Medford market-place made modern.
A half century ago the ancient home of Dr. Tufts and that across Forest street, where was once the Cotting bakery, were standing, and the ‘town pump in working order.’ Spot pond water came later with the stone water trough now gone. The railway station and some store fronts have been changed a little, the Bigelow building and Tufts hall have replaced those named. Otherwise the surroundings of the old Medford market-place are the same today. The near future will witness a marked change; indeed it has already begun. The ‘Withington bakery,’ for several years disused, has been demolished and a theater and business block is there building. Tufts hall, built by Dr. Weymouth in ‘72, the brick building adjoining and the Seccomb house [p. 46] of 1756 (recently known as the City Hall Annex) have all been sold and are all to be removed and a modern business building erected.It is to be hoped that the good taste manifested so long ago by the builders between Salem and old Ship street, and more recently at the opposite corner of Forest street, in reducing the street corners to easy curves, may be there displayed. A similar opportunity will offer itself in the proposed widening of Riverside avenue. That being done, it will only remain for the city of Medford to cure what need not be endured, by the purchase of its neighbors' holdings on both sides of the ancient but much maligned City Hall, and erect on their sites a substantial municipal building such as may spread its protecting mantle over the less beautiful neighbors' defects. Then Medford square ‘bigger, better and busier’ may be made modern, and creditably too. Will this latter ever be history?
