Guinan Street Area

Background to the Development of the Guinan Street Area

Morton S. Isaacson

February 14, 2021

William Guinan purchased a 7.5 acre lot on the east side of Bacon Street from Caroline Fiske and the other heirs of Edwin Fiske in 1873 (MLR 1285/314 and 1344/187). This is the same land as shown on the 1875 map. There were no houses on the lot at the time. William Guinan was a Boot and Shoe dealer with a store at 372 Main Street. He never farmed the land, or lived there, himself. However, his son, who worked for him in the shoe store, lived briefly in one of the early houses on the street, No. 59-61, in the 1880s. Guinan subdivided the land according to a Plan of the Land of William Guinan by Joseph Crafts in 1873. Lots 1 – 17 were on the north side of the proposed Guinen Street from east to west, and lots 18-30 were on the south side of the street from west to east. It should be noted that this was before any plans for the Central Massachusetts Railroad were probably known, since the railroad didn't come through until 1881, so that Guinan may have envisioned the neighborhood as more attractive to middleclass development when he started. When the railroad came through, it changed the nature of a number of the lots on the south side of the street near Bacon Street. In addition to selling lots to individuals who would either build a house for themselves, or pass the lots on to another buyer, in the mid-1880s Guinan passed a number of lots and mortgages back and forth between himself and another developer, William A. Pratt. Pratt was a carpenter/builder, so may have built many of the houses on the lots he owned. In 1885, Pratt also purchased from Edward G. Hammond a large lot between Guinan's lot and the Mass Central Railroad tracks on the east side of Hammond Street (MLR 1723/216), and developed his own subdivision plan (Plan of the Land of W. A. Pratt by J.F. Moore, 1889, Plan Book 31, Plan 40).