The picture above is from the Bancroft Library. Here’s a comment on it:
Hi Dan,
The photo looks like it could have been taken from our front lawn of the houses across the street. The trees in the background and the Nash in the driveway of the first house confirm the houses were located across Hammond Road from our house (left side of the road coming from Mendon Street). The boy and girl walking behind the boy on the trike could be my sister Nancy and myself, but I really can’t be sure from the photo. The boy on the trike could be Peter Tolenti. I do believe the photo was taken from our front yard, which would support that the boy and girl together were my sister and I. I don’t have any idea who the small child on the trike across the street is.
Thanks for the photo, as always it brings back wonderful memoirs of my days growing up Hopedale.
Phil Crosby
The next day Phil added this:
Peter Tolenti lived just up from Hammond Road in a older duplex with the Noferi family on the other side. He had a younger brother and there were two Noferi girls, Julie and Jerry. We all played together along with Joey Zapellawho lived just a little further up Mendon Street. I believe Julie and Joey graduated in the class of 1960, which would have been my class had we not moved to California in 1956.
The two pictures above show houses on Mendon Street near Hammond Road. The ones below are of Hammond Road.
Now and Then – Hammond Road and Mendon Street
Hammond Road, built in 1947, was named for Lowell Hammond, the first Hopedale serviceman killed in World War II. The plan below, drawn in 1945, shows that for a while Draper Corporation intended to do a lot more building, but as it turned out, the Hammond Road houses, a couple near it along Mendon Street, and, as noted under one of the pictures, several on Park Street and one on Jones Road), were the last that they did. Less than ten years after this “mini building boom,” they were in the process of selling all of their houses.
Thanks to Shirley MacNevin for the copy of Cotton Chats, which had been saved along with a good number of other articles on Hopedale’s history by her late husband, Perry.
Shortly after putting this page up, I received the following from Phil Crosby.
Our family moved into one of the new homes (3 Hammond Road) right after they were built in 1947. I was about 5 or 6 at the time and can remember playing on the road grader after the workmen left for the day. The houses were finished, but they were still working on the road. My father, Ralph Crosby, had just returned after serving in the army during WWII. I believe these homes were built for returning Draper employees who served in the war. As I recall, I believe there were only about a dozen or so homes built, nowhere near the number shown on the plot plan in your article.
