 Welcome to the Olschwamil's October presentation. This evening, our lecture program will be delivered by Richard Duffy. The topic is Arlington in 1970, Looking Back 50 Years. The talk tonight complements the special exhibit at the Olschwamil that celebrates 50 years as a museum, celebrating the transition from working factory to living history museum. And we encourage you to please send questions, either to YouTube or to Facebook, or please send your questions by email to infoatolschwamil.org. And we encourage you to come to the Olschwamil on Saturdays and Tuesdays to see the exhibit toward the museum. We are open 10 to 4 Saturdays and Tuesdays. So this evening, I would like to introduce our speaker, Richard Duffy, who for the past 25 years or more has been the town historian of Arlington. He has been active in the Arlington Historical Commission, Arlington Historical Society, the Olschwamil, and he is the author of three books in the Images of America series books on Arlington. So without further ado, here is Richard Duffy. I certainly miss the energy of the live audience, but I know that you're all out there. And although I wish we could be gathering in the mill, I'm really grateful for these opportunities. So as Ed said, without further ado, I'm going to present a half century ago, Arlington in 1970. I chose this typeface, which is called Cooper, because it's nice and bubbly 1970 typeface. And I guess I would nickname it the Marsha Brady of typefaces. And beneath that I have used a typeface that will be familiar to any of you who used an IBM Selectric machine with the ball type element. And that would be a Franklin Gothic script. So I wanted to give this a 1970 feel in just about every way I possibly could. Needless to say, I've had to leave a lot of material on the cutting room floor. And if you have any questions afterwards, I'll do my best to answer them. But in any event, welcome to the virtual old Schwann Mill. As Ed mentioned, the purpose of this talk, which was to have been given last spring, is to help celebrate the semi-sentennial of the old Schwann Mill as a living museum. And the Schwann Mill Preservation Trust in 1969. So the 50 year clock started ticking last year. And in hindsight, we are more than grateful for that, because it was during 2019 that we were able to dedicate Mill Pond Park. You see the beautiful marker stone here in the park directly in front of the Schwann Mill building. So this talk that I'm giving tonight is simply a continuation of that commemoration and that celebration. And we will look at 1970. And it's without any kind of hyperbole that I describe it as a truly momentous year. So I've organized it by theme. It was going to be too confusing to go from January to December and keep the important themes together. So for example, schools, recreation, social challenges, I'll define those real estate, are treated as topics for the entire year of 1970. Semicornologically, I follow the politics and government changes, the election cycle. And I will include some commercial breaks. And this is my device to be able to share with you some of the more fun, nostalgic images of businesses and activities that wouldn't fit neatly into these more, shall we say, academic categories of the talk. My images are from the most part from the year 1970 with a few from the early 1970s. And here's one example right here. This is the stop and shop and looming large above it was once the pride of Arlington, that being the gas holder that went up in the 1920s when Arlington was manufacturing its own gas from coal at a plant on Grove Street. But by the 1970s, it was an ugly and hated object and it didn't come down until 1975. But unless I have something in an image of later years that would be grossly anachronistic that I needed to point out, we'll all just pretend that the images are from 1970. And if you see a 1973 Plymouth satellite, well, you'll just assume they knew someone in Detroit. The reason I have so many photographs from the year 1970 is that at the Historical Society, we have many bound volumes of original copies of the Arlington Advocate newspaper. And there's a funny story behind this 22 years ago when the advocate was moving its editorial offices from Water Street to consolidate with the Lexington Minuteman in Lexington Center. I happened to be in the office on some piece of business and I looked at this big bin that was being wheeled toward the back. And I saw all these gigantic bound volumes and then I said, well, what are you doing with those? And they said, oh, they're going into the dumpster. We have no need of them. The advocate is on microfilm and we don't have the space for them in Lexington. Why do you want them? And I said, yes, I don't know where I'm going to store them. So I called up to the Schwann Mill and I spoke to Patricia Fitzmaris, our managing trustee. And I said, I have this historical opportunity. And she said to me, bring them up. So trunkload by trunkload, I brought them up to the Schwann Mill where they stayed for many years before making their way down to the Historical Society. And the beauty of having these original newspapers as opposed to microfilm or the day when microfilm is digitized and we have access from home, is that we can make photographs of the photographs and have reasonably good quality of images that otherwise would be lost. So I'm very glad, 22 years ago, this book that you see in front of you, I happen to be in the right place at the right time and had the right kind of cooperation to preserve. So that's the advocate in 1970 and here's how it looks today. It is exactly half the size. And one of the things you'll notice about this, not only is it half the size, it's about half the page count. And even on the front page, far fewer column inches are devoted to news stories than advertising and other things. So while the Arlington Advocate was the newspaper of record and remains the newspaper of record, we can see that just like many great newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, the London Times, many others, newspaper readership is not the ritual that it once was and you can see that we've had the incredible shrinking advocate. But nonetheless, we're very glad that it's here as it approaches its 150th anniversary serving Arlington. One of the things about the advocate in 1970 that led to such a high page count is that there would be anywhere between two to four pages of brides or fiancés. In 1970, baby boomers are marriage age by the standards of the day in their early 20s. So it's not surprising that we would see this. And today, if we were to look in the advocate and see even a single picture of a bride, we'd be terribly surprised. But this was very much one of the features that kept people subscribing and reading. The other thing dramatically different that was featured in the Arlington Advocate were photographs of car wrecks. It was almost impossible to pick up an issue of the advocate that didn't feature often above the fold on the front page, some kind of a car wreck. And I was curious about this as I kept seeing one after the other after the other and the statistics are scary. There were well in excess of 600 automobile accidents in Arlington. And if we were to have this level of automobile accidents and the amount of personal injury, such as you see depicted here, we would be treating this as an alarming public health crisis. We wouldn't tolerate that for a moment. Cars weren't built as safely as they are now with the kinds of breaks we have the kind of body features. And so you can see that accidents were were really the pandemic of 1970 for lack of a better term. There's a amusing story if we can say that an automobile accident can have an amusing story because there were no injuries. Look in the upper right corner, you will see a Volkswagen bug that has had a head on collision. And what it happened to have the head on collision with was a police cruiser that had come to investigate the truck that you see in the background. And the thing about this police cruiser is that it had only 68 miles on the odometer. It had been tested and just been delivered from the dealership on the same day. And you can see it very quickly met with some significant damage. So back to the Arrington advocate again. And I would just like to mention that as we go through from time to time, you'll see a headline that perhaps uses language that we no longer use. I will remind everyone that in 1970, just as in 1870 language has evolved the words that are used to describe people, describe conditions. And so these should be heard and understood as products of their historical context. So a message from our sponsor. I promise you some commercial breaks and I've decided to start with Avery's radio supply. And the official name of the business radio supply lets you know that it had been in business long before the age of television. But here for 1970, they actually gave a model year of this television. The 1970 Zenith Color TV and it outperforms every previous giant screen color TV. And by giant screen in 1970 that meant 23 inches, which gives us a little bit of a laugh. And you'll also notice that televisions, unless they were portable TVs, were pieces of furniture and they were available in Walnut or pecan veneers. And they were very much meant to be part of the furnishings and not merely entertainment devices. In 1970, starting in the late 60s, it was being discredited by 1970, were concerns that people might be experiencing high levels of radiation from their color television sets. Many, many tests were done. And here's a local business called Czech Ray Laboratories. You see their number at the bottom. And for $12.50, they would come into your home to measure the amount of radiation that was coming out of your color television set. So I won't go so far as to call this a scam, but it was certainly preying on the insecurities of people vis-à-vis their color television sets. And the ultimate conclusion was you were essentially going to have to almost climb inside the television set and stay there in order to suffer. Any significant kind of adverse effect from radiation, but it's an amusing product of its time. Another product of its time was a travel agent. I know many of us at this time are missing travel, whether it is within the country, going overseas. And we would set up all our travel for the most part right on our computers at home. The travel agent has become a very rare bird to set up very special trips on a fee basis. But otherwise we depended on companies such as the Mass Travel Bureau for things as basic as tickets, which in the day were as often as not handwritten on stock. And there were several travel bureaus in Arlington. And this particular agency, I was curious about this in Arlington Heights. I said, I wonder where this little freestanding commercial building is. So I looked and looked and looked, and I couldn't find it until I found it. And what it is, it is the section to the right of Szechuan's dumpling. And although there was not Photoshop in 1970, there certainly were ways to mask the rest of the building and give yourself a much more institutional feel in your advertising, as happened here. So 1970, the old is new. We have the old schwaam mill. It wasn't the old schwaam mill going into it. It was the schwaam mill, informally, and the Clinton schwaam mill as a legal entity. But when it became a living museum, it adopted the name, which it has today, of the old schwaam mill. In January of that year, we have a photograph here of the founding and managing trustee, Patricia Fitzmaris at Wright, receiving the symbolic deed from Mr. and Mrs. Harold Larson, who were the property owners. The Larson's had acquired the mill once Elmer Schwaam had decided that he needed to close up shop. The market for production level oval and circular frames no longer existed. And when he decided to close up shop, the Larson's acquired the property with the objective of tearing it down and building some warehouse facilities on the premises. Patricia Fitzmaris happened to be a member of the, an associate member of the Irlington Conservation Commission, which was very interested in the Mill Brook and what might be done to make the Mill Brook better positioned as a place of enjoyment for the people of Irlington. And on her travels with her bicycle, she happened upon the mill, which was not an object of beauty in its day, but she thought it was something beautiful. And from the moment she saw it and heard its story and understood that it was at risk, she said about trying to save it. And this was fairly late in 1969. And here we are in January of 1970. She's receiving the deed accompanied by a trustee in the Schwaam Mill Preservation Trust named William Abbott, who we'll be hearing a little bit more about later. This was the mill. This is from the Historic American Building Survey. This is the mill in the condition more or less when it would have been when Patricia Fitzmaris happened upon it with asphalt shingling on one side. And very much a working factory and not particularly well kept up because even while it was actively at work as part of the Clinton-Schwaam Company, it was well understood, certainly by the Schwams, that its days were numbered. And many, many people would have looked upon this in the way one would look upon a rundown gas station, any kind of utilitarian building. They would not have approached this and seen it as a splendid example of a formerly water-powered mill, a well-preserved Victorian industrial interior. It took a lot of imagination to visualize a new life for these premises. And that includes the buildings you see to the right, which would be the dry house for the lumber, hence the smokestack, because you needed to heat the dry house to dry out the wood and the barn that served the mill in other times. And all of these buildings still standing and in wonderful condition 50 years after they were rediscovered. Here again is that remarkably preserved Victorian interior, pulleys and lathes and tables and all sorts of equipment. Again, looking every inch, almost you could argue ramshackle. This was a place of work and people would not have approached it as, no, in fact, this is a place of fine craftsmanship. And that was the very problem that led the Schwams to decide that they could no longer stay in the frame making business because fine craftsmanship and frame making had given away to cheap mass production. And there just was not a place for them in that market. Here we see from the 1920s as water and sewer being delivered to the mill. We can see the workers standing outside. And this is a photograph taken in 1970 of Gordon Richardson, who was the Turner at the Schwam mill, who just as we saw Patricia a few frames earlier, seeing the receiving the deed. No sooner than she received the deed than the wheels and the lathe started turning again. This time on a more select custom kind of basis, but the craftsmanship would continue and the craftsmanship indeed continues today. We're going to see a fair number of pictures of the mill from the Arlington Advocate. One of the things that led to the initial fundraising and publicity and and for people to come together and they were not numerous. There were many, many doubters, but but that really caught the eye of many people was that Peter Jorgensen, who is the owner of the Arlington Advocate, the editor and publisher and his wife Kay, who was also a journalist. They both were big fans, not only of Arlington history, but also big fans of the mill. And it is through the generosity of their coverage that we have both this archive and that we had the groundswell of support that led the mill to survive in its early years. It could not have happened with a with an occasional publicity piece here or there. The mill in 1970 was featured easily in 52 issues. The mill had to have appeared in some way, shape or form between advertisements and editorial pieces for a good 40 of those those weeks. And here's one of the advertisements for the old Schwann mill, the Schwann mill was going to need a life turning the occasional custom frame was not going to be what kept it going. So the Schwann mill became a craft center, a use consistent with its historical purpose, but with a much expanded array of offerings, including jewelry making pottery, drawing furniture repair and refinishing woodworking leather craft with an experienced professional teaching staff. So there was a whole course catalog that went out and it ran from from children to young adults to adults, a wide array of classes could be pursued here. And between the professionals who are doing the teaching and the volunteers who were helping to keep the mill going. And one of those volunteers being Patricia Pitts Morris herself, although she was the managing trustee she was throughout her service a volunteer. The old Schwann mill was really on the map in its new life right away in 1970. And this is just one example of woodworking. You may have been thinking of perhaps something more banal but in this case here, woodworking was to craft medieval musical instruments and this musical instrument is called a VL. And it would have been a violin like instrument a stringed instrument that the troubadours would have been known to use in their day, and providing studio space for people to either learn woodworking techniques, or to be craftspeople and artists in residence was a very important dimension in the first decade of the Schwann mill. So let's leave the Schwann mill and talk more broadly about the context in which it existed in Arlington. I'm going to start with Arlington's government, which was experiencing unprecedented pressures. There have been good times and bad times. There was the Great Depression, which certainly was was no laughing matter. But in 1970 Arlington was in a very difficult position. The population was approaching 53,000 today. It's more about 42,000 and it's been that way for the past 30 years, I would say. So Arlington was approaching its population peak. The baby boomers were far from having made their way through the school system. So between new development and population booms and greater numbers of children in families, as well as an aging population, Arlington was in a real financial squeeze. And from the Board of Selectments report that year, they wrote 1970 was a most difficult year. Economy of operations and controlled costs was constantly the principal topic. Loads and loads of money worries. And why? Well, give you a quick idea right here. The services that Arlington was providing, it was taking to the dog pound 400 dogs a year. And yes, Arlington had a leash law. And of those 400 dogs, there would be a good hundred that wouldn't have owners that would come to claim them. And they needed to be fed. So this photograph was taken showing a Sam Femme of the dog officer with an empty bag of wanged dog food. And it was a way to encourage town meeting members to approve Article 41 to provide an allowance of $2 per day to feed the dogs at the dog pound. And even this sad looking little dog, I hope he found a home or his owner, is there to help carry that message across. This is a graph showing the Arlington tax rate. And the reason there was such panic by 1970 about the rise in taxes is you see the very thick black line. And you see how it suddenly jumps up in the year 1966 and keeps climbing on a very steep basis versus the thin line, which was the rate of increase, which pretty much had been tracking on a very even basis right up until the year 1966 when this spike occurred. So you can see here just at a glance what was going on here. And what was driving this trend, one was reliance on the residential base. If this is sounding like a discussion you've heard in 2020, you'd be absolutely right. The situation is largely the same. There was record low state aid coming to Arlington, despite the fact that in 1966, Arlington, forgive me, Massachusetts had implemented a 3% sales tax. And that 3% sales tax was meant to solve a whole host of financial problems, which ended up not happening. The demands were too great. MBTA assessments went up 10%. Middlesex County assessments, we still had a very active and utterly inefficient Middlesex County government. And the charges for Middlesex County had increased by 20%. Added to this were federal grants that existed in the 1960s that had run their course. They were three to four to five year grants that were funding programs such as Head Start, a pilot program having male adult men as classroom aides to interact with children who might have benefited from having a male role model. The town manager Donald Marquis had been with Arlington only four years. He would have a 35 year career almost with Arlington. And he was hard at work studying the problem and what kind of alternatives to tax increases. One could be to reduce municipal expenses that could get unpopular. Something he initiated in 1970 was to reorganize departments to create a department of human resources and natural resources and to eliminate a lot of the duplication and inefficiency in town government. A lot of people had believed up until that time, well, the town manager act and the first town manager who was hired in 1952, that did so much to cut down on the number of elected boards and a lot of the complexity of the town. That, you know, surely our work is done well, certainly it wasn't and Donald Marquis was absolutely the leader to make some very difficult but in the long term what we've come to recognize very wise changes in the way town government was organized. He discussed broadening the property tax base because 80% of the budget was residential tax. And therefore he advocated the creation which was voted in 1971 of a redevelopment board to look for different kinds of businesses, both retail and other types of commercial businesses that might help to support the property tax base. Arlington had a number of businesses that were operating mostly along the railroad corridor and then the rest was retail. Arlington was not a place of large employment. It didn't really have the land that Lexington had on Route 2 because Arlington was developed before 128 was built, whereas Lexington was still comparatively rural. So between 128 and Route 2 Lexington was able to develop the frontage on Route 2 with offices and plants and that was not really available to Arlington. So that was something to struggle with and it wasn't something that was likely to change. In 1970 the largest private employer in Arlington was the New England Telephone Company. It had a business office in Arlington, a business garage with additional business offices above that as well as the telephone exchange that was on Pleasant Street after that came Sims Hospital. So both of those businesses are long gone from Arlington. Changing the tax structure with revenue sharing, again looking more to federal and state support for town programs and developing new sources of revenue, the ever popular increasing fees and again some kind of outside grant funding. One of the issues that was troubling Arlington and was above the fold early in the year on page one of the advocate had to do with the need for low and moderate income housing, an issue we grapple with today. And the league in question here is the League of Women Voters. It's Committee on Human Resources, which was headed by Lenore Winkler, put forth a report and then a panel presentation to examine the issues relating to the need for low and moderate housing. We tend to think of that need today as more providing housing for working people and providing housing for young families who would like to live in Arlington. In 1970, the very strongly identified need was enabling elders to continue to live in Arlington because being unfixed incomes, that kind of tax increase that I showed you in the earlier graph was really compromising the ability of people who were living in Arlington onwards of 50 years to be able to securely and safely live in their homes. It's not a problem that has gone away. More solutions are being sought. But the Arlington Housing Authority was one that had existed from the creation of the Veterans Apartments now in an autonomy manner in the early 1950s. But the Housing Corporation of Arlington, which is a private organization delivering subsidized housing, would not come along until the mid 80s. What did come along at the grand opening in March of 1970 was Winslow Towers, 13 stories tall, 136 living units for the elderly, which later would be expanded to house the elderly and the disabled. And whoever this photographer was, I would love for this photographer to take my picture because this is about the only time you will see Winslow Towers so attractively cited. They took this picture from the front lawn of the telephone company and they even dragged in some tropical plants probably from Mahoney's down the street and stuck them into the foreground so that we could have this very attractive view. When it opened, someone actually sort of had the nerve to describe it as a stately building. I don't think any of us would claim that it's a stately building, but it was providing and continues to provide much needed housing and above all much needed community for the people who live there. And this is one of the residents, one of the very first residents to move in. Here we see her in her one bedroom apartment and very, very happy to be there. She had lived in Arlington her entire life prior to that in her own home on Bates Road and now well into her 80s. She was no longer able to maintain that home and so Winslow Towers came along at just the right time in her life as it did for the many other residents who were happy to call it home. This may seem like a funny picture, a couple of railings. There were no handrails to get into the town hall and one of the things the town was just a little bit ahead of the curve on were facilities for the disabled. Now it's nothing resembling what we've seen implemented since the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and elevators and ramps and curb cuts and all these things. But this was considered newsworthy that in order to help the elderly climb the very short flight of stairs to get into town hall that we ought to have hand railings. It's funny to note that as we speak all the town hall plaza is torn up again to have some more work done on it, which naturally will include facilities for the disabled. So we have an election taking place. Elections happened earlier than they do now. They would happen in the first week of March and that was an old tradition going back to the era when Arlington was an agricultural community. And during the planting and growing season, you needed the farmers out in their fields and so you would try to get rid of town meeting as fast as you could. You'd have your election in the very beginning of March and you would have town meeting and you tried to have it in one or two nights. In a town of 53,000 people continuing, which had a very prolonged town meeting and having elections in town meeting when there was still risks of snowstorm and things like that was not a sensible thing to do. But it took a great many years after this before it was finally changed to April. And during this election I chose this one add to feature and you can see Perry is running for assessor and he has labeled the man who has no clothes and is forced to wear a barrel as a genuine Arlington taxpayer. It was quite an election. Every office was contested. And the result was that 13,000 people came out to vote. If you have any idea of a recent year municipal elections, you realize what an incredible number this is. Over 40% of eligible voters came out to cast their ballots in these contested elections and three chairman of their respective boards were voted out. It was not a year for incumbents. There were 11 incumbent town meeting members who also were voted out to their surprise. So it is a very turbulent time in Arlington. Here we see seated the new board of select men who at the time are still all men. We are a couple of years ahead of having any women serve on the board of select men. The select board as it's known today. Here's a political cartoon. The advocate ran a weekly local political cartoon and the older gentleman here is saying, Hmm, shall we move the chart down or use the ceiling because the Arlington tax rate is soaring and going right off the charts. So the question became, is the Mugar Woods going to come to the rescue? And you might say to yourself, Well, what about the Mugar Woods? We're talking about that now in 2020. And indeed we are earlier this year. And I'll show you an example of the development that is currently being proposed. But to give you a thumbnail history of the Mugar Woods, more than 17 acres of undeveloped land, and most importantly, wetlands in East Arlington, bounded by Thorndag Field, Dorothy Road and Burke Street. It's got its primary frontage on route two. That was the value and it was acquired in the early 50s. So close to 70 years ago by the Mugar family to build a shopping center anchored by Star Market. The Mugars are the ones who own Star Market until selling it in the late 1960s. And they were primarily developers after that. But this was going to be a Star Market development, just like the one at Porter Square. So you can imagine the variety of stores that are and were at Porter Square. Well, something like that was proposed right off of route two here in Arlington. And the idea behind that was to mirror the development that was across the street on the Cambridge side of route two, which included the bowling alley and there was a motel, restaurants, car washes, gas stations. And so the development of both sides of route two was considered something desirable. The shopping center project in Arlington was shelved because the Mugars turned to other areas. They had very big fish to fry in terms of the Redstone shopping center, which was going to have downtown Boston department store branches in it, the Natick Mall. So some really big projects were in front of them. And this was going to be a relatively small project and they just decided not to pursue it. So it didn't get built. Perhaps they wish they had gone and built it when they could have. So what has come along in this year for the 17 acres, you can see a huge portion of it has been reserved not to be built upon. This was a proposal by Oakwood Development to build on some townhouse units that would face Dorothy Road, as well as three apartment buildings that you can see here. And to leave as open space and flood retention area, the Mugar Woods, but there have been for many years, different kinds of coalitions as a Facebook group right now, that say, let us preserve the Mugar Woods as open space as flood control space. Let us not build upon it. So even though it looks as though this is building right on the edge and there's still plenty of room to spare. There are people who have lived through more than one 100 year flood who will tell you differently. The proposal just this month has been cut down. How much it's been cut down, we don't know. We see that the townhouses on Dorothy Road have gone away. But we don't have a sense of how tall these buildings are going to be. And if this is a distinction without much of a difference in terms of being able to leave the Mugar Woods and preserve it in its natural state. And we have an organization today known as the Arrington Land Trust that is very strongly advocating for that. Why the Mugar family who are renowned philanthropists, absolutely tremendous philanthropists to Boston College, Boston University. I can't even begin to name the prominent organizations of Greater Boston that they have supported with millions and millions of their of their hard earned dollars. But for some reason this particular parcel, they have not been willing to to to salad at what might be considered an affordable price so we'll see. And in 1970, they had big ideas and that's why I said it was going to possibly save the budget. And that was this development that you see here that consists of three 19 story apartment buildings. And we're looking towards route to so these apartment buildings are behind a five story office building that's fronting on route to and you see some tennis courts at left and a swimming pool at right above parking garages. It was a $35 million project. The architect was the same architect who had designed Center Plaza, which is the curved building on Cambridge Street that faces government center in in downtown Boston so prominent architectural firms from New York were engaged to put together this very modernistic and pretty remarkable project. And here is a view of it. You can imagine that we're standing in front of one of the three apartment buildings and looking toward the the two other apartment buildings and their garages straight ahead. And to the left is the office building that faces route to and it's assumed that in the office Plaza they would be different kinds of retail amenities. One of the issues about this was it was not receiving necessarily glowing praise the reporting I would say was pretty balanced but the reporting in the advocate on this development was what I would believe not as strong as it should be when you consider the reporting that took place in the Boston Globe. And in the interest of full disclosure, although I never found this in the in the pages of the advocate. David Mugar was the best man at the wedding of Peter and K. Jorgensen so there was a very intimate personal connection between the Muogars and the publishers and editors of the advocate but I will say that from a realistic ethic perspective, they did raise some of the concerns of the neighbors which were primarily around flooding. But what the Boston Globe pointed out was, there are two big issues here. Any kind of power driving is going to go into 80 to 100 feet of Pete flooding is almost assured, and the brochures advertising this were uniformly seeking high income residents. Anyone who would look at this development and say well look you know we need housing and we need some low income housing, and if you have 40 be on your mind the inclusionary zoning act, which had been enacted in 1969. You would be mistaken this was this was proposed at what as what they call a by right project. And what they were going to do was seek rezoning to create a planned unit development zone for the 17 acres town meeting was thrilled to accommodate this, and it ran through as fast as you can imagine. The idea for surfaced right around election time, and by town meeting. By the time it wrapped in April, it had voted to rezoning almost 18 acres, so that construction could begin. By the town meeting looked at it again in the fall, there were more concerns, and you can see that the planned unit development has significantly changed. And if you look at the shaded areas, those are sections of the buildings that would have that could not be built. You can see only one of the three apartment buildings is left intact the other two have been enormously reduced and the office building is literally a sliver of its, of its former self. And so the project did not go forward and just to make matters worse, the state was not going to give this site the opportunity to have access on and off of route to and without direct access on and off the highway. That was just the final nail in the coffin. So in the decades that followed there were other proposals, but it hasn't been until 2020 that we have had a proposal that has gone as far as it has. And interestingly enough, this time making use of the 40 B requirement to supersede any kind of zoning. One of the things Mugar knew was that the red line was going to be extended, and it was going to be extended to a life. And here we have a view of John bill of her who at the time was on the board of select man, standing with 1970 Lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Michael Dukakis, he was the running mate of Boston Mayor Kevin White, they did not win election that election was won by Francis Sergeant who Dukakis four years later would go on to beat and begin his first non consecutive term as governor. But here he was out in Arlington for a photo op to survey the area where the Elwife terminus of the red line was to be built. It still was not proposed to go beyond Elwife. We there's a lot of that but that happens much later in the 70s. And of course, the Mugars who were expert developers and had done projects on route nine and many other places. They knew perfectly well that a mixed use residential and office complex with such proximity to rapid transit would be a sure winner. And that's arguably been a reason perhaps even now more than ever to hang on to those acres. So it's time for another commercial break in my story. Three supermarkets in Arlington to were a and P and one was the first national but they were still independent markets doing a great business and great advertising. And this one here is from Danielson's Market in East Arlington. And you see some of the different products there and the one that gave me a laugh is the dishwashing liquid that's called thrill. Now I know that there were many housewives who perhaps had joy at doing the dishes, but I think thrill was taking it a bit too far and it was not a product that that lasted. But in addition to Danielson's we had Monument Market in the center we had the Warren Market later on and Beacon Market and John's Market up in the Heights so a great many local markets the the modern market directly across from the stop and shop that were still continuing to serve their clientele and would do so for for some years to come. I also wonder if it's just a little gentle poke at the first national which was also known as the Finest that Danielson's would have had as its headline the finest foods don't know. And after you've done some shopping you may want to take a break and go to supper at Buttricks and Buttricks what was by this time in 1970 it had been acquired by Brigham's which in the small world department had been acquired by Star Market under the ownership of the Mugars. And Buttricks was being continued as a separate brand it would ultimately be folded into the Brigham's brand, but they thought they would give this colonial restaurant theme, a bit of a go and see if they could expand upon it. And so Brigham's were ice cream parlors and sandwich shops and Buttricks were was this was sort of this was the flagship of Buttricks it was an Arlington headquartered business and and when Brigham's came in they they took over the old Buttricks plant. But here you can see you can get steak French fries and coleslaw for just $1.95. People complain. Often you can't buy underwear in Arlington and I'm very fond of saying if so many people were eager to buy underwear in Arlington I would open an underwear shop in Arlington immediately. The fact of the matter is that purchasing patterns have changed especially as concerns. Clothing and in the 1970s there was intense competition from malls, but old standby still had very loyal clientele and one of these was the Belden and Snow men's store advertising some fantastic polyester short sleeve shirts for Father's Day. And to rain, which was a nine store chain branch of the Boston ladies department store, and a very funny lady of my acquaintance describes this picture as terrain where where shops the best dressed minute woman. 1970 was big it was the first year of Earth Day in the United States and those of you who are around or perhaps you know someone who has a retro T shirt with this logo on it. This was the ecology flag that was the emblem of those concerned with protecting the environment. And this extended nationwide people were were caring more and more about water and air pollution and enacting more and more regulations and Arlington was not immune from that. Here we see an editorial cartoon in the advocate where the line was that Arlington's air is one third less polluted than the air in Boston but we should be able to do better than that. And we see this bird sort of escaping the the bad air of Boston and and making its way into Arlington. What it's failing to show is that Arlington is sending its own pollution problems, those being waterborne problems from the Millbrook from the L wife brook and the Mystic River into the Mystic River watershed and ultimately into Boston Harbor. So Arlington had a lot of work to do itself. Air pollution control is going to add extra cost to the town budget and the reason for that was two large school buildings were still burning coal in the year 1970. And they were going to have to stop burning coal and switch over to oil. So that happened. And the second thing that happened was going to be a ban on incinerators within private buildings. So apartment houses newer apartment houses were built with trash shoots that dropped down to an incinerator. And those were more problem than they were worth because if you didn't close the door in your hallway properly the the burning trash the smoke from the burning trash came right up back through the incinerator door. So that caused a lot of problems and home incinerators, which had been an appliance introduced in the 1930s. All of these burning devices were banned as ways of controlling air pollution. And of course, ultimately, and this isn't particularly pertinent to Arlington, but the elimination of automobile fuel with lead in it would be a major contributor to stemming air pollution. And as for the polluted and largely hidden Millbrook, there were some great ideas being put forth in terms of how can we really use the Millbrook to good effect? Should the town acquire land flanking Millbrook for recreational purposes for restaurants and dining purposes? Do we have an untapped resource in the Millbrook? So some of these designs were developed to give an idea what some sections of Millbrook might be like. And this one here is an idea that was not realized the way you see it. But this is the Ethel Wellington Park. So figure that the year is 1970, the Ethel Wellington playground is on Grove Street adjacent to the tennis courts. And there were already big, big ideas to do something pretty good about that stretch of Millbrook. And it took until 2019 before any of that would come to fruition. So not all plans sparked to life the way the Ultron Mill did. And the Millbrook has been waiting very, very patiently over the decades for its turn. We see some young people here, Boy Scouts, high school and junior high school students, who participated in Millbrook cleanup days that were sponsored by the Arlington Garden Club and the Conservation Commission. And in this particular cleanup in 1970, 75 cubic yards of debris and trash and waste were collected during the Millbrook cleanup. So very significant and getting young people mobilized and getting more of a focus on the Millbrook for the town of Arlington. And in this very fun picture here, which is taken in January, we see the Garden Club in almost a stereotypical pose having a tea party. And this was kind of the idea of, yep, that's what garden clubs were all about. Well, not the Arlington Garden Club. Certainly they enjoyed their tea and they enjoyed their sherry and their pastries. But in order to be a member of the Arlington Garden Club, you had to have dirty hands, meaning you actually had to be someone who personally gardens, who tended to gardens. You could not be someone who admired gardens and liked to visit gardens. I mean, you could be that also. But the Arlington Garden Club was very different. And despite these lovely dressed ladies that you see here, they were very concerned in civic beautification projects and also projects that would clean up the natural environment. And one of those projects that was established in 1970, not completed, but established was Cook's Hollow off of Mystic Street. And some of you, it's adjacent to the QSAC housing apartments and quite close to the police station. And any of you who have walked up the flume, you can trace that back 50 years ago to the very hard work and dedication supplemented by the town acquiring the private property that created the Cook's Hollow area that we enjoy today. Historic preservation bears some relationship to ecology, although not strictly in the water pollution, air pollution category, but rather the built environment and making Arlington a desirable place in which to live by preserving historical resources as value added features. And so what happened in 1970 was that the historic committee was to be disbanded. This was a body of town government, but its unique mission was to support the commemoration of Samuel Wilson, aka Uncle Sam, as a son of Arlington. And we can see a commemorative medal that was for sale during 1970 as a fundraiser to build the statue that ultimately was built. And in 1969, and the second one happened in 1970, in September were Uncle Sam days, which took place around the September 12th birthday of Uncle Sam. And it is those Uncle Sam celebrations that evolved into our town day celebrations. But the historic committee was going to be able to continue its work on a private basis. And instead, historical commission was established in the year 1970. And here we see the original five members of the commission at their very first meeting with town manager Don Marquis. And the one lady who you see here is not other than Patricia FitzMars. She obviously had a vested interest in historic preservation, but did not begin and end with the mill. She became really an all-purpose historic preservation activist and proponent. And it was at the Arlington Historical Commission where I first met Patricia. One of the things that got the historical commission to work because it had set about initially doing surveys and recording. And as a matter of fact, in later years, our own Ed Gordon did some of the building surveys for Arlington. But this was the historical house from 1845 that stood at number 58 Pleasant Street. Pleasant Street had been zoned so that it could have apartment buildings for its length from Mystic Street all the way back to almost its junction with Irving Street. And it didn't mean that everybody was going to put an apartment building there, but several did. And this was a project and it involved the taking down of three very significant historic houses. This one obviously could not be saved. But the Jarvis house was able to be saved quite creatively. What was going to be built as a matter of zoning right were four-story apartment blocks and a, I guess I would call it a compromise was arrived at that said, we will allow you to build up to five stories in height. If you build around the Jarvis house, which you may recognize at 50 Pleasant Street directly across from the old burying ground. It was a wonderful example of federal architecture. And it was just not a building that anybody wanted to lose. So the arrangement was that the town would acquire the Jarvis house, what was known then as the Saunders house. And the development would proceed with a cap taken off of its original height restriction. This met with pretty widespread approval in the town as a almost as a better than nothing kind of solution and not that bad, but it was not unanimous. They were two people, two members of the planning board who voted against it. They just said five stories is too much and and too bad about the old house, maybe it can be moved somewhere. But, you know, we don't want anything higher than four stories. So one of them went so far as to sue the town, but ultimately you can see that the compromise position prevailed. And speaking of federal houses, we see the what we now know is the Cyrus Dowling Museum, the Jefferson Cutter House back when it was located in Arlington Heights near the Theodore Schwann Mill. And this was a house that would have been very much vulnerable to demolition because there stands the Hyundai dealership, Myraq Hyundai dealership. But the Myraqs arranged for one of our former trustees, David Baldwin, to remove one of the homes that was on the site, which he in turn restored in Belmont Center to make his own home. And we all know that the Jefferson Cutter House was moved with great ceremony down Mass Avenue to become the centerpiece of Whittemore Park. And it is the home of the Cyrus Dowling Museum. And interestingly enough, in 1970, along with a dedicated editorial cartoon on the Advocate, there was a weekly feature on a different work of Cyrus Dowling. And it was sponsored by the Arlington Art Association. There was not yet a Cyrus Dowling Museum, but the interest was very much there. And it was, again, decades in the making. But when it happened, there was really a nice outcome for it. And the Cyrus Dowling has been with us now for a museum has been with us for now three decades. Social changes are on the horizon in 1970. I describe it as the early light of dawn for girls, women, racial minorities, and the disabled. It's nothing compared to the progress that would follow through the rest of the 1970s. And when the progress would begin, it would move quite quickly as the 70s progressed. But 1970, we have, we tend to think that in the 1960s, well, everything happened. We had all the social protest and we had the beginnings of women's liberation movement and gay liberation movement. 1970 was the very first year of a gay pride parade commemorating the Stonewall riots of the year before. Benefits for the disabled who were referred to as the handicapped or even by terms less attractive than that. In the day, racial minorities, well, you know, we had the Voting Rights Act and we had the sacrifice of Martin Luther King. So, well, we have a quality and certainly we have it here in Massachusetts and in Arlington. And of course we know with benefit of hindsight that the work had barely begun. So thus I refer to it as the early light of dawn. Nonetheless, it's worth talking about in 1970 because there were some significance moves. For girls and women, we were still quite tradition bound. 1970 was the 50th anniversary of women's suffrage. So it's the centennial year this year. Interestingly, the Selectment of Towns chose the list of jurors that were submitted to the courts from which in any given year people could be chosen and called in to serve jury duty. And so the Selectment went through the lists of residents and voters to choose suitable people to serve as jurors and it was rather a long list. And on this long list, year after year after year, no women were selected as jurors. Women could be selected to be on the juror list. But were they to do so, and if they were a married woman, they would be listed along with their address. And if they had an occupation, it didn't matter. It was what was the occupation of their husband that would be listed. But since we didn't select any women to be potential jurors, the opportunity for being in a court and with a jury of your peers was not going to be available to the women of Arlington. The only townwide elective office held by a woman was that of Town Clerk, and that had existed since 1923. There had been some men who had been Town Clerks in the interim, but that was the only individual elective office. And in terms of elective office, there were town meeting members and school committee, library trustees, areas that were quite classically viewed as areas of government where women would be expected to lend their particular skills and points of view. Whereas finance committee, well, you know, finance is for men, and Peg Spangler, who later would go on to be Arlington's first elected member of the board of select men, not the first woman to serve, that was Anne Powers-Mahan, who first served as an appointed member of that board. But on the 1970 finance committee, there was Peg Spangler, and I would expect nothing less of her. Social, religious, and service organizations are still gender-based in 1970. And that's whether people wanted it that way or not. I don't know. I'd have to speak to some of the people who would have been active then. I was a boy in 1970, so I don't have a personal point of view on that. And certainly that was the way things went in Arlington as they went in most other parts of the country. There was a new program in 1970 from the Arlington Recreation Department, charm school, and they had no shame to write in the annual report that the girls were not forgotten during the year. And certainly they had volleyball and softball and things like that, but they were very proud of the curriculum that would have girls pay attention to their figure and poise, makeup wardrobe, and this is a direct quote, and so forth. I'm not sure what the, and so forth was. And this program was so popular it was to be expanded the next year. But by contrast, the women's physical fitness program was discontinued due to poor attendance. So you can see that there's a lot of traditional views of womanhood, young womanhood, and girlhood that are being practiced in the Arlington of 1970s. So, you know, they were talking, the Harvard Coop would advertise in its fashion pages, mini midi and maxi skirts for the liberated woman. But there was a big difference between what was happening in Cambridge and what was happening right next door in Arlington. Women were having a growing presence in business and political scenes. The Zonta Club of Arlington had been in existence since 1931. Women were not eligible to join service organizations such as Rotary, and the Rotaryans were not business women. They were supporters of their husbands who were Rotarians. And the Zonta Club was a professional women's organization that was very successful in the 70s. The League of Women Voters. I will talk more about the League of Women Voters in a moment, but we already saw from the low to moderate income housing study, they were involved in a lot more than women's issues. It was a group of very civic minded women who had very broad based community interests and above all community effectiveness. And one of our state reps was a woman, Eleanor Campobasso, who represented several precincts in East Arlington where she lived, as well as a portion of Somerville in what was called the Fifth Middlesex Representative District. And what was funny about the House of Representatives in Massachusetts in 1970 is that it had, excuse me, it had over 240 members. And so you got into weird situations and Arlington had one of them where in a single district, I don't mean a single town, in a single representative district, you would have two representatives. Not all districts had two representatives, but some did. And the Fifth Middlesex was one. So one of the representatives representing the whole district was from Arlington, that was Eleanor Campobasso, and the other one was Michael Pickett from Somerville. You can see she's advertising, making reference to the John Wayne film True Grit, that Eleanor Campobasso has true grit because Eleanor Campobasso dared to speak up and to take a very unpopular position, which was to say the proposal to reduce the number of members of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts should go forward. And people said, oh, no, no, you should leave this to the voters. You shouldn't have a point of view on this. And these were a lot of people protecting their own seats. And Eleanor Campobasso was well aware that, you know, she had a seat that could be lost in a new redistricting, but it was the right thing to do. So she said, the people have the right to decide who their representatives should be and how many representatives should represent them. So a very bold position that she took, yet as we can see in the left side picture, she's in the classic role of serving coffee and donuts, pouring the cream to the poll workers on Election Day. So a very interesting person. And this is not the first time that Arlington had representation by a woman the first time for the Massachusetts House, but not for Congress, because for many years Arlington was in the congressional district of Edith Norris Rogers. One of the things the League of Women Voters did in 1970 was to help implement the Supreme Court's one man, one vote ruling. And what that was going to mean in Arlington was that we needed to have precincts of essentially equal size in terms of the number of residents, not just the number of voters, but the number of people who live there. And this was going to take a very careful drawing of the precinct lines in Arlington. It was going to increase precincts from 14 precincts to 21 precincts, increased town meeting from 240 members to 252 members. And it was painstaking work. And they went about it diligently and thoughtfully and creatively to come up with the right answer, which has endured. And in this editorial cartoon by you can see runners. And why is that? Basically, half of the town meeting members were going to be redistricted. And the reason they were against the whole new precinct project was it was going to mean that the entire legislative body of Arlington was going to have to run again if they wanted to hold onto their seats. And given that 11 incumbents had been defeated in the earlier election, they were not looking forward at all to 1971, but it was quite an accomplishment. Clarice Welsh was the cartoonist speaking of women. She was a resident of 48 Bartlett Avenue and she who provided the editorial cartoons to the advocate. So another piece of women's history for you. Turning to issues of race, Arlington did not as yet as part of a body of government. It would later in the 70s have any kind of civil rights organizations. So those activities were taking place on the personal level and especially at the church level. And Pleasant Street congregational church was very active in that for an academic year. They had a student from the Harvard Divinity School based at the church. And I kind of, Dibinga Wa Sayeed was a Divinity student from Africa. And he said about his time at the Pleasant Street church, as usual, I've often been asked by people inside or outside of this church about what they call white racism in this very church. My answer to them was I did not experience any white racism during my stay in this church. I did not join the church in order to investigate the philosophical tactics of white racism in this church. This was not my main concern. I joined the church because it is the body of my brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ. And so he had a very powerful presence during his year here and then returned to Africa. In the basement of Pleasant Street congregational church was established a nursery school, which is now called the Rogers Pierce School, but which began as creative playmates and it was purposefully developed to be a multi racial nursery school by design. And the thinking was that this program and the medical program that Arrington enjoyed five years earlier would do a lot to make people acquainted with one another from the different races and therefore promote greater racial harmony. Sounds simplistic to our modern years and certainly during this time of racial reckoning, but it demonstrates what was going on at the private level and how the citizens of the town were ahead of the government in terms of getting going on these topics. And lastly regarding the disabled in 1970, there's an organization called the Greater Boston Association for Retired Children. What had happened really up into the 60s was very, very often and on the recommendation of a doctor, let's say a child with Down syndrome had been born into a house where there were already three or four or more other children. A doctor might recommend that the child be institutionalized and that the child be a resident of the nearby Fernolt School. And now there was much more of a movement to include those with developmental disabilities in the regular life of Arlington. And so chapters of what was called Gray Bark, the short name for it got involved and high school students in particular became very active in participating in this organization. And here we've seen advertisement Teenagers March for the Retired and it was a very successful program as well as playground programs that were designed not only for Arlington residents who were at home with their parents who had significant developmental disabilities such as Down syndrome, but also and this was a big change in the way of doing things. The children of Arlington parents who were resident at the Fernolt School, they would come over from the Fernolt School and participate in the Arlington structured playground programs. So this was a big move forward towards the institutionalization that would really take hold later in the 1970s. So a pause for station identification and what am I advertising radio station WCAS which was called WICCAS and it served WICCAS Island and believe it or not WCAS stood for Cambridge Arlington Somerville. It was what I would call hyper local radio really well regarded for its news coverage and its talk shows. It was 740 on the AM dial not that many people had FM radios then and United Press International awarded them two years in a row a radio award. So it was hyper local radio but it had a huge base right here in Arlington and some of the topics that you would have heard me talk about in this talk you would have heard if you tuned in to WCAS commercial radio for WICCAS Islanders. If radio wasn't entertaining you you could go to the capital of the region theater which were under the same ownership by this point of the Viano family. And one of the things that was showing was the 1970 Academy Award winner for Best Picture which was Midnight Cowboy and I would hazard a guess that this was the one and only time that an X rated movie you can see that little X next to Midnight Cowboy that an X rated movie was shown in Arlington cinema. Not during the Saturday matinees needless to say. Speaking of region imitation is the greatest form of flattery and region cleaners was named after the theater not related to the theater right on Medford Street. And the reason I include this is this was the era of trading stamps and everybody was giving out S&H green stamps top stamps plaid stamps supermarkets gas stations. And as you can see here even the dry cleaner was giving out trading stamps and happy families pasting them into books to get great prizes and merchandise. And banking for the most part was local. The only out of town bank in Arlington in 1970 was the Harvard Trust Company which had acquired monotomy trust about 20 odd years earlier. But 1970 would be the last year for the Arlington National Bank a bank that had been established in 1911. And it was a commercial bank. And the very next year it would be acquired by Coolidge Bank and Trust of Watertown. And thus would begin little by little so that eventually they would be no Arlington headquartered banks in Arlington until 2002 when leader bank came to town and suddenly Arlington headquartered banks were were back on the map but they were once a big thing. So getting to the last two big chapters in this talk Arlington confronts the drug crisis. In Arlington the statistics were daunting especially among teenagers drug use not only involving marijuana but marijuana as a gateway drug use of LSD use of heroin deaths by drug overdose happening in Arlington. The deaths were not many but really you know any death of a young person is is a tragic death. And this is what Arlington was facing drugs had been glamorized certainly that was a one of the outcomes of the 60s. And and there was the soft drug culture and the you know get high tune out mentality that was being very widely promoted. So this was a problem in Arlington and Arlington decided that they needed to confront it was getting out of control. So one of the first things it did in 1970 was to set up a drug hotline and if you needed help or information confidential calls and it operated on Friday or Saturday evenings. And it was based out of Sims Hospital Sims Hospital at that point was 180 bed very successful and still with room to grow hospital and they provided the room for it. New England telephone provided the phone line and John bill of first seated here was one of the top supporters of getting this drug program into Arlington. And here's John bill of her again John bill of her cared deeply about his hometown of Arlington and especially about the young people of Arlington. So he was very involved in the teen center there was a drop in center for teens. And here we see ID cards were were being issued to the teens. But what Arlington really needed was a drug counseling center and over at 12 Prescott Street the Knights of Columbus were getting ready to tear down this Queen Anne style building to create some parking for themselves right across from the Knights of Columbus Hall. They had been renting out the building but they expressed a willingness to rent it out to be used as a drug counseling center was not going to be a residential center was going to be an outpatient center and they would instead of tearing it down they would rent it out for a very reduced price. So this proposal came forth to the town. And as you can see by the 400 people who attended the meeting there was tremendous anxiety that such a facility should be put there. People feared firstly that it was going to be a drop in center which it was not it was going to be appointments only and they feared that it was going to attract drug dealers. There was a lot that just wasn't knowledge at the time. And people could call it not in my backyard nimby ism. But at the end of the day there were a number of concerns and people wanted to have those concerns be heard so that they could understand exactly how is this place going to operate. Who is going to be around it were drug dealers likely to be lurking on the corner waiting to to make a sale opportunistically and tremendous amount of protest against it but ultimately public opinion was such that look the drug problem is here we cannot hide from it. And this needs to go forward and indeed it did go forward. But that house was not ready for occupancy it took a huge amount of volunteer work much of it done by teenagers and shirtless men and they were involved in very much of a grassroots endeavor to turn this house into an appropriate counseling facility. And so it was that by November it was furnished and ready for its open house under the official name of the Arlington Youth Consultation Center the well known AYCC. And the AYCC this year therefore celebrates its 50th anniversary I know that it's it's celebration celebration of it has been deferred because of COVID but nonetheless it continues to provide a very important service to the town. It's been based for most of its years out of the Wittemore Robbins House but it got its beginnings at this drug counseling center at Prescott Street. And in the year 1970 in the summer of 1970 there was an intern from the Masters of Social Work program at Boston College who came to Arlington a young lady by the name of Miss Patsy Goins and that is none other than Mrs. Patsy Kramer who went on to lead the AYCC and indeed the Department of Human Human Services in Arlington and now she's running our market and our activities at Town Hall so you see Patsy everywhere around town and if you run into her please be sure to wish her a happy 50th anniversary of her service to Arlington. Interestingly enough in the year 2020 50 years later marijuana is legalized and it is being sold currently at one dispensary there are other dispensaries under consideration but this one is up and running. In the heights in the former Harvard Trust Bay Bank building that for many years housed Swifty printing and what's the big concern on the minds of people I pulled this chart from the Boston Globe. It has to do with the fact that the average retail price of prepackaged marijuana is the highest in the nation compared to other states. So where marijuana went from being a deeply feared substance in Arlington viewed uniquely as a gateway drug and a crime you can see that 50 years later we're complaining about something different where marijuana is concerned. At least some people are. And the last big chapter is the Arlington school system. It's bursting at the seams. The baby boom is in full swing. And we have so many kids in schools that we have had to at several schools. This is the scene at the pier school in the heights the old pier school it's since been rebuilt of what we're called demountable classrooms otherwise known as portable classrooms. And these were set up pretty much at any school that had available land to stick a few other classrooms and we see the kids here. And I'm pretty confident that the learning that went on inside these rooms were was as good as the learning that went on inside the main school but clearly this could not be a long term solution. I will mention as an aside Florida which just never stops having increases to its population. Its own portable classrooms don't stay up for five or 10 years. Sometimes they stay up for decades in a hurricane belt. That's a big deal. But Arlington did not keep its portable classrooms longer than 10. Here we see the cutter school at left and the lock school at right. And a very expert survey was commissioned of Booze Allen Hamilton consulting firm. And their recommendations were that the cutter school be torn down and the lock school be torn down and that new school buildings be built on the site. They obviously had a cloudy crystal ball because about 10 years later those schools were closed and they were not replaced with other schools. The school age population had dramatically dropped and in fact they have both been converted to condo use and over and above taking these schools away and expanding other schools and replacing schools. There was to be a 10th public elementary school. We only have seven of them now but a 10th public elementary school that was to be built somewhere in the Washington Street Summer Street area to take care of the 1960s developments that had gone up there. That school never ended up being built. In fact the Crosby School closed in addition to the lock and the cutter and the and the par mentor and new school buildings were built and took their place. And I might add in 1970 not only did Arlington have the benefit of a parochial elementary school from St. Agnes but St. James Parish had an elementary school. And part of East Arlington was part of the Immaculate Conception Parish over the ill wife Brooke in North Cambridge and they had an elementary school. So there were two additional parochial schools to take the pressure off the public elementary schools and yet still as you can see bursting at the seams. Clarice our cartoonist has had a bright idea. She says could apartments above pay for education below. And she's not literally talking about putting apartments and school buildings co locating them. But there was a feeling that more development in the form of apartments was going to improve our tax base and therefore fund our school needs. Here is the graduation class of 1970 from Arlington High School over 600 graduates Arlington was operating a general high school college prep and general education. And in addition the Arlington vocational technical high school program was located here and it would be in 1971 that the townspeople would vote to join the minute and regional vocational technical school district. And that would open up a few years after that. But this was not the biggest class of Arlington grads but it's certainly much much bigger than we than we see today. And the Arlington High School students we would be expecting this is the era of the Vietnam War and but that was mostly happening on college campuses and to the extent protests against the war were happening in Arlington. They were taking place in church settings. The superintendent of school actually remarked in his annual report this would be superintendent Gibbs for whom the Gibbs School got its name. That there was not much in the way of political protest by the students. But as you can see here at the junction of Mass Ave and Highland Ave someone has spray painted the words war to create stop war. So the sentiment was in town. But nonetheless there was unrest. There was unrest with young people everywhere and there was just I'll just cite one interesting example of unrest that took place in Arlington. There was a group of students. It was a warm day in March and they wanted to eat their lunch outdoors rather than in the cafeteria and they were told no. And somehow they were seized with the idea that what they ought to do is storm the office of the high school and seize the public address system and voice a complaint about that to the student body. Well not only did they arrive and do that but a young lady got the very interesting idea to burn an American flag and it was reported that she burned the flag and it burned everything but the field of stars. So she was not expelled from school but she was not allowed to return to school. She graduated with her class but she had to spend the rest of the school year at home. But the police arrested her and she was fined fifty dollars and a period of time to be served in the House of Correction. But later in 1970 the judge said if you would be willing to lead a march of three miles through the streets of Cambridge carrying the American flag. That will be your sentence. So here she is with two court officers. You can recognize them because of their batons marching through the streets of Cambridge with the American flag. So quite an interesting vignette I would say. Story of the weird from the year 1970. No year 1970 would be complete without an homage to Ed Burns and a revered hero here you know at the height of his career as the athletic director the football coach above all the hockey coach. And it is in 1970 that was what was then called the MDC rank the Veterans Memorial Skating Rink off of Summer Street opened its doors and the arena is called the Ed Burns arena of that rank. So a very important period 1970 for recreation in hockey mad Arlington. So coming to the end of the talk what else but holiday nostalgia. So I'm going to run through some things to give you ideas of what might be great gifts for for Christmas or Hanukkah this year. And one of the things and this is true I actually got a sleeve of flash cubes. These were flash bulbs that were contained in a cube. And when one bulb would be burned it would mechanically turn so that you were not changing bulbs with every single frame but you could get four shots out of it. So it was quite a neat device and I remember being very happy to pull one of these out of my Christmas stocking to put in my Kodak 126 Instamatic camera. And you also see a popular product the Bell and how auto loads super eight movie outfit because you could not take your black telephone that was connected to the wall and had a dial and make movies with it. So you needed to have a movie projector. And I chose this little photograph selection of stores because New England photo still there. But the building suffered a fire is seen at right. And of course my Rex Chevrolet has moved to the heights WT Grant Grant was a nationwide chain and you see it here on Broadway next to Helen's pastry shop and the basket and Robbins ice cream and the family shoe store. And you see what they call baby pinups they call these so for 88 cents you could disrobe your baby and someone inside WT Grant and Arlington would would take the picture. So how about that over in the east you could go to Hudson's five and dime there was one on the heights and one in the east or you could stop into Driscoll's card shop to to take care of your greeting card needs. This is Christmas decoration at Belden in snow men's store to your right and Sears and Tibbetts pharmacy to your left. And I love this picture. This is down on Broadway grants is off WT Grant is off to the right and the family shoe store. A lot of people think this is all since shoe store but all since was further down on Mass Ave. This was the family shoe store. But it's just great to see these these ladies out shopping and getting together and meeting and we don't have stores any of the stores like this anymore in Arlington. We have other things and we have wonderful things we just don't have these things. And sadly in the Christmas season during wartime it does not spare anyone and on December the 19 Lieutenant Richard Bazal a graduate of Arlington High School and of the United States. Naval Academy was killed in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. It's easy to forget when it's a foreign war but we had many young men and some women who were in the armed forces. Richard Bazal grew up on Russell Street. He was only 28 years old when he was killed in action and running just beyond Russell Street. A new park opened in 1970. It's on Summer Street and it's a town owned park. The Arlington Catholic playing field is is adjacent to it. But the town owned park opened as fouls pond park because it was in the area that was filled in mostly with with rubbish and capped in what used to be fouls mill pond. And appropriately enough it was renamed in Lieutenant Bazal's honor and it is today's Buzzlefield. The crash at the Central Fire Station was a feature in Arlington for generations. It came to be viewed later in the century that religious displays belonged on the property of religious institutions rather than on town property to avoid any any questions of the establishment of religion and and just certainly as a matter of sensitivity and reflective of diversity diversity of faith or or no faith in the community but nonetheless in 1970 this would be one of the much anticipated features that families would bring their children to to see. And my next to last slide is of this block that will be beloved to many who knew Arlington in the 1970s. At left we have Shattuck's hardware store Shattuck's is the oldest continuously operating business in Arlington by that name the Schwann Mill is a close second but but Shattuck's is the oldest and here it was in all its art deco splendor and we see Helen's Curtain and gift shop beauty parlor and the Pewter Pot muffin house and I pulled this ad out because it seasons greetings from the management and then all the cheerful muffin girls at the Pewter Pot muffin house and I want to leave on this note Hullaback and Coughlin sporting goods wishing peace on earth in 1971 and certainly I hope that the year 2021 will bring us health and peace and harmony just as this sentiment was so thank you very much. Hello Richard we've had many questions come in one right off the bat that East Arlington Walgreens today is at the site of the A&P. In the Heights and it was torn down to make way for the Walgreens Trader Joe's complex and interestingly enough the very first A&P supermarket was converted to become the New England telephone business office and that building is still standing on Mystic Street. Right near the junction of Chestnut Street it's got the green Carrera marble on it but that began life as Arlington's first A&P supermarket. Someone asks if there were recent craft classes at the old Schwann Mill before COVID and if not when did those classes end and I have an idea about this too Richard but. Well you know what Durham I'll let you answer that question. Well I think Patricia with a lot of help from volunteers ran a large number of those classes right through the 1970s but by 1980 she determined that it was becoming a break even proposition and she. I think the class has mostly ended by 1980 and at that point a number of craftspeople at the mill. began doing work that would sort of bring in more regular rent to the mill with with less volunteer overhead but I think they were extremely popular in the 1970s starting of course when the mill opened as a museum. Well they absolutely were. I don't know if my mic on. All right. Which should I have a face over here. One of the things Patricia explained to me that there was a dual phenomenon taking place because not only for the very good reasons you mentioned but for the Schwann Mill people's interest in the crafts was starting to wane in the 1980s in favor of more physical activities aerobics and exercising and physical training. And so obviously we weren't going to be having aerobics classes on the second floor of the Schwann Mill. So there was there were two things at work and she always cited that as a as a factor in getting out of the the crafts and and teaching business. Someone asks if we have any idea how much a color TV set cost in 1970 and was it about proportionately about what you might expect to pay for TV or a screen now. I would have to I would have to Google that and so I'm not sure about the pricing. I did things like. Think about the price of other types of objects like a postage stamp. You didn't ask me a question on that but it used to cost six cents to mail a letter and following consumer price index inflation that would be about 41 cents today. And we obviously know that the price of a postage stamp is is more than than inflation but it's still a superb value especially compared to postal costs of other countries. The cover price of the Arrington Advocate was 15 cents and that would be about a dollar in change today. The cover price of the Advocate is two dollars. So the thing about television sets again I haven't answered that question because I don't have the data. But one thing I would point out is that if you can remember the flat screen TVs plasma and and other types of TVs when they first came out they were tremendously expensive and then they declined. So typically as technology would advance you would see price reductions take place. And in 1970 they were still making television sets in the United States which there's some assembly going on but not much. And they included the furniture and things like that. So I would guess that a cost of a TV was was more. But Google will tell you that and if you Google the words inflation calculator. You can enter a figure in 1970 and it'll tell you what it is today. Okay. Somebody asked and of course the answer here short term is no do you have any photos of the railroad that ran through Arlington in 1970 or any photos of it in that year. But since that's not particularly part of the presentation you might at least comment if you know anything about the railroad in 1970. On the cutting room floor because already this is a pretty comprehensive and long talk. So I stayed away from the railroad except in passing mention but there were several businesses that were served by the railroad. It was only having one passenger car into Boston and back from Boston per day in terms of scheduled commuter rail service but freight service. It wasn't super active in terms of serving Arlington customers but some ones I can name would be Arlington coal and lumber the Larsen terminal Harold Larsen who sold the the schwa mill to the to the trustees was served by that. The frame manufacturer Malcolm Stevens received shipments by rail at the corner of water and Russell Street was a complex known as New England farms and that was a vegetable and fruit packing and processing facility. And they received many carloads of fruits and vegetables that was why that business was established here they had four railroad sidings. Brigham's had its main ice cream manufacturing plant here and it received by train carloads of liquid sugar and strawberries that would come in by rail so and then other businesses in Lexington and Bedford were also served by that line. So there were freight trains passing through Arlington but but not that many businesses that were being actively serviced by by the freight line by the year 1970. And what I'd like to add about the railroad history in Arlington is that the 1885 Arlington Center railroad station was still standing. It had been fallen out of use as a railroad station in terms of being a depot but it housed a taxi company at one point for several years. It housed the Veterans of Foreign Wars post and there was discussion in 1970 of converting it to be used as a meeting place for the senior citizens of Arlington. So it was on the short list to become the first Arlington senior center and somebody had a crazy idea that perhaps it could be restored and a restaurant could be there. But that was a very considered a very silly notion and now we regret that instead of that happening that it in fact was torn down. So there's some railroad history for you in a nutshell in 1970. Somebody asked and I guess this wasn't entirely clear was the Jarvis House moved to its current location or is it in its original location. No the Jarvis House is where it was. In fact that's why it has hardly any front lawn because it would have been more set back from the street but Pleasant Street kept getting wider and wider and wider. But the Jarvis House is on its original foundation. The front portion of the Jarvis House is what was saved. There was a rear and some outbuildings that could not be accommodated but the the main body of the federal structure was preserved and that in fact became the home. Speaking of Arlington seniors that became the very first gathering place. Nothing like the Arlington Community Center today. But the Jarvis House was was the first gathering place for Arlington seniors. And when I was very first on the Arlington Historical Commission in the 90s that was our meeting place before we moved over to the Whittemore-Robbins House. Thank you Richard and let's go out with it. Thank you very much for your talk and Ed will let us know what's up with the mill. A wonderful kind of context for the special exhibit that we have at the mill currently entitled She Did It exclamation point women's saving history which is available on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10 to 4. And please join us on November 12th for Susan Wilson of Brandeis University. She is also the in-house historian for the Parker House Hotel and is a well-known photographer. She will be speaking on innovative women in the Boston area between the Civil War and World War One. And she is a fabulous speaker so we have that to look forward to and we hope you'll join us on November 12th. Thank you.