1923 Planning Board Report-Existing East-West Through Streets and Diagonals

When the main thoroughfares of Norwood were laid out a century or more ago for a convenient approach to fields and pastures and to connect knots of houses or villages with one another, less continuity was secured in the east-west routes than the north-south. As the north-south streets served to connect Boston with Providence and with other large towns lying toward the south and southwest, the traffic of those days forced these radial highways and their diagonals into a semblance of directness. The east-west thoroughfares, however, were only stressed by the much smaller and lighter traffic streams leading from Wellesley and Needham to Sharon and Canton. As a consequence the existing east-west thoroughfares are crooked and they jog or end at Washington Street, as shown on the accompanying diagram. Moreover, less interest was shown in choosing lines of good gradient for these highways. Their present alignment is also evidence of the comparatively slow development of high ground of the Town to the east and the low ground to the west. These tracts originally served as woodlot and back pasture areas, or were abandoned as “wasteland.” Today they have become the most available land for residential purposes, but they are handicapped for lack of through lines of street, and for want of direct connections across Washington Street, and especially across t lie railroad tracks. The owners of land in the districts between these widely spaced streets are, of course, wholly unable to cope with this situation. If the matter is not remedied now while the construction of new streets by private owners is in progress, and while the direction and the width of these privately planned streets is capable of adjustment without cost, the Town will he put to exceedingly heavy expense later lo remedy defects after they have been fixed. The Town, as well as the owners of the land immediately effected by these routes, can depend for help only upon the Planning Board as the responsible agency to secure in such cases cooperation which is both needed and desired. As a whole the cast-west thoroughfares, with all their faults, arc well distributed over the largo areas of vacant land of I he Town. The needs which can lie supplied at. little or no cost if taken in hand promptly are: a greater number of through routes in the wide interspaces, greater straightness in the present route, greater width, and elimination of dead ends and jogs.