
Click image
for larger view Directory
of Houses &
About the Information
On These Pages
_____________________
Questions, Comments?
E-mail kliss@muddyriver.us
|
| Year
Built:
Permit Date:
|
1926
11/1/1926 |
|
Architect: |
Harold
E. Dicks |
|
Builder: |
Sherman
& Fennell |
|
Cost
to Build: |
$8,000 |
|
Owner
(On Permit Date): |
Charles
Johnson, Boston |
|
First
Residents: |
William
& Mary McManus |
The McManus family, which
lived in this house from 1930 until about 1942, owned and operated
the Wiliam H. McManus Funeral Home at 54 Harvard Street for many
years. Mary McManus, who was 24 years younger than her husband,
became the proprietor after William's death (in 1934 or 1935). Mary's
sisters, Marion Wall, a dressmaker, and Margaret Wall, a buyer,
also lived here.

The 1930 U.S. Census
showed the residents as: William H. McManus, 60, undertaker; Mary
G. McManus, 36; and Marion Wall, 46, (sister), dressmaker. (Margaret
Wall joined them later.) The house was valued at $18,000.
John Scahill, a realtor,
and his wife Ann were the next residents, listed in the Street List
for just one year (1942).
They were followed by
Betty (1899-1974) and Robert Tishman, who moved here from Boston,
and lived in this house until about 1956. Robert Tishman (1898-1995)
was co-owner of the F&T Restaurant and Diner in Kendall Square,
Cambridge, which he founded with his best friend Isaac Fox in 1924.
The restaurant, according to Tishman's 1995 obituary in the Boston
Globe, was "a landmark for hungry Cantabridgians for more
than 50 years" with a four-foot high sign that "beckoned
passers-by to 'EAT' deli sandwiches and daily specials on red-covered
stools behind a long wooden bar flanked by gleaming silver coffee
urns and sandwiched between a stamped-tin ceiling and linoleum flooring."
For more on the F&T,
see "F&T
fans recall good talk and good food."
The Tishman's son Maynard,
along with Isaac Fox's son, later took over the restaurant and operated
until it was bought and razed by MIT. The Tishman's daughter, Phyllis
together with her husband Bernard Rothstein, continued to live at
the Greenough Street house, at least briefly, after her marriage.
|