This one has been bothering me for some time. Thompsonville, I was taught in 5th grade, is Newton’s smallest village by far, like a comma between Chestnut Hill and Newton Centre, best known by the intersection at route 9 and Langley Road with Tony’s Villa on one side and a gas station on the other. There are fewer draws to the shrinking business center nowadays. The new Atrium Center went so far as to add the pricier “Chestnut Hill” to its name.
In an effort to emphasize our villages, city hall and the media often exaggerate the boundaries of Thompsonville such that its size is on par with other villages. Village boundaries are always a tricky business. In reality, there are no boundaries, but people generally have a sense of what is or is not part of a village. The Bowen-Thompsonville Neighborhood Association was so named because it covers an area larger than just Thompsonville. City Hall IT sometimes uses the somewhat-defunct BTNA boundaries as a guide (the current map avoids the issue). Historical maps point to Langley Road and the area abutting the Webster Conservation Area. There’s a legend of the neighborhood being named for a hermit who lived in those woods. NewTV recently identified a Glenwood Road resident as living in Thompsonville. Longtime residents of the part of Newton which is indisputably T’ville would scoff at the idea that White Ave, or even the “new” Bowen School (the playground yes, the school, marginally) are part of the village, much less early 20th century subdivisions down the hill near Parker Street.
Anyone have any evidence to cite? Any historical documents (building permits or otherwise) to shed light on this? Any longtime residents care to weigh in?
I have been puzzling over where one village ends and another begins for months, as I tweet dead trees. Mostly I can go by zip codes, so it is rather annoying that Newton Centre and Oak Hill seem to have the same zip code, although they must be connected by an imaginary isthmus that would run between Newton Highlands and Thompsonville/Chestnut Hill.
There are streets with Newton Corner zip code that sure feel like they should be Nonantum, like you could probably throw a baseball and hit Nonantum Square. I’d like a better map.
Occasionally there are addresses that when you put them in Google maps, you don’t even get a zip code!
In planning the Tour de Newton bike route this was one of the questions that came up (also, where is the center of Chestnut Hill?).
I’d guess that at one point long ago, before Route 9 became what its today, Thompsonville probably had a conventional looking little village center, and today’s route 9 was “main street”.
As for the outer boundaries of T’ville – I think the outer boundaries of virtually all of the villages are pretty muddy. There seem to be a half dozen sources you can site (post office, ward boundaries, historic district, area council maps, school districts, etc) that all have slightly different borders.
Upper Falls has a little triangle between Route 9 and Elliot St that for various purpose gets defined as the Highlands but it seems like many/most of the people self identify as Upper Falls residents. I think nearly every village has these quirky/mushy border regions.
Maybe T’villes icon for the Tour de Newton should be a big question mark 😉
I’ve been told that the City is reluctant to put out a map with fixed village boundaries because it would stir up unnecessary conflict and debate in a City where it is easy to stir up conflict and debate over just about anything.
When I was young, there was an old silver sign with the face of an American Indian announcing your entry into Waban Village at the intersection of Allen Avenue and Woodward Street. Somewhere along the line, a group of citizens who lived on Allen, Beethoven, Winslow and Hinkley successfully petitioned the City to move their streets from the Highlands to Waban. A Waban address was far more prestigious in those days. The playing field has been leveled since then so we’ll be happy to welcome those streets back into the Highlands where they rightfully belong. In the process we’ll get John Rice and perhaps Steve Siegel back into the fold.
Jerry. Hands off the triangle.
2
For what it’s worth, this is how Google Maps defined the boundaries: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=thompsonville+ma+google+maps&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x89e37899bd17427d:0x56e621896dc036cb,Thompsonville,+Newton,+MA&gl=us&ei=4TnOUbSmCYe30AHIgYGgCw&ved=0CC8Q8gEwAA
Mind you, Google Maps has made some questionable assertions in the past….
Bob – the triangle’s ours and we’ve got a defensible border on Route 9. If the Highland Troops can manage to get across Route 9, they can take it back.
@Chris, I just did that for Oak Hill in Google maps and got a dashed line boundary for that, too. Will have to try for other villages.
Also, just noticed on map there’s a Frank Barney Conservation Area in Upper Falls. Never knew Newton had a Frank Barney as well as Barney Frank!
Just a reminder that everything in Google Maps is peer reviewed, folks 😉 Google hasn’t yet learned the lesson that City Hall has, apparently.
Jerry, I think you’ll find consensus on the center of T’ville. It’s just not clear whether the village extends much more than a few blocks in any direction. For purposes of the ride, going through Langley/Jackson should be sufficient. I think the businesses are more or less where they always were. You can’t get a steak or a good salad dressing anymore, but you can get some nice window treatments.
And a bit of history: prior to the Worcester Turnpike (Route 9) which is a pretty old highway in its own right, and the high-speed trolley that ran down the middle of it, the main road in the area was the Boston-Sudbury highway, today known as … Jackson Street.
@Julia: Brian Yates knows a lot more than I do about Frank Barney, but he owned a large, grey Victorian home and barn where the Conservation Land is now located. It’s technically in the Highlands, so there’s nothing about it in “Makers of the Mold.
The house was abandoned and falling apart when I first saw it as a kid and it was more than a bit spooky because all the furniture, drapes, paintings and other household goods were still in the house. The barn was full of decaying treasures including a large sleigh, two grand pianos and even a small keyboard instrument that was either a harpsichord or some other such instrument. One of the kids we knew from Upper Falls claimed that someone who lived in the house had been the victim of an ax murder a few years back, but I’ve never been able to determine whether or not that story was true.
We went up through Circuit Avenue one day to see if we there was an easy way to get into the two buildings and found to our surprise that a side door to the house and the full door to the barn were not locked. None of us really wanted to go inside, but I volunteered because it had only been a week previous to this that I froze while trying to crawl over the narrow beam on the small side dam near Horseshoe Falls in Hemlock Gorge, the place where Jerry found Barbie holding up that very same dam a few years back. I was still embarrassed about freaking out on the dam, so I crept up the main stairway to the second floor. Suddenly a door to one of the bedrooms flew open and this large hulk of a man let out a yell and came rushing down the stairs after me. I recognized him as one of the town’s more notorious derelicts, a guy the kid’s called “Grandfather the Great.” He reeked of beer and staggered sideways and simply plopped back on the floor. We all beat a hasty retreat. A few years later, they tore the house down. I don’t know what happened to all of the stuff inside the house and barn.
@Adam. Two centuries ago in 1813, scores of large Conestoga type wagons used this part of Route 9 to haul goods around Boston after the British Navy blockaded Boston Harbor during the War of 1812.
Adam, I find it very interesting that Thompsonville was named for a chronically homeless person! 😉 Thanks for the history lesson.
I heard if you find Thompsonville, you find Waldo.
Gerrymandering within Newton!
A number of years back, I tried to find the boundaries of some villages.
I went to the post office and was told that zip codes don’t have anything to do with village borders but were only devised for ease of delivery and shouldn’t be considered having any other meaning.
At city hall I went to one department after another, finally, at one, I can’t remember which, I was told that the city did not have official borders for the villages and no official map. After much sweet talking, she confessed that they did have an old “official” map, but it was no longer used and the city didn’t want to be in the border business. Apparently, as Bob Burke has told us, village borders became a battle in the BOA. Real Estate Agents (some of whom were Alderman) tried to expand the higher priced (in R.E. terms) villages and shrink the lesser. It became a very contentious battle and the city got out of it and eliminated the map. Eventually, she gave in and dug out the old map. While I was looking at it, her supervisor walked by and said, “What are you doing?!!” It was as though she showed me the nuclear code!
With the development of the Area Councils the city has gotten back into the boundary business, stretching some villages beyond their historic or practical lines for the sake of capturing everybody.
Although I only thought of T-ville as Tony’s and Capriccio’s, I have friends who lived on Cypress st closer to Parker than Bowen, who considered it Thompsonville, so who knows?
There’s at least one official border for T-ville, because there’s a sign on Langley south of Newton Centre that say “Welcome to Thompsonville”.
Jerry Reilly — The orange indicators in this map seem to pin-point village centers: http://www.newtonma.gov/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=39223
P.S. I wouldn’t trust any Newton landmarks on Google maps. They had Auburndale where West Newton was, Chestnut Hill at Lower Falls and Waban at Newton Corner a few years ago. I went back and forth with them a few times until it was corrected. Can’t really blame them since there are no legal or clear borders.
mgwa, those little green signs seem to mark entry to village centers. Thompsonville has a few. I don’t think they attempt to mark boundaries.
Bob Burke, great story. Sounds like you had an adventurous childhood. Did your parents ever learn about that particular foray?
Terry Malloy, you should have grabbed it and run! Free the Map!
@Julia. We didn’t do things that were mean or vindictive, but it was best for both our parents as well as we young un’s that they never knew some of the things we got into
I have spent a lot of time recently digging into Newton’s past, and plan to blog about it, along with photos in the near future. I lived in T’ville for a few years (1997-200), on Carlisle Street, in a house owned by the DiBartolomeos. My wife and I were the last to live in the house before it was sold, razed and turned into townhouses. Anyway, in looking into just what goes on in Thompsonville, and reading all t he comments in this section, I’ve got a tantalizing bit of information to share. In something called the Mineral and Locality Database (MINDAT.org) I found this sentence: “Silver was supposedly discovered at this location near Thompsonville in the autumn of 1877.” The source is Samuel Francis Smith’s 1880 book, “History of Newton, Massachusetts.”