along Washington Street, south of downtown and hard by the railroad tracks.

Currently home to an Extra Space Storage facility and other businesses, this set of buildings was once home to three companies that each owned a one-third share in Norwood Press, which was a real estate holding company, according to the historical society.

"The Norwood Press first opened its doors in January of 1895," per the historical society. "At that time J. S. Cushing & Co (compositors) and Berwick and Smith (printers) were the only companies that moved into the new facility and began printing books. However, they still needed a bookbinder partner to come join them in Norwood; without one, all the printed pages would have to be shipped out to be bound....In 1897, the Norwood Press completed an addition to their Washington Street facility, and bookbinders, E. Fleming & Co., moved in. Now a book could be manufactured in one place, a novel idea at the time."

(I like that Extra Space has updated the clock on the old factory.)

The three companies had a good run for several decades, but by the mid-1950s it was over. "The Norwood Press had some of their best years before World War II, the height being in the 1920s," per the historical society. "After WWII, the press experienced declining production and operating shortages. In early 1952, management and labor could not agree on a contract, especially relating to procedures for machine operation that would reduce costs. In April the Norwood Press shutdown (sic), in October Berwick & Smith was dissolved, and in 1954 C. B. Fleming and J.S Cushing & Co. were dissolved on the same day."

Across Washington Street is the former site (I think; possibly it was where Frank's Food Mart and gas station are now) of Ambrose Press and the Norwood Messenger, the latter a newspaper published by the former. Ambrose was in business from the late 1890s into the 1970s, per the Norwood Historical Society.

The Norwood assessor's office indicates that the warehouse was built in 1954. The Environmental Protection Agency lists the site as a Superfund site for Ambrose Press.

Half a mile away, on the eastern side of the train tracks, once stood the Plimpton Press. The massive complex was torn down in recent years, to make for the Avalon Norwood apartment development. What's left is a smokestack and a remnant of railroad tracks.

I really wish I'd explored Norwood before this was demolished. To see photos of the mill being razed, check out the Norwood Then and Now blog.

Herbert and Howard Plimpton founded their company in Boston in 1882, according to Norwood Then and Now. In 1897, the Norwood Business Association convinced the Plimpton Press to move to its town. "The location was so successful," according to the blog, "[Herbert] closed the Boston plant in 1904, added an addition to [the] Norwood plant and moved the rest of his business to Norwood." The company reached its pinnacle in the 1950s, when it employed 1,200 workers.

"Like the competing press in town, the Norwood Press, the Plimpton Press began by producing school textbooks," per Norwood Then and Now. "Eventually to offset the seasonal nature of textbook printing, the press expanded into religious books, fiction and deluxe editions of classic novels."

The plant closed in 1973. The complex was used as warehouse spaces for many years after. According to MACRIS, the complex was also known as the Howard Woodworking Company and the Paine Furniture Warehouse.

Directly across Plimpton Avenue from the Avalon development, to the south, is the Print Lofts apartment building.

I'm not sure whether this building was part of Plimpton Press or not, but I'm sure happy it's been rehabbed into apartments rather than torn down to make way for them.

This building might also have been part of Holliston Mills, another printing company that was located on Lenox Street.

Before I get to a former roofing and flooring mill complex in the south of Norwood, I want to mention the Morrill Ink Works along Pleasant Street, remnants of which still stand but which I did not photograph.

Located just south of the Neponset River, the Morrill complex was in business from the late 19th century into the early 1970s. "They started out making just black ink, around 1874 they began to make colored ink," according to the Norwood Historical Society. "By 1890, the company had enlarged its Norwood facilities to fourteen buildings. Then in 1894, the Norwood plant was totally rebuilt and new buildings added in order to meet their sales demands. In 1904 they added a new building to make dry colors that are needed for the manufacturing of colored inks, and the following year another building was constructed to handle the making of colored ink, and they retooled the facility again in 1914. By 1910 it was said they were the largest producer of printing ink in the United States and over twelve million newspapers used George H. Morrill ink daily....For over eighty-five years the Morrill ink works had been a family run business, employing five generations of Morrills. In 1929 they sold the company, and it became part of The General Printing Ink Company, and in 1972, they stopped manufacturing ink in Norwood."

I wanted to make photos of the buildings that remain from the old Morrill complex. Honestly, I couldn't find a decent place to park, so I gave up. There, I said it.

OK, let's get to the Norwood Space Center.

Comprised of more than two dozen buildings, this site "was originally owned by Bird & Sons, who operated a paper mill in Walpole in 1838 and launched a roofing company in Norwood that expanded to a floor covering plant by the early 1900s," according to this April 2016 New England Real Estate Journal article about the site's redevelopment.

Not all of the buildings have been repurposed. The ones that have include "a mix of retail, commercial, creative, and entertainment space," per the Norwood Space Center web site. "The spaces range from small artist studios to large commercial suites and everything in between. Our core workspace is occupied by WORKBAR, a remote work solution providing open and shared co-work space along with private office options."

Tenants include Irish Brewing Boston, which brews beer and roasts coffee on-site....

(Exterior of Irish Brewing Boston.)

...Salvage Angel, which sells clothing and home goods....

(Exterior of Salvage Angel.)

...Magic Room, an intimate music and entertainment venue.

(Exterior of Magic Room, which formerly operated out of Boston's Brighton neighborhood.)

I wish I lived a little closer to this place, since it has places I would love to frequent. What really grabbed me about the Space Center, however, were the gritty details around the edges.

(The stone below the middle window has this inscription: "1795-1923." That gives you an idea of how long this site has been in use for industry of one sort or another.)

The warehouse-sized building behind Magic Room has a few broken windows at street level. I poked my head through one and learned what these old mills look like before they get redeveloped.

Regular readers know I don't trespass and go on urbex adventures, so for me this was quite a stunning sight.

Make sure to check back for the third and final post about Norwood, covering the downtown area and other features.