Garden State Utopia, a 2001 Newton North High School junior thesis project by Julia Werb, provides an in-depth history of the creation of Oak Hill Park – Newton’s post-war planned community for returning WWII veterans. There are striking parallels between that history and today’s contentious political fights over today’s development issues.
This past Friday, Oak Hill Park history came even more alive thanks to some dramatic domestic archaeology by Jon Melick. Jon and his family were original residents in Oak Hill Park when it was first built. Even though he moved out of Oak Hill Park in 1977, he still is endlessly fascinated by the history of this unique suburban neighborhood. In 2017, he wrote a memoir about growing up in Oak Hill Park that captures much of the feel of the neighborhood back in that time and fills in lots of details.
Jon’s house was at 6 Caulfield Circle, at the end of Spiers Road. He recently learned that the house had been sold and will soon be demolished and replaced by a new home, following the same fate as the majority of those original post-war houses in Oak Hill Park.
Jon tracked down and contacted the developer, Vlad Sirotin of MIR Realty. Jon hoped to get into his childhood house one last time before it is demolished, in hopes that he could retrieve a few mementos that he believed may still be in the house.
Jon and Vlad arranged to meet at the house last Friday afternoon. Jon brought a treasure trove of interesting material related to his house in particular and to Oak Hill Park in general. He had the original deed and order form for the house, and a map of the Oak Hill Park phase 1 lots. His parents chose their house lot at City Hall from that map in the 1940s. He had a large stack of all kinds of photos from the early days of Oak Hill Park, including an aerial photo that his father took from the cockpit of a friend’s airplane.
After sharing lots of stories and providing a tour of all his Oak Hill Park memorabilia, Jon went to work on his domestic archaeology project. The first stop was his childhood bedroom. Back when he was a kid he had a coin collection. One day while he sat on the floor with his coin collection, one of the coins got away from him and fell into a tiny slot behind the baseboard along the bedroom wall. He never was able to retrieve the coin because you’d have to pull the baseboard off the wall to get at it. So last Friday Jon went to work with a pry bar and pulled the baseboard off.
Alas, no coin was found. Jon definitely was a bit disappointed.
Next up, he pulled down the retractable stairs that led to the crawl space/attic above. He disappeared through the hatch with a few tools, and then the whole house was filled with hammering, banging, and all kinds of noises. Next, pieces of wood began raining down from the hatch. After about 15 minutes, Jon came down the ladder and showed what he had found.
When Jon was a child, his grandfather was the president of a company out in Worcester called the Wright Machine Company. Jon remembered that his grandfather had brought lumber from his company when they were finishing off the crawl space. Friday afternoon Jon retrieved a stack of his grandfather’s old boards from the attic.
That house will soon be gone, much like the majority of those original Oak Hill Park slab houses. Last Friday, Jon was able to retrieve some childhood mementos before the house is gone forever.