In this screenshot from the 1893 Birdseye Map of Ipswich, the house that John Updike lived in at 26 East Street and the old Treadwell house at the corner of Spring Street are circled. The intersection was historically known as Willcomb’s Corner and Willcomb’s Square because Willcomb’s Store was across the way.
The corner where I now live was recently widened so that the cars going back and forth to the summer colony on the Point would not be troubled to slow down. My neighbor’s house was sold to the town and wrecked and picked clean by salvagers and finally burned in a great bonfire of old notched beams and splintered clapboards that leaped tree-high throughout one whole winter day’s cold drizzle. Then bulldozers, huge and yellow and loud, appeared on the street and began to gnaw, it seemed, at the corner of our house.
My third child (Micheal, born in 1959) a boy not yet two, came running from the window in tearful panic. After I tried to soothe him with an explanation, he followed me through the house sobbing and wailing “ ’Sheen! ’Sheen!” while the machines made our rooms shake with the curses of their labor. They mashed my neighbor’s foundation stones into the earth and trimmed the levelled lot just as my grandmother used to trim the excess dough from the edge of the pieplate. They brought the curve of the road right to the corner of my property, and the beaten path that does for a sidewalk in front of my home was sheared diagonally by a foot-high cliff.
Last night I was coming back from across the street, fresh from an impromptu civic lamentation with a neighbor at how unsightly, now that the snow was melted, the awkward-shaped vacant lot the bulldozers had left looked, with its high raw embankment gouged by rivulets and littered with old chimney bricks. And soon, we concluded, now that spring was here, it would be bristling with weeds.”
—John Updike, The Early Stories: 1953-1975
Thomas Franklin Waters wrote the history of the two houses in the book Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony:
Updike House (“Polly Dole House“)
“John Baker owned, by grant, to the corner of Brook St. or Hog Lane, as today’s Spring Street was called. On May 30, 1670, he sold a quarter acre on the corner of Brook St. and the highway to John Knowlton Sen. (Ips. Deeds 4: 171). John Staniford purchased a house lot west of this, of John Baker. Capt. Jeremiah Staniford inherited the homestead of his father, Capt. John. Daniel Staniford received the homestead (179: 114) and sold it to Nath. Lord 3d, March 5, 1811 (193: 115). Nath. Lord sold to two women, whose names are well remembered, Lucy Fuller and Polly Dole, April 29, 1837 (301: 268).
The Capt. William Treadwell House
“The corner lot, sold by Baker to John Knowlton, was acquired by Nathaniel Knowlton. John Caldwell 4th, schoolmaster, sold to Philip Hammond Jr., mariner, Feb. 7, 1787 (149: 233). Capt. Hammond died at sea, and his widow Abigail sold to Capt. William Treadwell, Nov. 5, 1823 (232: 301). The present dwelling was unfinished when Capt. Treadwell bought it, but much material from the older house was evidently used in its construction.” Captain William Treadwell was master of the Salem schooner, “Plato,” and made regular southern trips.”
The Ipswich Vital Records show the following entry: William P. Treadwell of Portsmouth, age 32, married Abby Treadwell, age 28, the daughter of William and Welcome Treadwell on Oct. 14, 1845. His gravestone at the Old North Burying Ground at location G-154 reads, “Our Father. Capt. William Treadwell, Passed away Sept. 30, 1870, AEt. 79 yrs. 7 mos. Thou lost to sight awhile, safe, safe Heaven.”
William Treadwell’s widow Abbie seems to have died in 1886, but the 1888 and 1896 Ipswich Directories list the owner of the house at the corner of East and Spring Streets as Abbie Treadwell, widow of William P. Treadwell. Capt. Treadwell’s heirs were still in possession of the house in the early 20th century.
Removal of the House
No record of how the house was demolished has been found, but the town widened the intersection in 1959:
1958 Ipswich Annual Report: “The newly acquired Recreation park atop town hill has seen many changes. A large area has been cleared for the development of a picnic area adjacent to Baker’s Pond, a huge fireplace has been erected at the pond for warming of skaters, the ski slope and toboggan run have been cleared of trees, the access road from Spring Street has been widened, and a sizeable parking area has been made. Present plans call for a great deal of work in the spring so that picnicking may be enjoyed by townspeople in the coming season.
1959 Ipswich Annual Report: “The traffic island at Willcomb’s Square was removed, the corner widened and that area loamed and seeded.”
1961 Ipswich Annual Town Report: “At Willcomb’s Square, parts of County, Spring, and East Streets were regraded, one catch basin built and a manhole made of one of the existing basins. The whole area was then hot-topped including the sidewalk at the store and three temporary traffic islands set up on a trial basis.”
Historic Ipswich 