From the Archives: Belmont Center in 1969

One upon a time, several lives ago, I lived in Belmont, Massachusetts, USA. Belmont is a quiet bedroom community in Middlesex County west of Cambridge, also bordered by Arlington, Waltham, and Watertown. Belmont's commercial nexus was the Center, where Leonard Street emerged from under the railroad tracks and ran past a fire station and a cluster of stores. 

I bought my first "serious" camera in late 1968, a Nikkormat FTn. Here are some frames from my early attempts to use Tri-X film. I did not know what I was doing, but the built-in light meter was reasonably reliable in the hands of a total novice, and the Nikkor lenses were very good optically. I do not remember who developed the film, possibly a small camera shop in Arlington, where my dad knew the proprietor. 

Leonard Street

Leonard Street from railroad bridge 

Leonard Street passed through the Center and often had heavy traffic, even back in the 1960s. Note how the Volkswagen Beetle on the right is dwarfed by the Chevrolet behind it. 

1908 Belmont Station

Rail side of the Belmont Station

The Fitchburg Railroad (later the Boston and Maine Railroad) built the Craftsman-stye railroad station in 1908 after they raised the rail line to eliminate a grade crossing for the busy Concord Avenue. According to Wikipedia, a farmer quarried the stone used in the station from nearby Belmont Hill. 

Train service to Belmont ended in 1958, but the Boston and Maine ran commuter trains from Concord to North Station on these tracks using Budd Rail Diesel Cars (Buddliners). I recall when we occupied the new Belmont High School at its new Clay Pit Pond site in 1970, we occasionally mooned the commuter train as long as the teacher was not present. The MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) resumed service to Belmont in 1974 during the first energy crisis. 

When I moved to Belmont in 1966, the Lions Club owned the station, and the platforms were fenced off. If you look at Google Maps, the porch in the picture above has been filled in with ugly cinder block. 

Fire station hose tower

This is the Belmont Center fire station tower, where the firemen dried canvas hoses. The fire station is now a restaurant. The new fire station is a beautiful brick complex at the corner of Alexander Avenue and Leonard Street. This was formerly a parking lot for Filenes clothing store (sto-wah). The boring moderne building that was once Filenes is gone, replaced with a CVS and craft beer cellar. During one of my life interludes, I sold men's clothing at Filenes in 1979-1980 while job hunting. It was rather dull but paid a bit ($2.90 and then $3.10/ hour??). I had to wear a suit or jacket every day. But the suits came from a tailor in Athens, not Filenes.

Construction of Belmont Savings Bank

Demolition of Tudor-style commercial building (Kodak Instamatic 500 photograph)

Demolition detail

Belmont Savings Bank demolished an elegant 1920s Tudor style building to build a pseudo-colonial style bank and parking lot. Back in that era, banks invited new depositors to open savings accounts, no matter how little they could deposit. The idea was to encourage a habit of saving and demonstrate the benefits of interest. The bank employee typed your deposit and the accumulated interest in a passbook using a machine that resembled a big typewriter. I assume that it was connected to a mainframe computer somewhere, but I do not know what technology they used. Today, banks rarely accept customers with minimal funds, thereby driving the poor to pay day loan shops and other unsavory or illegal financial services. 

Clay Pit Pond from Concord Avenue

Clay Pit Pond was the site of a blue clay that was mined for brick production between 1888 and 1926. When I lived in Belmont in the 1960s, the pond was polluted and may only be marginally better now. The city needed a site for a new high school and chose the land between the pond and the Boston and Maine railroad tracks. The photograph above shows some initial dirt work in the distance. 

The town selected this site to replace an older high school on Orchard Street. In 1968, a disgruntled student torched the building. After the fire, we still used part of the old building. A temporary wall closed off the burned section. 

The 1971 school was quite luxurious in a mid-century manner, with earth tones as the color scheme. I even lifeguarded at the pool. Today, a spectacular new school occupies the site, a gorgeous brick complex that resembles a corporate headquarters (demonstrating an advantage of living in a rich town with a strong education ethic).

The author measuring cedar shingles. The house and shingles are still extant. The black underlayment is tar paper.

The famous February 1969 snow storm

This ends our short time warp trip to Belmont. Thank you for riding along.

Most of these photographs are Kodak Tri-X film. I scanned the negatives on a Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner operated with NikonScan 4.03 software. I cleaned splotches and scratches with Photoshop CS6 software.