The Steele House

The Steele House at 1 Nason Drive is the second-largest affordable housing complex in Melrose, with 155 units. It is also the only standing building in Melrose whose very existence was declared illegal.

In the 1960s, Melrose was the only city in Massachusetts that had failed to form a housing authority, and so was ineligible to receive state or federal funds to create public housing. In 1968, the Board of Aldermen finally caved to public pressure and voted to create a housing authority for the specific purpose of building senior housing.

Perhaps because the city had waited for so long to create senior housing, they moved all too quickly to make amends. The city opted to apply for funds through the state’s Chapter 667 program, which paid for the construction costs of senior and disabled housing up front and would subsidize rents for residents in perpetuity thereafter.

In 1969, the housing authority settled on constructing a 9-story building on a site between Greenwood Street and the railroad tracks, and pushed the project through the Zoning Board over the objections of neighbors in order not to lose recently granted state funding. The housing authority then hired a contractor and an architectural firm on the advice of state officials.

The Steele House opened in 1971. A year later, a lawsuit that had been filed by abutters made its way to the SJC, which ruled unanimously that the zoning board had overstepped its authority by granting variances for the structure. Rather than order the building torn down, the court ordered that Melrose change its zoning for the site.

In 1979, the walls of the Steele House began to crack and buckle. The contractor hired in 1969 had done shoddy work, and the architectural firm had failed to oversee them. The walls had to be reconstructed. Melrose sued for damages, but the SJC again ruled against the city, arguing that they too had been negligent in their oversight.

The Steele House has now been open for 50 years, and has provided housing for thousands of residents. Yet the difficulties that attended its planning and construction hold a lesson on the importance of municipal due diligence.

2020 Census

One of the most important documents for understanding the historical trajectory of any community in the United States is the decennial census. Preliminary statistics from the 2020 US Census were released yesterday. Some highlights from the Melrose results in historical perspective:

Melrose’s population rose 10.5% over the past decade, from 26,983 to 29,817. This is a dramatic reversal of a half-century of demographic stagnation, but it is still well below Melrose’s population high of 33,180 in 1970.

All population growth can be attributed to the arrival of people of color, as the total white population of the city continues to decline slowly. The city is now 79.6% white, down from 91.15% ten years ago. This is by far the most racially diverse the city ever has been.

Black people now make up just over 3% of the city’s population, which is the highest percentage recorded since 1765, when the number was just under 5%. While Black population has grown year over year since 1950, when the census recorded just 24 Black residents in Melrose, it is worth noting that Black population growth was slower between 2010 and 2020 than it was in the decade prior.

The Asian-American population in Melrose more than doubled in the past ten years. The census only began to separate out statistics on Asian-American people in its aggregate data in 1990, so it is currently impossible to get a complete picture of Asian-American population trajectory over time in Melrose, but population growth has been accelerating over the past three decades. In 1990, Melrose’s Asian-American population stood at 321.

The Latino population likewise more than doubled in the past decade. “Spanish origin” first appeared as a discrete category in the census of 1980, when Melrose reported a population of 165. Since then, Latino population growth has been steady.

In short, the results from the census show a trajectory of greater racial diversity and overall population growth in the next ten years.

The graphic below was taken from the Boston Globe; for full census data on every city and town in Massachusetts, please visit their website.

Affordable Housing: Congregational Retirement Homes

About one-third of all of the affordable housing stock in Melrose, 324 units altogether, is owned by the Congregational Retirement Homes, and is found in their three buildings: the Levi Gould House at 200 W. Foster Street, the Fuller House next door at 101 Cottage Street, and the Jonathan Cochrane House at 80 Grove Street.

These hundreds of apartments are the direct result of a conversation that started in First Congregational Church’s Social Service Committee in 1961. Concerns about the fate of the elderly people of Melrose led the committee to conduct a study on how best to serve them. With the full support of their congregation, and the leadership of their energetic pastor, Clarence W. Fuller, the committee decided to take on what may have been the most ambitious mission project in the long history of Melrose’s houses of worship.

Their timing could not have been better. The Federal Housing Act of 1959 had established under Section 202 a program whereby private non-profits could apply for federally funded, long-term, low-interest rate loans that would cover up to 99.5% of construction costs for low and moderate-income senior housing. In 1965, the housing non-profit established by the church with Reverend Fuller as president was among the first in Massachusetts to apply successfully under the program.

At first, the Zoning Board rejected a proposed eight-story plan for the Gould House; the church resubmitted a six-story proposal with the same number of units a month later, and won the variances it needed. Ground was broken the next year, and the Gould House opened in 1967. The first building was such a success that the church applied for a second Section 202 grant in 1972 to expand their campus with the Fuller House. In 1977 the church won a third Section 202 grant to construct the Cochrane House, which the Zoning Board quickly approved, citing their “great confidence in the moral force of the First Congregational Church.” It opened in 1979.

Starting in the 1980s, Congress began to defund Section 202. Although the law is still on the books, no funds for new Section 202 projects have been available since 2011.

Introduction to Affordable Housing in Melrose

After a year of study, this month the city is scheduled to release its Housing Production Plan for approval by City Council, which will include recommendations for how best to increase both the total amount of housing stock in the city and the inventory of affordable housing in particular.

As the city contemplates how to implement those plans, we would like to provide context through a series that tells the stories of how Melrose’s current stock of affordable housing was established. “Affordable Housing” in this series will be defined as housing eligible for inclusion on the state’s Chapter 40b subsidized housing inventory (SHI). You can read more about those guidelines here:  https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/10/18/mhphandbookzoning.pdf.

Such housing is not evenly distributed. In fact, the vast majority of SHI-eligible units in Melrose are located in just seven developments. Each of these living spaces took strikingly different paths to realization, encountering different legal hurdles along the way and relying on differing funding streams to finance them. What they had in common was the passion of certain individuals and organizations in the community who stopped at nothing to see them built.

We hope that telling these stories will inspire renewed passion in our community to create the housing that Melrosians need in 2021.

P.S. This series would not be possible without the dedication of the Melrose Public Library’s reference staff, who over the course of decades compiled a series of news clippings on housing which you will see throughout these postings.

The Mascot

There were many other mascots at Melrose High School before there was a Red Raider.

In the first half of the twentieth century, a “mascot” was not a person in a costume; it was a living good luck charm, typically a cute pet or a charismatic kid, although endearingly eccentric adults would occasionally fill the role. Because their careers were so short, often lasting just one season, they leave almost no trace in the record.

We only know about the little dog who served as the girls’ field hockey mascot in 1923 because Ruth Gurnett’s yearbook entry happens to mention that she was charged with escorting him around the field.  We only know that 4-year-old Helen McPheters served as the girls’ basketball mascot in that same year because of a chance surviving photo of the team which includes her.

While we have no similar evidence for boys’ team mascots at MHS, we know that they were as common with men as with women. Hence you see MHS graduate Frank Selee, manager of the Chicago Nationals (later the Cubs) sitting with the club mascot on his lap in 1901, and six-year-old David Balfour leading the Melrose Auxiliary Firefighters’ Department in 1942.

The “Red Raider” did not begin as a mascot. It was a nickname adopted by journalists in the late 1930s and early 1940s to describe the boys’ football and hockey teams. Around that same time, many other local hockey and football teams that wore red were beginning to be described in the same way.

The establishment of the “Red Raider” as a Native caricature took several years to develop. The old definition of a mascot as a living talisman gradually faded in importance, replaced by a warlike costumed figure who could compete in the context of neighboring teams called “Sachems,” “Sagamores,” and “Warriors.”

The Red Raider made sense to children of that generation, who were raised on the Native stereotypes of TV Westerns and grew up in a city that was by design over 99% white. We look forward to seeing what makes sense to the present generation when they begin the process of choosing a new mascot that reflects and respects the full human diversity of their student body.

The Melrose Free Press

This past Thursday, July 29th saw the death of one of Melrose’s oldest institutions. After nearly 120 years of weekly publication, the Melrose Free Press ceased its run.

The MFP’s inaugural issue was published on November 15th, 1901. It was Melrose’s third newspaper, competing for readers with the Melrose Journal and the Melrose Reporter. While it promised much of the same coverage, the MFP differed from its competitors in one key way: as its name proclaimed, it was free. The newspaper was delivered to the doors of thousands of Melrosians, no subscription needed.

The paper was founded by S. G. Potter, who had previously worked for the Journal, and had been a co-owner of the Reporter. He brought on veteran Boston Globe reporter George H. Dearborn to serve as editor. Rounding out the team was twenty-year-old Arthur M. Blackstone, who drew political cartoons on Melrose subjects, a first in the city’s journalistic history.

This formula worked, and the MFP became the city’s dominant newspaper. In 1939 the company constructed a suitably impressive building for itself at 40 West Foster Street; it was knocked down to make way from the TD Bank drive-thru in 2010.

In 1930 the paper hired Dorothy Raymond, a recent Melrose High grad, as a receptionist. By 1942 Raymond was the paper’s editor, a post she would hold until 1987. She also served as the first female president of the Massachusetts Press Association.

In 1991 the MFP was sold to the Community Newspaper Co., a subsidiary of Fidelity that had bought up most of the Boston suburban newspapers. It has been in corporate ownership ever since, most recently being absorbed by Gannett Media in 2020. In recent years the paper has weathered the decimation of advertising revenue that accompanied the rise of the Internet, and an ever-shrinking staff. The newspaper has not had a full-time Melrose reporter since September of 2019.

A new, amalgamated successor paper will now publish news about Melrose and four other communities. 

Gangs of Melrose

In 2021, teenage gang activity is not a concern in Melrose. Things were different in 1954.

As the weather had warmed that spring, tensions had grown between adults and teens, as youth would loiter on Main Street in the evening, acting boisterously and annoying adult passersby. A group of teenage boys with access to cars, whom the Free Press dubbed “hotrodders,” had made a reputation for themselves on Main Street from Wakefield to Malden.

On June 1st they gathered at Brigham’s ice cream parlor (now Bruegger’s). The fed-up waitstaff called the police. Patrolmen Patrick Walsh and Melvin Crosby responded, and asked the gang to disperse. They refused. As the Boston papers would report, many of the boys were from well-connected Melrose families. A police spokesman later said, “They, they’ll tell you, [that] they know their constitutional rights. Their fathers pay taxes. They have a right to stand on a street corner if they want to. That sort of stuff.”

Facing an impasse, the officers elected to arrest a boy they identified as the ringleader. As they passed down Main Street towards the police station, the gang surrounded them, and pushed the two officers through the plate glass windows of the Melrose Army-Navy Store (now Lilah-Rose). A long sliver of glass punctured Walsh’s lungs; Crosby suffered broken ribs.

Melrose was aghast. The members of the gang were rounded up, a volunteer police force of 50 was brought in to patrol Main Street at night, and the Aldermen passed a tough-on-crime anti-loitering ordinance empowering the police to arrest anyone obstructing a public way without a warrant.

One anonymous teenage letter-writer to the Free Press mounted a defense of his cohort, writing that “I, like the rest of my friends, have been subjected to lectures, pointed remarks, and repudiations of all kinds,” but that the problem for youth in Melrose was that, aside from Main Street, there simply wasn’t anyplace in town for teenagers to gather. Adults, he alleged, had created this problem.

True to their privileged backgrounds, none of the boys charged with crimes seem to have been prosecuted. Sixty-seven years later, the anti-loitering ordinance is still on the books.