The area of Norwood known as Guild Square might not technically be called a “neighborhood,” however all that it contains is intricate to all the neighborhoods and areas of Norwood. The area at the start of Walpole Street and the split at Washington Street was farmland owned by Aaron Guild and his brother Moses Guild. It was from this farm that Aron left his plough and with his farmhand went to Concord in 1775 to fire on the retreating British. It was the site of the first meetinghouse that established the Second Parish of South Dedham in 1736, which was the initial step to the village of South Dedham in becoming the town of Norwood.
This Norwood block contains not only the Morrill Memorial Library, built in 1898, in memory of Sarah Bond Morrill daughter of Norwood industrialist George H. Morrill and his wife Louise, that continues to serve all in the town of Norwood a walk around it’s illustrious block will be the placard of some of Norwood’s most prominent community endeavors.
At one time it saw the vast estate of the Edmund Shattuck family who donated the land for Shattuck Park as green space for Norwood in 1924. A stroll down this portion of Winter Street will have you on “Doctor’s Row” where the physicians of Norwood Hospital had their houses and offices. When you join Washington Street you would have found the Norwood Civic Association, the progressive organization started by George Willett to have a place for Norwood’s immigrants who came to work in the town’s industries to assimilate socially into their new community. This corner also was the setting of the first industry in Norwood, the Everett Furniture Factory, which after fire destroyed it became the site of the Norwood Hospital. We can see Norwood’s first Junior/Senior High School, now the Guild Medical Building, and of course the Norwood Post Office sits on the land that was once the Everett School, teaching upper elementary and junior high children. Across the square was the Guild School teaching the lower elementary age children, and that became the Talbot Block with apartments and businesses as it is today. Guild Square Park the resting place of our many service memorials, and in older days a bandstand for concerts, today remains the a restful place to stop and relax.
Guild Square and its “walk around the block” environs, may be small, yet it holds so much of Norwood’s history and continues to serve all the neighborhoods of Norwood.
Development/Growth of the Area
Winter Street (from Walpole St to Lothrop Rich Park)
Intersection at Washington & Winter
Post Office Square /Guild Square Park