The 1852 map shows two houses and a school.  By 1856, just a couple of years after the train, there were nine homes, the train station, Village Hall (with its meeting rooms, general store and post office), and the Baptist Church. And an active market in real estate.

In 1959, Pat and Bud Roche’s grocery business moved into the corner store. The Roche brothers had a store in Roslindale, but its success convinced them to expand into nearby towns.  The Needham site was their second store. However, by 1965 they needed more space, so they purchased a larger site on Chestnut Street.

The first business block and Post Office, Village Hall, was built right beside the tracks by 1854.  Properties became valuable overnight, as local businessmen bought them up to sell as house lots.

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Since they have robust designs and can handle heavy cutting operations, horizontal milling centers are ideal for precise roughing applications. The horizontally oriented spindle allows the machine to remove material efficiently from the workpiece. Many horizontal machining center models can make aggressive cuts and easily handle rough surfaces or irregular shapes.

Harvey’s Hardware is the current occupant of a corner that has been – literally – at the center of Needham for nearly 170 years.

It is the busiest corner in town, and arguably the best recognized. It is the one you navigate by, and the one that anchors your directions to visitors – “At the light in front of Harvey’s, turn left…”

We stand out from other machine manufacturers by offering horizontal milling centers with several facing head sizes and multiple turning diameters to meet your production requirements. Our equipment lineup includes models that can work as metal-roughing machines, including the DS600 RAM, which features two separate 100-horsepower spindle motors to handle your most demanding roughing jobs.

Roughing is a critical step in machining because it helps prepare the workpiece for subsequent finishing operations while improving the overall efficiency of the production process. Excess material is removed from the workpiece during this phase, typically using larger cutting tools or high-speed machining techniques. The primary goal of roughing metal is to quickly remove the bulk of the material, shaping the workpiece closer to its final form.

In 1893, he acquired the rest of the lots between his store and his house and built two additional retail blocks as lease properties. Once these were done, he moved his own store into one of the new blocks and leased his corner site to TJ Crossman’s Market, which had been for many years on the southwest corner, across Chestnut Street.

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Gloria Polizzotti Greis is the Executive Director of the Needham History Center & Museum. For information, see our website at www.needhamhistory.org.

Before the railroad, this land was open and had little use, and mostly served as pasture.  Asa Kingsbury’s 1836 map of Needham shows just five houses between the big bend at Beaufort Avenue and the intersection of Nehoiden Street.

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Edmund Fowler, a maker of yeast, moved to Needham in 1874 from Boston.  He opened a market in a building on the other side of Chestnut Street and then moved it into the main retail block at Village Hall. Two years later, he purchased and moved into the house he bought from Gardner.

Fowler’s business was clearly successful because he began to acquire a property.  In 1891, he moved his house to the corner of Great Plain and Dedham Avenues (now the Farmhouse site), and in 1892 built a new market for himself on the corner where his house had been.

Most of the original downtown buildings are gone now, replaced by newer structures.  Unexpectedly, although the corner store has been rebuilt, Fowler’s two other retail blocks remain – now well-hidden behind the brick facades of Masala Art and Barre3.  But from Stephen Harvey to Harvey Katz - Fowler’s Corner/Crossman’s Corner/Harvey’s Corner continues to anchor our busy downtown.

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The move into Fowler’s store gave Crossman more space, and so his business grew.  The corner came to be known as “Crossman’s Corner.”  In 1928, Crossman took down Fowler’s old building and built a larger one for his market, adding a second floor.  Crossman’s Market occupied that corner until 1959, ultimately run by three generations of Crossmans.

The advent of the train line through the Great Plain in 1853 brought rapid changes to Needham. Although the Great Plain did not become the “real” downtown until about the 1870s, the Plain was already seeing a significant transformation as early as 1854.

Our milling centers are practical and efficient solutions for operations wanting to improve production speeds by minimizing the number of setups. The facing and contouring heads can handle various milling functions, including heavy-duty roughing and fine finishing. By using the same CNC machine for multiple machining processes, operations can optimize production speed and minimize setup time while ensuring dimensional accuracy and surface consistency.

The next occupant was Harvey Katz, whose hardware store still flourishes on that corner.  The 1928 building is gone now, however.  In May 1977, sparks from a fire at Locke’s Lumber on Chestnut Street ignited the roof of Harvey’s and fire gutted the building. It was replaced by the larger brick structure that we see today.

Trevisan Machine Tool specializes in designing and building horizontal milling centers that work well for roughing and other machining processes like drilling, contouring, boring, tapping and facing. These centers combine all the benefits of a standard horizontal milling center and a traditional lathe into one streamlined solution.

At Trevisan Machine Tool, we go the extra mile to help customers analyze their applications and choose optimal solutions for their machining requirements. Besides our standard dual-spindle roughing machining centers, we also offer customized solutions built specifically for your production needs. Contact a Trevisan team member online today to learn more about our equipment and how it can benefit your business.

In 1959, Pat and Bud Roche’s grocery business moved into the corner store. The Roche brothers had a store in Roslindale, but its success convinced them to expand into nearby towns.  The Needham site was their second store. However, by 1965 they needed more space, so they purchased a larger site on Chestnut Street.

One of those new homes, on the southeast corner of Great Plain Avenue and Chestnut Street, was the home of Stephen F. Harvey.  Harvey was also the owner of Village Hall and other properties in the Great Plain.  Harvey bought the land from Edmond Pearson of Maine in 1854 and built himself a rather attractive house.  In 1868, the property was sold to Capt. Alfred Gardner of Boston, and in 1876 it was sold to Edmund B. Fowler.

The move into Fowler’s store gave Crossman more space, and so his business grew.  The corner came to be known as “Crossman’s Corner.”  In 1928, Crossman took down Fowler’s old building and built a larger one for his market, adding a second floor.  Crossman’s Market occupied that corner until 1959, ultimately run by three generations of Crossmans.