A Spruce Hill story
Hello. I’m Dayle.
But right now I’m not Dayle. I’m a tropical dancer.
And now I’m an Indian.
And now I have a pretend raccoon.
No, it’s a real raccoon! Found him in my barn when he was just born. His eyes couldn’t even open yet. My parents let me keep him. I named him Terry.
We live in this house.
It’s very old and has 17 rooms. We live in the small part. It has five rooms. We stay there because it has a heating system. The rest of the house is freezing unless you burn wood in the fireplaces all day. It has three floors if you count the rooms way up inside the roof. Those were for servants a long time ago.
We do fun things here. We make apple cider.
And we read books.
And play hockey. That’s my brother, Sumner.
And we take care of the barn, where horses used to live. Raccoons sneak in. Bats too. Every kid in the neighborhood knows about the bats.
The history books call our house the Frothingham Mansion because a priest named Nathaniel Frothingham built it a long time ago, around 1852. He was the pastor of the First Church of Boston, and he was friends with the Sewall family in Burlington, so he came here a lot and really liked the town.
My dad is George. He’s a teacher and coach in Belmont and Maynard and other towns. I don’t know how he bought this huge house. He probably had to borrow a lot of money.
We moved here in 1946 because he always wanted to start a summer camp for kids. Our house is on a hill with lots of spruce trees and hiking trails everywhere, so my father calls the camp the Spruce Hill Day Camp.
Kids come from all around. Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge. Some Burlington High School teachers work here in the summer. Here are some camp teachers.
Here’s my dad talking to another teacher.
Some kids ride our bus to camp.
They do a lot of fun things here.
The kids learn a lot, but my parents learn too. My mother had to figure out how to operate a school cafeteria. My mother and my grandmother spend a lot of time in the hot kitchen all summer, making hot food. There’s no air conditioning. Sometimes they wear cold, wet face cloths around their necks.
My dad has learned a lot too, like how to build a big swimming pool in the ground.
The kids used to swim in a pond out back, but it had too many creatures living in it. My brother would wear a big top hat and go underwater, then come up with a frog on top of it. So my dad hired the Thorstensens to dig a big hole so he could put in tar paper, painted blue like an ocean, and fill it with water. Our pool is the only one like it in Burlington. It’s even in a magazine!
My brother Sumner and little cousin Michael like to glide around the pool in Sumner’s boat. He made it himself.
We have no way to keep the water clean, so we have to take out the old water and put in new water every two weeks. That means we have to carry a heavy fire hose all the way down our dirt driveway to a fire hydrant on Lexington Street. Every time we fill the pool, that water is VERY cold!
In the winter, the pool freezes. But Dad does not let anyone play hockey or even skate on the pool because skates will damage the sides. So everyone uses the pond. My mother shoots hockey pucks and Sumner plays goalie.
Maybe someday when our pool is gone, and the whole camp is gone, and we don’t live here anymore, there will be some way for people to remember Spruce Hill Day Camp.
Epilogue
The operation expanded to include a kindergarten before Burlington offered public kindergarten, and then a nursery school — all within the huge house. In the late 1950s, the fledgling Burlington Country Club rented the pool for swimming “after hours.” In 1967, the Rupprechts sold the property to the Cambridge YWCA, which modernized the pool.
In July of 1982, Mystic Valley Mental Health bought it as a group home, to the consternation of some locals. Mysterious fires broke soon afterward.
In the early 1990s, a Burlington boy named Tony Santullo bought the property, renovated the house and built a little cul-de-sac with more houses (Theresa Ave.)
The long, sinuous driveway to the house is now Shady Lane Drive and, of course, Spruce Hill Road, named after the camp. The Frothingham estate included a gatehouse at the start of Spruce Hill and another house across Lexington Street, where the name survives.
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What can I say! One of The Best
I love this entry!
Great story of Spruce Hill. I thought the mention of the Sewall family was interesting because they are my relatives.
The Sewall name is in my family tree as well. Might have completed the story to know who anonymous is.
Very interesting. Great job.
Brings back many memories. Joined the club in 1969 – 1972 to swim in the pool (a regular pool was installed by then). Went there several days a week. As I recall, there life guard working most days was a guy names Mel. What stands out about him strangely enough was he drove a 2-seater MG. Didn’t see many of those around Burlington, so his stood out. Red as I recall. Another memory was that building in the background was a filed house of sorts. had a basketball court in it. Old and not used when I was there, but building was still standing. Inside, the owners had put up a whole bunch of plywood on the back wall. Apparently a large nest of bees had made a home in he wall. We used to put our ear up on the wood and you could hear them buzzing around in there. There was a small square opening in the back and you could see the bees going in and out there. Not sure what year they finally removed that nest, but as I recall it was massive! Covered at least a third of the wall.
Lived in Woburn / Burlington from 1954-1973 . Heard about this place many times .
I went to kindergarten there.
That little girl at the beginning is one of the first people that I met when I moved to Burlington the end of February 1952. That empty house was a fun house to play in when there was no summer camp there. That pond with all the critters in it was the place where all the kids in the neighborhood skated in the winter. It was a great place to catch pollywogs.
Great story- grew up just down the street on Lexington St in the 60s – 70s … when riding bikes Spruce Hill was “the big hill” and you had to make sure you stopped before sliding onto Lexington St
Just read the Spruce Hill Camp history and I enjoyed it very much. I lived in Billerica 1955 and love to see Burlington and the other towns information. I volunteer with a Historical Society in Plaistow NH. your or should I say Dayles story has given me a great example of how to provide narrative to pictures. I think pictorial history great, the narration I hope will be a good addition.
Great read never knew the history
Amazing history. I went to Spruce Hill kindergarten and still remember one of the teachers names, Mrs. Brownlow. She got me going on Cheezits which they used to give us as a snack, still my favorite.
Great memories at both Spruce Hill Nursery school and the YWCA after.
Teacher, camp counselor swimming lessons , and director of the Nursery for the YWCA.
Where I met Dayle.
A great story. I do remember the YMCA being there when I was a child. I enjoy these segments so much. It’s nice to know about the town I grew up in.
Wow! A real blast from the past. I grew up on Lexington Street and have many fond memories of Rupprechts, as all the local kids referred to it. We would walk through the woods so we wouldn’t be noticed, and climb through the window in the barn and play basketball in the winter. I think Mr. Rupprecht probably knew we were in there but was happy it was getting some use by the local kids. I went to camp there a couple of summers and the lifeguard was none other than Al Wilde or Albie as he was known back then. He taught me and Jimmy Murphy how to dive. I would always remind him of that when I’d run into him in later years and he told me he actually remembered. RIP Al.
That property was one of a kind and the likes of it we will never see again in Burlington.
I bet this is Joanne.
I went to Spruce Hill Kindergarten, 1959-1960. My older brother, Doug, might have gone to the day camp. Once it was YWCA, my sister and her husband were caretakers and lived there (apt.) for a while. (Late 70s or early 80s?) I think my youth group might have gone swimming at the outdoor pool. (Was there a regular outdoor pool in late 60s/early 70s). My Brownie troop might have done an outdoor activity on the grounds in the early 1960s. My Dad (or brother) had a friend, Sumner. Last initial R. Not the most common name.
I had Al Wilde for swimming lessons at Burlington Country Club. (Cheryl Forbes, my comment above, too.)
Thanks for the “History lesson” Dayle, all I knew about the home was that you and Sumner lived there.
Wow. What a lot of information. Thanks
I was a classmate of Sumner. In 1952 I took tap dancing lessons from Beverly Fay in that house. I know Bev would never admit I was in one of her classes.
❤️my neighborhood oh I could add so much but that house was and is special
so great to go back, thanks for the memories
Great story and pictures. My family also built an asphalt swimming pool, our house was on Brown Ave. The Armstrong family on Lexington St showed my parents how it was done. I remember putting 3 layers of tar paper around the sides and bottom, overlapping the tar paper and spreading tar. What an awful job it was. We painted it and my father built a sand filter out of an old 50 gallon barrel.
Great story. I remember going to Rupprechts kindergarten/day care and having a great time. I vividly recall Albie Wilde teaching me swimming lessons during the summer when he was going to Ithaca. Albie was my guidance counselor years later in high school. Jim Murphy
Lived on Lexington Street and Daryle. My brother Jim and friends used to go up that hill. Burlington was “ the woods” people told us – why would you move way out there .
I rented the master bedroom there 1980-1981. It took us a month to clean out the pool and get it going after it wasn’t used for about 5 years. About 7 of us shared the house. Until the eaves were closed there was a ton of bats in the roof.
The rooftop deck was nice. We were lucky no one ever fell off. Wish I could post a couple pictures.
If you have pictures, I’ll add them to the article. I can be reached at 781-718-9872.
Robert Fahey
Great post.
My siblings went to kindergarten at spruce hill. My family belonged to the pool.I remember Al Wilde as the life guard when he was in college. My father played poker with George.All great memories. Kimball Ranger
My siblings and I learned to swim at the Rupprechts pool. We were members of the pool (early-mid 60’s). Spent many summer days at the property not only swimming but making houses in the pine needles in the woods and climbing the best trees ever! Beautiful memories.
Great story! I love the old history of Burlington!
i went to high school,and graduated with her brother sumner……….great guy,highly intelligent………….never knew he had a sister…………….emailed him shortly before his death in new hampshire………………fine family……………………….carl johnson, 54 bhs,piner36@comcast.net
Climbed those spruce trees many times. Heated flat rocks from the beach in Maine to warm the beds at night. Loved going up on the widow’s walk (even tho we were not supposed to) and climbing though the secret crawl space in closet to the woodworking room. What a wonderful trip back in time. Maybe Dayle could write her account some time. It would be so special.
Love to all from Carol
Thanks Dayle for the history lesson. Very interesting. Here’s a chuckle for you. When it was the ‘Y’, I took belly dancing lessons there. I would do much better now, with the belly I have!!
Noreen (Osborne) Cassidy
I remember going to the Spruce Hill Day Camp , in the summer of 1954, when I was 5 years old , just before I started first grade at the Hamilton School in Everett
Edward P. HOLZBERG
I went to Spruce Hill kindergarten , must have been around 1958. I remember Mrs. Rupprecht. It was a great experience, I still remember some of the crafts we did. Wonderful memories. Thanks for the article! Karen (Klotz) Ryan