Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 22.

[p. 36] will employ several hundred persons of both sexes, who will require places of abode and education of their children. Thus both Medford and Somerville will find added problems to solve. In years agone, but within memory, conditions had been unsavory in the Somerville corner. A slaughter-house was on the old rangeway for many years. At about 1874 a hill below it was devoted to drying hog-bristles. Later this hill was all dug down and carted away, and to its place was moved the Somerville pest-house. This remained for a period of years beside the serpentine, sluggish Alewife brook. This latter had been receiving the refuse and filth of Tannery brook, with its adjoining marshes a foot lower than those a mile down stream. Little wonder that malaria was in an alarming increase. One day the writer noticed an unusual stir about the pest-house, and an orderly crowd gathering. Approaching nearer he was in time to see one of the city officials apply the torch thereto, and witnessed its destruction. A little later, the Powder House boulevard and Somerville field were constructed in its locality. Next, the hill-slope up to the zigzag boundary line was built over with dwellings. While the cow-pasture lines remain intact in our municipal boundaries, we wonder, sometimes, about those in ‘the thread of the river.’ Both the Mystic and Menotomy, which divide Somerville from Medford and Arlington, now flow in channels other than those of ten years ago; but as they flow within the Park Commission's jurisdiction, there is little chance of either private or municipal disagreement. Another allusion to that crude portrayal of this Medford-Somerville corner. While it depicted the ‘river, canal and railroad,’ it also showed, hovering overhead, a balloon. We wondered quite a little at such portrayal, but of late have queried if it were not really so, for at about those years we find mention in the papers of aeronaut Lauriat and his balloon ascensions. It may be that it was even so. Be that as it may, on the evening of