Medford Ruins removed.
It is rarely that a dwelling built of good material and fair workmanship, with but fifteen years occupancy, goes to ruin, becomes a menace, and is demolished within forty-five years of its building, in a residential locality.
In the winter of 1870 and ‘71,
S. B. Brock, carpenter, who lived in the ‘
Gamage corner,’ built for
Erastus F. Brockway on Cottage street a ten-room, two-story house, with mansard roof of slate and tin. After a few years the elderly owner sold it and removed from town.
The new owner and occupant improved it, adding a twostory bay-window that overlooked the vacant land which extended to Prescott street and was bordered and crossed by
Whitmore brook. Twenty-nine years ago the family left it and it was ever after vacant.
After a time the lawless element began to trespass therein, windows were broken, and at least once it was set on fire.
Later the tin roof became rusty and loosened and subject to the winds, which finally stripped it. Then the rains and melting snow got in destructive work, and plunderers followed with theirs.
Several unavailing efforts were made by citizen neighbors for its removal by municipal action.
We are told its final demolition was at the instance of the state authorities, because of fire hazard.
Its removal is certainly a relief to the neighborhood and improvement to the city.
That it withstood the destructive
[p. 48] elements so long is due both to the quality of material and construction.
Many of those erected in this and other cities within the last ten years, under the same conditions of neglect and exposure, would succumb to the destructive forces of nature in less time, and that, too, despite the improvements of which we boast.
