USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 28
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1 Winchester Star, February 18, 1893, March 4, 1893, April 29, 1893.
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Central Street and the railway tracks formerly owned by Captain William H. Kinsman. Mr. Ginn was like Mr. D. N. Skillings, Sr. a native of Maine and, like him, a self-made man whose energy and sagacity in business established one of the greatest publishing houses in the United States.1 Mr. Ginn became a very large owner of real estate in Winchester and was always deeply interested in the development of the town as a place of residence. His multi- farious business and philanthropic interests kept him from accept- ing any leading part in town affairs. About 1900 he built the stately house, which is still occupied by his widow, and which con- tains in addition to the usual rooms of such a mansion a large and beautiful music room in which an organ is installed.
In 1887 and again in 1888 Winchester sent to the General Court (more commonly called the Massachusetts legislature) Samuel W. McCall, and thus began a very distinguished political career. Mr. McCall was a Dartmouth graduate, a lawyer by train- ing, but a publicist and a public man by choice and aptitude. He was editor of the Boston Advertiser when he came to Winchester to live in the early eighties. His first home was on Washington Street near the corner of Swanton Street, his next at the corner of Wash- ington Street and Park Avenue, and in 1902 he built the large and handsome house that crowns Myopia Hill, and is a conspicuous object on the skyline viewed from the Mystic Valley Parkway across the Mystic Lakes.
Mr. McCall was the most eminent political figure who ever lived in Winchester. After his service in the legislature he was sent to Congress, where he remained for twenty years, recognized as one of the ablest and most independent members on the Republican side of the house. His career terminated in 1919 after three terms as Governor of Massachusetts. Mr. McCall's congressional duties kept him much away from Winchester, but he was always devoted to the town, and his fellow townsmen never wavered in their affec- tion and admiration for him, both as a man and a statesman.
Another striking figure in the Winchester of the nineties was Thomas W. Lawson, the meteoric financier and copper magnate. His house, before he moved away to an ample estate on the South Shore, was on upper Main Street. He too had horizons broader 1 Ginn & Co., publishers of educational textbooks.
GOVERNOR SAMUEL W. MCCALL
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A GROWING TOWN
than any single town could compass, and he took little part in the affairs of Winchester; but he was a stirring figure, who was always conspicuous wherever he was, and who dramatized himself so effec- tually that while he lived here he was constantly in the eye of the community. Mr. Lawson was a lover of dogs and horses, and the owner of a number of fine specimens of both animals.1 In the matter of horses he had a rival in George H. Gilbert, a retired woolen manufacturer who lived in the house at the corner of Pine and Dix streets which he called "Sunnyside." Mr. Gilbert's pas- sion was for driving horses, especially of the Morgan strain. While these two gentlemen lived in Winchester, fine horses were com- monly to be seen in the streets of the town. Since their departure, expensive automobiles have replaced blooded horses in the affec- tions of most men who can afford either luxury, but old residents can still be found who remember with a kindling eye the Morgan pair that Mr. Gilbert used to drive or Tom Lawson's "Glorious Bonnie" and "Glorious Arthur," his favorite high steppers.
Arthur H. Russell was a distinguished Boston lawyer whose residence in Winchester dates from the same years. Often he was chosen moderator of the Winchester town meetings; as a presiding officer he displayed a unique combination of gracious courtesy with firm determination, which none who observed it can forget.
I have spoken of the notable growth of Winchester as a place of suburban residence during the years following 1890. The devel- opment of the "West Side," now so thickly covered with attractive dwelling houses, dates from the nineties. Previous to those years only Church, Bacon, Fletcher, Wildwood and Cambridge streets existed, together with the beginnings of Everett Avenue. There were a few houses scattered along these streets, but most of the land, level and admirably adapted for building, was still used for farm- ing or market gardening - or for nothing at all. The wide area between Church, Cambridge and Wildwood streets was still called Wyman's Plains, though the Wyman family no longer owned the land. The boys still played ball on Bacon's Field where Stratford Road now runs.
1 In the New York Horse Show of 1899, Mr. Lawson entered no less than sixteen horses from his stables.
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It was in 1890 that the attention of enterprising real estate salesmen was drawn to this promising region. Suburban develop- ment around Boston was becoming popular, and the attractions of Winchester were well understood. Mr. Frank B. Forsyth, who lived on Central Street (he would be called a "realtor" today), conceived the idea of forming a land syndicate, buying up all Wyman's Plains, opening streets and building houses upon them, and so making a fortune for the investors. The syndicate was formed in 1891, and the bonds and stock were readily sold, mainly to Boston investors. With the money thus raised, reënforced by more, bor- rowed on mortgages, some seventy-five acres belonging to William Boynton, Henry A. Emerson, V. P. Locke and Joseph Purington were bought. The streets now known as Calumet Road, Foxcroft Road, Wedgemere Avenue, Salisbury, Oxford and Yale streets were laid out, and a number of houses were built or started. But the syndicate (first called the West Side Syndicate, and later the Wedge- mere Syndicate) fell upon hard times when the panic of 1893 arrived. Neither land nor houses sold fast enough to make the venture profitable, and early in 1895 the land was sold to other owners - in some cases to the banks who had advanced the mortgage money.1
The name Wedgemere, by the way, was first suggested by Charles P. Curtis in 1860. A movement among the "young men of the town" was set afoot to change the name of Wedge Pond to something more genteel. Echo Lake was suggested. Mr. Curtis who was interested, since his house stood upon the banks of the pond, thought that commonplace, and coined the name Wedge- mere. There was a public meeting, and the advocates of Echo Lake carried the day over Mr. Curtis's objections, which seem to have been stated with more force and heat than courtesy.2 How- ever, the new name did not stick. Both it and Wedgemere were forgotten until the latter was revived by a tennis club formed in the eighties, which played on the courts on Palmer Street where the playground now is, on the border of Wedge Pond. The name Wedgemere seems to have been adopted by Mr. Forsyth (without
1 Winchester Star, March 15, 1890, January 24, 1891, July 17, 1893, August 18, 1894.
2 Middlesex Journal, September 8, 1860; article by Arthur E. Whitney in Winchester Star, February 17, 1899.
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any special appropriateness) for his land development - no doubt because he found it original and pleasing to the ear. About the same time it was given to the railway station hitherto called the Mystic Station. It is said the name was changed by the Boston and Maine Railroad because so many of its patrons, desiring to attend the trotting races at the old Mystic Park in Somerville, made the mistake of buying tickets to Mystic Station - only to find themselves deposited in Winchester three or four miles from the trotting park.
But the development of the West Side, though arrested, went on at a slower pace. Mr. Ginn opened Stratford Road and sold house lots upon it. Mr. Twombly opened Lawrence and Harrison streets and found buyers for his land. Everett Avenue was pushed through to Cambridge Street and began gradually to fill with some of the handsomest houses in town, and the land laid out by the Wedgemere Syndicate, now fallen into other hands, year by year blossomed with attractive residences, occupied almost exclusively by the families of business and professional men from Boston who had learned the advantages and attractions of Winchester as a place for their homes.
The part that Captain Phineas T. Nickerson took in directing this fortunate development ought not to go unmentioned. Captain Nickerson, a retired sea captain with a fondness for building, bought many of the lots in this part of the town, and erected on them houses that were invariably tasteful in design and excellent in construction. His houses set a high standard and attracted pur- chasers of a substantial sort. They stamped on the growing neigh- borhood a "desirable" character it has never lost.1
Meanwhile the high land on Myopia Hill, perhaps the most beautiful and sightly part of the town, was gradually occupied by larger and more costly houses. Handel Pond and E. Henry Stone were the first to take advantage of the attractions of this hilltop. Samuel J. Elder and Governor McCall built not long after on still higher ground. Oren C. Sanborn followed with his Italianate man- sion, W. I. Palmer, Jere Downs, Dr. H. L. Houghton, Frederic S. Snyder, William H. Schrafft and John Abbott built in later years,
1 Captain Nickerson's own house stood at the corner of Church and Fletcher streets, where old Andrew Huffmaster lived more than a hundred years ago.
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and the more recent development of Swan Road has pretty nearly covered the hill from High Street to the Winchester Country Club with handsome estates, many of them notable for their beautiful gardens.
The harmonious development of the West Side was threatened for a time in 1901 when the heirs of the late D. N. Skillings found it necessary to sell the large and beautiful estate he had named Rangeley. They could no longer afford to keep it in the spacious and park-like form bestowed on it by Mr. Skillings. The purchaser, a Boston man, proposed to resell it to a real estate firm which intended to cut it up into seventy or eighty small lots, after the manner of many suburban "additions" of a less desirable sort. The town was shocked at the idea, but could hardly have prevented it from being carried out, had not Mr. Edwin Ginn, whose own estate on Bacon Street adjoined Rangeley on the south, stepped in, bought the land from its new owner, and announced that it would be kept substantially in the condition it then was.1 That promise he kept, and Rangeley today, though a considerable number of new houses have been built on it, retains the unique park-like char- acter which Mr. Skillings gave it.
There has been a development of the East Side almost equally fortunate though not so extended. The first unlucky experience of Arthur T. Wyman on upper Highland Avenue, which paralleled that of the Wedgemere Syndicate, was followed by a gradual and interesting improvement of that street, on which some of the hand- somest houses in Winchester are to be seen today. About 1914 Mr. George C. Ogden covered with attractive houses the hillside above Symmes Corner,2 where not so many years before Samuel S. Symmes had had an orchard in which he raised the finest peaches that ever entered the Boston markets; and Mr. Ogden sponsored as well the building of scores of houses on Manchester Road, Gover- nor's Avenue, Park Avenue and elsewhere. George B. Whitehorne built a number of excellent houses in Wedgemere Avenue and else- where on the West Side which found a ready sale. So, partly stimulated by enterprising builders and partly advanced by scores of individuals who bought land and built thereon according to
1 Winchester Star, November 22, 1901, May 2, 1902.
2 Where Ridgefield, Edgehill and Bruce roads are.
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THE HOSPITAL
their own tastes, the growth of Winchester proceeded, a healthy unhurried growth, but continuous. From 9,309 in 1910 the popu- lation swelled to 10,391 in 1920 and 13,371 in 1935.
Something appropriate, I hope, has been said concerning the elder physicians of Winchester - Dr. Ingalls, Dr. Chapin and Dr. Winsor. It is time to return to the subject and say a few words about the medical men who, following in the footsteps of that dis- tinguished trio, have labored for the health of the townspeople and the alleviation of their more or less inevitable ills.
Dr. D. W. Wight, who was coeval with Dr. Winsor, lived and practised here for several years in the seventies. He lived on Main Street just beyond the old Wakefield house, in which in those years the savings bank had its home. He left Winchester in 1876.
A few years later Dr. Daniel March, Jr. came to Winchester and practised in the house now occupied by Dr. Mead on Church Street. Dr. March, who swiftly became much beloved in Win- chester, was a son of the venerable Dr. Daniel March, pastor of the First Church in Woburn. He was a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and had prac- tised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before settling in Winchester. Dr. March was a skillful physician, and for many years was the medical examiner for this part of Middlesex County. His sudden and untimely death on January 1, 1897, when he was hardly fifty, occurred as the result of a heart attack suffered while he was engaged in his duties as examiner at Woburn. Dr. March was a public-spirited citizen and among other services was a member of the Winchester School Committee.
About the time Dr. March came to Winchester, Dr. Ben- jamin F. Church settled here also. Dr. Church practised in Win- chester until 1917, and lived until 1931; he died at the age of ninety. He began life as a pharmacist in Boston, but studied medicine at Dartmouth and practised his profession in Boston for several years before moving to Winchester in 1878. Dr. Church was a family physician of the old school; his patients were devoted to him. Mrs. Church (Adaline Barnard Church) was a physician likewise, though she practised little in our town. She was an extremely handsome and brilliant woman, as many old residents of the town
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will remember, and she was for many years a teacher of medicine in the Boston University School of Medicine.
Dr. Clarence J. Allen, a graduate of the University of Vermont Medical School, came to Winchester in 1898 after many years of practice in Waitsfield, Vermont. Dr. Allen's most notable service to the town was rendered as secretary and executive of the Board of Health from 1907 to 1919. From the incorporation of the town until 1878 the duties of the Board of Health were discharged by the selectmen, who confined themselves to abating nuisances obvi- ously detrimental to public health or comfort, and to declaring. quarantines in cases of epidemic illness. Dr. Winsor was the execu- tive of the first independent board established, and after his death Dr. Church succeeded him. Dr. Allen took up the duties of the office at a time when the sciences of sanitation and public health were first being seriously developed, and when the pollution of Winchester's waterways by the waste products of industries farther up the Aberjona was becoming a very acute problem. He was active and courageous; he revolutionized the methods of the board and made it an effective agency for community well-being.
He organized the first thorough and scientific inspection of the town's supply of milk, extended the field of the board's work to cover the examination and control of the stables in town, improved the handling of garbage and the management of the town dumps, and carried on with energy the board's campaign to stop the pol- lution of the streams and lakes in the town; in all of which he had the cooperation of his colleagues, F. Manley Ives, Marshall W. Jones and D. W. Comins. His capable direction of the work of the board has been continued by his successors, Dr. Mott A. Cummings and Dr. J. Harper Blaisdell. Dr. Allen's health gave way in 1919 and he was forced to retire. He died June 3, 1921.
Dr. Cummings was a graduate of Dartmouth and the Harvard Medical School. He practised in Winchester no less than forty years - from 1888 almost to his death, which occurred June 23, 1929. His home was long on Church Street near the corner of Wild- wood Street. Like almost every other doctor who has chosen Win- chester for his home, he had the gift of winning the confidence and affection of his patients; his wife, who died before him, Mrs. Lenore Cummings, was a woman instant in good works and warmly remem-
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bered in Winchester. In later years Dr. Cummings married as his second wife Miss Elsie Enman of Winchester.
In 1898 Dr. George N. P. Mead began practice in Winchester, living in the house formerly occupied by Dr. March. Of Dr. Mead, who still lives though retired from practice, it is enough to say here that he has always stood very high in his profession and in the regard of the people of Winchester among whom he has spent his active years. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School. His son, George Jackson Mead, a native of the town, is one of the lead- ers in the aviation industry, long connected with the well-known firm of Pratt and Whitney of Hartford, Connecticut, makers of airplane engines.
Dr. Ralph Putnam, who received both academic and medical training at Harvard, practised in Winchester twenty years, from 1903 to his untimely death, not yet fifty, on October 17, 1923. Dr. Putnam was a man of very brilliant parts and a physician of high qualifications. His peculiar service to Winchester was the organ- ization of a medical service of great efficiency in the schools of the town; he was the first school physician, and no town ever had a better.
Dr. Daniel C. Dennett, a graduate of the Bowdoin Medical School, has practised in Winchester for almost forty years. His house on Washington Street stands on the site of the ancient black- smith shop of the Johnson brothers, Francis and Nathan. Dr. Dennett, though in general practice, has developed a special skill in the treatment of nose and throat troubles.
Dr. Henry L. Houghton, a widely known homeopathic physi- cian with a degree from the Harvard Medical School, was for long a resident of Winchester, first on Pine Street and later in a handsome estate on Arlington Street. His practice has been principally in Boston. Dr. Herbert E. Maynard, also a homeopathic physician, with a wide practice in the town, has a record of medical work in Winchester since 1902.
Dr. Charles F. McCarthy died in 1921 after twenty-five years of successful practice in Winchester. He was a graduate of the Long Island College Hospital. For many years he was one of the Overseers of the Poor.
Dr. Clarence E. Ordway, a graduate of Yale and the Harvard
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Medical School, and a resident of Winchester from early boyhood, has been in active medical and surgical practice since 1906. He is at present chief of the professional staff of the Winchester Hospital.
As for the doctors who have lived here for brief periods or who have more recently entered on practice in the town, a roll call must suffice. The roster contains the names of Dr. Lilley Eaton, Dr. Irving S. Cutter, Dr. Harold E. Gale (who rendered highly valuable service not only as a specialist in children's diseases but as an active guardian of the purity of the milk sold in the town), Dr. Arthur L. Brown, Dr. Richard W. Sheehy, Dr. Milton S. Quinn, Dr. Wilfred L. Mckenzie, Dr. Harold F. Simon, Dr. Robert L. Emery, Dr. Roger M. Burgoyne, Dr. S. H. Moses, Dr. A. R. Cunningham, Dr. Harold Brown, Dr. Ralph A. Manning, Dr. Richard J. Clark and Dr. Philip J. McManus.
No less essential than the doctor in the proper treatment of the sick is the nurse. It was a clear understanding of this truth that led in 1899 to the founding of the Winchester Visiting Nurse Association. Even before this, the Women's Fortnightly Club, under the direction of Mrs. Dr. Winsor, its president, had for a year or two supported lectures and classes in home nursing, which had no doubt equipped a number of women to undertake the intel- ligent care of the sick. But the story of the Visiting Nurse Associa- tion, one of the most beneficent of local institutions, begins with a meeting of ladies at the home of Mrs. Stephen Thompson, Feb- ruary 1, 1899. The association was formed then and there; Mrs. Joshua Coit was chosen president, Mrs. Thompson vice-president, Miss Alice Pattee secretary and Miss Alice Shattuck treasurer. The purpose of the organization was to maintain a nursing service in the town, free for the needy, but accompanied by a moderate charge of a dollar a visit to those who could afford it. From the start the association has been largely supported by the voluntary subscriptions of townspeople who were interested in its aims, and that support has been so generous that the association has been not only continually useful but continuously solvent. It has at present a staff of three nurses; it does not of course pretend to supply trained nursing to those who can afford to pay for it; but through the daily visits of its nurses to the bedsides of those who require
Courtesy of Miss Florence Maynard
MRS. HARRISON PARKER, 2D
MRS. JOSHUA COIT
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THE HOSPITAL
care and attention, but not the continuous presence of a nurse, the association has by its thirty-six years of friendly efficient service justified the hopes of its founders and made for itself an indis- pensable place in the community. To the poorer families in town to whom it has brought, free of charge, careful and skilful nursing attention they could not else have had, it has been a godsend.
The association has always been supported and directed by the women of Winchester. For many years its funds were swelled by the annual June Breakfast, served by the ladies in the town hall. This affair was attended by almost two thousand persons every year; Winchester folk look back upon it with delightful mem- ories as a community effort in which the toil of preparation was recompensed by the success achieved in the support of a worthy cause and the social pleasure afforded to so large a number of people. The good women who all but exhausted themselves in conducting it, no doubt heaved a sigh of relief when the June Breakfasts were discontinued, but they were unique and cheerful occasions; the town has had no such opportunity for community meeting and acquaintanceship since they ceased in 1916.
Mrs. Coit, the first president of the association, was succeeded by Mrs. Ellen E. Metcalf, and she in turn by Miss Katherine F. Pond and Mrs. James W. Russell. For a time, while the Winchester Hospital was maintained by the Visiting Nurse Association, Mr. Harold W. Fuller was president, but he gave his attention solely to the hospital; the visiting nurse service was still directed by the women, with Mrs. Russell as chairman of the committee in charge of it.
In the reception room of the handsome building of the Win- chester Hospital today hangs the portrait of Mrs. Coit - fitly so, for it was while she was its devoted president that the Visiting Nurse Association shouldered the task of supplying the town with a hospital. There were many to say that the undertaking was far too ambitious, and that in the absence of any large gifts or bequests from wealthy persons the town could not properly establish or maintain such an institution. It was recalled that in 1909 Mrs. Sophronia Harrington had offered the town $50,000 to establish a hospital in memory of her son Frank. A committee of representa, tive citizens - Lewis Parkhurst, Preston Pond, Alfred S. Higgins,
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William B. French, John L. Ayer, William D. Richards and Nelson H. Seelye-had with Mr. George Harrington gone so far as to incor- porate the Winchester Hospital, and to solicit subscriptions for an additional $50,000 which they believed essential for establishing such an institution. The town had proved lukewarm to the project, and after six months of unsuccessful canvassing the corporation had disbanded and returned the $50,000 to Mrs. Harrington.1 If Winchester with $50,000 in hand could not raise the necessary money in 1909, what chance was there to raise it in 1912 with no endowment to start with?
But the ladies went bravely to work. Their plans were far less ambitious than those which had failed three years previously. They envisioned a "cottage" hospital, to be operated for two years experimentally to determine whether Winchester did really need and would support a hospital. With an appropriation from the treasury of the Visiting Nurse Association and a few gifts and pledges of moderate amount, they had $7,000 in hand. They hired a good-sized house at Washington and Lincoln streets - the Todd house so-called - had it made over to suit their requirements, and on March II, 1912 opened it to patients. Gifts for furnishing the wards and rooms and for medical instruments and supplies were generous, for the townspeople admired the pluck of the earnest women who were willing to venture great things on so modest a foundation.
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