Needham History: An Italian Palazzo in the center of Needham wickedlocal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wickedlocal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This week, April 27 marks the 165th anniversary of the organization of the Baptist Church in Needham.
This is, of course, an event to be celebrated within the congregation. But it is also important to the town as a whole since it lies at the convergence of two important events that created the downtown as we now know it.
The first event is the amendment to the MA Constitution in 1833 that ended taxation to support the established church. Massachusetts was the last state to sever the ties between church and state (no, it didn’t automatically happen in 1776).
In Massachusetts, going back to the early 1600s, the definition of a “Town” was a church, a school, and the tax base to pay the minister’s salary. The church was literally the foundation of the town and the concept of the separation of church and state would have been purely meaningless to these folks.
Needham History: The Norfolk Rifle Rangers
Gloria Greis
Needham History Center & Museum
The United States Army was founded on 14 June 1775, when the Second Continental Congress created a unified force to fight the British. George Washington was appointed its first commander.
Washington rode to Cambridge to take control of the Army, arriving on July 3, 1775. Washington assumed his command on the Cambridge Common – it is said, under the large elm tree that once grew in the middle of the intersection of Garden and Mason Streets.
The elm tree died in 1923 (by then it was in the way of traffic anyway), and is represented by another elm at the nearby edge of the Common.
Needham History: On the road
Gloria Greis
Needham History Center & Museum
I gave a talk last week on the impact of transportation on the development of Needham. Perhaps because this is fresh in my mind, or perhaps because I am writing on a Friday and only a few hours from Cocktail Night, I decided to elaborate on one important component of that network – the Taverns.
The lovely house at the northwest corner of Great Plain and Central Avenues bear a sign identifying it as the “McIntosh Tavern Site.” The tavern itself, both its commerce and its building, are long gone. The sign, however, reminds us of a time when this corner was the center of Needham life.