History of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1900–1999
[20][21][c] He discovered 11 small, oval stones made of marble marking the graves of children and, rather than disturb them, set the land aside and did not build a home on it.
Special laws were passed by the Massachusetts General Court in 1957 allowing the town to use Stone Park across the street to build a new high school.
The State Constabulary patrolled outside on horseback and motorcycles[51] and the courtroom was retrofitted with bomb shutters and sliding steel doors that could seal off that wing of the courthouse in case of an attack.
The brothers Millen, Irving and Murton, alighted from the Yankee Clipper at Readville station on On April 14, 1934, to a crowd of thousands booing and hissing them.
[58] The pair, along with Abraham Faber, had robbed a bank in Needham and killed several police officers, including Francis Oliver Haddock and Forbes McLeod.
[78] The Ursuline nuns who ran the school purchased the property which included a grand manor house designed by Boston architect Guy Lowell.
The house, described as "one of the grandest of grand mansions west of Boston, and comparable to what one would see in Newport," was built by Francis Skinner for his new wife Sarah Carr, in 1906.
[79] Today, the mansion once known as the Federal Hill Farm has "the richest and most elaborate residential rooms in Dedham" and serves as a convent for the sisters who run the school.
[89][88] Canton's Jonathan Mann commissioned a new bell, weighing 2,000 pounds, to be cast by the William Blake Company of Boston and presented it to the church on February 20, 1882.
[96] The neighborhood had schools, churches, and homes, in addition to the commercial district known today as East Dedham Square centered at the intersection of High and Bussey Streets.
[98] The Town Selectmen and business leaders joined Michael Redstone in cutting a ceremonial length of film as hundreds of cars lined up on Elm Street to get in.
[98] Permission to build the "open air theater," an exact copy of the drive-in Redstone had operated on Long Island for the previous 10 years, was granted in the fall of 1947.
[112] He declared Dedham to be the "quaint New England village" they were looking for, but choosing the Fairbanks House as the title home was an odd choice as it did not resemble the Nova Scotian farmhouse that served as the inspiration.
[118] A picnic was held at the Fairbanks House for the film crew after production finally ended in August, having been delayed by an unusually rainy summer.
[125] At the cornerstone laying ceremony were several selectmen, telephone company officials, the town’s postmaster, police chief Walter Carroll, and State Representative Francis Harding.
[125] The telephone company ran ads in the Dedham Transcript to alert customers to the change, and the Avery School PTO hosted a workshop to help explain the new system.
[125] While the new systems enabled residents to obtain new phones in colors other than black, it also resulted in the layoffs of 176 operators who worked in the Church Street facility.
[128][129] When police and the fire department arrived to shut it down, they were pelted with rocks, cherry bombs, and full cans of beer from the thousands of people there.
[134] During the early years of the century, the Playground Association of America encouraged people to celebrate Independence Day safely, without fireworks or other rowdy behavior.
[139] Fires burned in Rodman's Woods off of Westfield Street and Job's Island[k] as well as in Broad Meadow in Needham and Purgatory Swamp in Canton.
[145] To honor those who served and died in the war, the Town set aside 23 acres of marshland at the corner of East Street and Eastern Avenue and created Memorial Park.
[147] He brought up the issue at Town Meeting, and newspapers around the country started running stories about how Dedham had mistakenly erected a monument to the enemies the Americans had defeated.
[149][n] Before the United States entered the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, instituting the nation's first peace time draft.
[150] On Fairview Street, 22-year old Stephen Ferris was eating lunch when his mother, who was listening to the live radio broadcast, gave him the news that he had been drafted.
As the number of recruits and draftees grew larger, the ceremony became more elaborate with marching bands and a color guard escorting the young men to the train station.
[150] Members of the public again stood on the sidewalk and cheered while the Women’s Defense Corps gave them refreshments and the Dedham Association for Men in the Service handed them a billfold full of cash.
[150] When Phillip Jackson entered the Navy in 1944, he handed the drumsticks he used as a marching band member off to his replacement before boarding his own train.
[162] A reception and campaign rally was held at the Ames Junior High School for John F. Kennedy in September during the 1952 United States Senate election in Massachusetts.
[163] They later decided that a scholarship would be established at the High School to better "embody some of the warmth of the late president for people, some of his love for athletics and his interest in literature.
[168][169] In 1921, the local American Legion post moved into the home at the corner of East Street and Whiting Avenue originally built by Charles and Mary Brown.
