Scout This! Summer 2009

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Winner: Bob Dempkowski

Bob knew that the lion’s head depicted in our summer issue’s contest is above the door of the Homans Building at 350 Medford Street. Built in 1925, the Homans Building is a former furniture factory and warehouse located behind city hall, near the proposed Gilman Square stop on the MBTA’s green-line extension.

Gilman Square was named after wealthy landowner Charles E. Gilman, who sold his holdings in the 1840s. It developed as a commercial center in the 1840s, following the arrival the Boston-Lowell commuter rail line. In 1888, a railway station, the Winter Hill Station, was constructed on the south side of tracks behind the Homans site. Between 1885 and 1940, more homes and businesses arrived. Gilman Square became a bustling civic center with a pharmacy, an athletic equipment store, a post office and a furniture repair shop. In 1940, commuter rail service was discontinued. Winter Hill Station was removed.

In 1998, under the administration of then-mayor (and current Congressman) Michael Capuano, the city purchased the Homans Building for $1.14 million. In 2003, Somerville’s aldermen approved a $7.5 million bond to renovate the building into 52,000 square feet of office space, serving as a City Hall Annex. In 2004, however, Mayor Joe Curtatone announced that his Municipal Property Review Committee had urged the city not to renovate the Homans Building. “The Homans purchase made sense in different economic times,” said Curtatone in a press release from March 29, 2004. You can read the rest at: somervillema.gov/news.cfm?year=2004.