Welcome to our first Framingham History Center blog post. There has been so much going on around here that this will serve as a bit of a catch up. First – I’d like to thank the McCarthy School students who performed as part of our Very Victorian Christmas program in December. Their singing and dancing was fantastic and brought the most important ingredient of the season to our program – children. It was wonderful having the students and their parents at the Village Hall and the whole McCarthy School community should be proud. Thank you.
Our Shopper’s World Roundtable drew close to 100 people – all eager to share their memories, Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins, and some great information about the iconic mall.
Ruth Colson and Dorothy Yetsina reminisced about working at Jordan Marsh for over 30 years and what a great employer it was. They told us about their group of former employees – The Jordaneers - and how they have an annual reunion. They were actually meeting for lunch on the day of the roundtable.
Bruce Leish read excerpts from “The Day it Rained Fish” (1978) by Sidney Shurcliff – the landscape architect for SW. Apparently opening year (1951) had a few rough spots. In a cost cutting measure, the necessary gravel and hardtop for the parking area was cut in half and by April of that year unsuspecting shoppers came back to find their cars “mired to the hubcaps!” Who knew that the first mall east of the Mississippi was originally slated for Peabody but the developer, Huston Rawls, could not secure the zoning change necessary for its construction. In Framingham – a better location – the ‘“promotion” of a zoning change had been so carefully advanced by Huston that the desired change had been actually adopted.” To view an excerpt from Shurcliff’s book discussing the original design of SW, click here.
Elbert Tuttle spoke about his father representing the downtown merchants who were worried that SW would draw customers away from their shops while on the other side of the political spectrum, Julian Hargraves’ father represented Huston Rawls and knew him quite well. Julian spoke about going to see the prototype for SW in Washington state with his father before the much larger SW was built.
Did you know that on George Washington’s birthday, Shopper’s World gave out cherry tree seedlings free of charge? Perhaps this is why Framingham is abloom with cherry blossoms each spring. If anyone knows of a tree that survived from an SW seedling, I’d love to know.
We will have a full Shopper’s World exhibition this summer once the windows are completed at the Edgell Library and would love to hear from you if you have other stories, memorabilia, etc.
That’s all for now,
Annie Murphy
Executive Director
