The Backside of America

It’s Really Big, Sometimes Beautiful and Always Worth a Second Look

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Somewhere Near Twin City

From Dave Brigham:

I'm not big on revisiting neighborhoods I've already photographed and written about. With all the redevelopment in the Greater Boston landscape, though, I feel it's important to chronicle as many old places as I can before they get torn down. And often when I check back in on a place, I come across things I missed the first time around.

Recently, after exploring Somerville's Inner Belt district (see April 22, 2023, "Walking Around Belt-Bottom"), I found myself in the area near Twin City Plaza, on the border of Somerville and Cambridge, and started wandering some more. I'd tromped through part of this area back in 2019 (see "East Cambridge-ish Randoms"), so I made it a quick hit this time. But I still found some stuff. I can always find some stuff.

Passing under the bridge carrying the new Green Line Extension to Union Square, I quickly spotted a place that I at first assumed was out of business.

Carroll & Sons Roofing has a much better-looking web site than it does a headquarters, that's for sure. In business since 1962, the company is now under second-generation ownership. The building dates to, uh, 1900.

The roofing company is just a bottle cap's throw from the former Somerville Brewing Company facility on the corner of Horace and Ward streets.

Founded in 2011, Somerville Brewing opened a brewery and taproom at this site in 2014. "In December 2017, the company expanded with American Fresh Brewhouse at Assembly Row," according to this Boston.com article. "When the coronavirus pandemic hit, American Fresh Brewhouse closed and its Somerville headquarters, like so many other local breweries, began selling beer to go."

In 2020, the company's financial taps ran dry, and Somerville Brewing went out of business. I mentioned this site in my previously cited East Cambridge-ish post, and talked about how the brewing company had filed for bankruptcy a few months prior. What I didn't know at the time was the history of this place.

The old brewery started life in 1903 as George W. Norton Soap Works, according to MACRIS. "Adjoining the 3-story factory were engine room, stables, and storage sheds," MACRIS indicates. "The company manufactured laundry soap and a specialty, 'Norton's Tidy Soap,' 'one of the purest and best laundry | soaps made.' The rendering of tallow and the production of soap was a natural offshoot of the huge meat-packing business in Somerville, the largest of whose firms, Charles H. North & Co., was located about a block distant."

Below are some shots of the rear and side walls of the old soap-making company.

The complex is now home to Typhoon HIL, which makes marine power systems, battery energy storage systems, microgrids and, I don't know, maybe bars of titaniium cryptocurrency; and Science Research Laboratory, which definitely doesn't sound like a CIA front. Not at all.

I'm often looking up when I'm on a Backside walkabout -- at buildings, signs, murals, graffiti. But I lower my gaze, too, on the lookout for entryway mosaics and manhole covers and the like.

The "METER" cover in the photo above is located in front of the former home of previously cited North Packing & Provision Company on Medford Street. I wrote about that building in the above-linked post from 2019. My effort can't compete with Daniel Fireside, who runs the Iron Covers Instagram page.

Across from the old packing plant is a building that pops up as Fedele's Fish Market on Google Maps, although there is no sign on the building and little information online. Google Street View features an old business, Executive Auto Body, which opened in 1999 and closed fairly recently. The assessor's office says the building dates to 1960.

Finally, a sign of the times in Somerville.

The parcels that most recently contained Somerville Gas and Cubby Oil, at the intersection of Medford, South and Warren streets, have either been sold or will be soon. The buildings aren't old, dating to the 1950s, but the properties are valuable, because they are close to the new Union Square Green line station, as well as the growing Boynton Yards life science/residential/arts complex.

According to this Berkshire Hathaway listing, this site features 21,344 square feet of land, and holds the possibility of being redeveloped with a total of 27 residential units or research and development space.