Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 29.

Negotiations were in progress for the post office to be in this new building when Mr. Usher, 2d, forestalled matters and kept Uncle Sam as tenant by tearing down the old Whitmore-Usher house and moving the little building back beside the railway, where it stood for many years in various uses until moved against the old depot building, which had become a laundry, when, after two more years, it was torn down for firewood. Peace to its ashes.

The new building of brick which he built had stores with very large plate glass, and when completed was at once occupied. The Usher wooden block, after taking fire so many times that it acquired the name of the ‘only fireproof building in town,’ was damaged beyond repair by fire on December 24, 1921.

The house where Mr. Usher last lived was moved twice, lastly near to Warren street, and a one-story structure, with seven stores of various kinds and times of occupancy, then built.

And then came someone who began to erect another similar block on the site of that burned. The board of aldermen had in their wisdom seen fit to pass an order for widening High street. It was vetoed by Mayor Haines. Meanwhile work had been going on with much rapidity on the rear of a new building, when one day the front of the cellar wall was put in, and sections of front piers of brick begun a little outside of the former building but within the property line. Then the aldermen promptly passed the act over the mayor's veto, and a change of work resulted.

Next followed the removal of the Kent store and Wyatt-Cheney house, and the erection on the new line of a seven-store block of white cast stone—just completed.

In the latest nineties the phrase ‘Fin de siecle’ was considerably employed, and in 1898 people thought the builders were ‘at the end of their rope’ (perhaps they were financially), and remarks were made—‘It is twenty years ahead of the times.’ Perhaps so. But now that