Lost Melrose, Volume Eight

In this installment of Lost Melrose, we remember Deering Lumber—rather specifically, its business office, which was located on the corner of Essex and Willow Streets.

At the time of its sale in 2015, the Deering Lumber Company had been in operation for well over a century, having been founded around the year 1900, as you can see in the map image from 1903. Its original location was further up Tremont Street, across from Ell Pond. It may well have remained there if not for a disastrous fire that broke out 86 years ago today, on May 18, 1935.

Deering Lumber’s entire operation was destroyed, but they must have been well insured, for they were able to reopen the next year at the location they would occupy for the next 80 years, at what is today 158 Essex Street. Not only that, they managed to hire Melrose’s most famous architect, Royal Barry Wills, to design their front offices. Wills gave the building a sophisticated 18th century flair, with an elaborately pedimented Georgian doorframe and varied fenestration that you would not have expected to find at a business known for the whir of buzzsaws and the rumbling of forklifts.

The building later suffered from a rather utilitarian, if unobtrusive rear addition. Nonetheless, it survived the great fire of 1959 that destroyed much of the 1935 Deering Lumber complex, had weathered decades of varied uses, and was unique in being both a tangible link to Melrose’s industrial past, and a rare example of Royal Barry Wills’ commercial work.

The Historical Commission only learned that the building was a Wills design after it was demolished, when Historic New England placed their collection of Royal Barry Wills materials online, from which these architectural drawings are taken. This is yet another example of why we believe a demolition review ordinance is of such importance. Had such an ordinance been in place, we could have documented the structure before it was gone forever.