Laurence Breed Walker lived in a fourth floor walk-up apartment (really just a single all-purpose room) at 304 Essex Street in Salem, Massachusetts when I first met him about 1964. Situated on the busy corner of North and Essex Streets, opposite the Witch House, this location became a clearing house for people interested in New England transportation history. A steady flow of visitors and correspondents kept "LB" (as many knew him) busy day and night.
My introduction was arranged by Russell Munroe of Marblehead (whom I had met about 1963). Russ Munroe is a train enthusiast who specialized in photography of rail subjects. Munroe had been a regular visitor to LB's place for some time, and he recommended that I come along some evening and meet Walker. So one Friday evening found us making the long climb up the rickety wooden stairs to Room 18. An adventure of unimaginable proportions lay beyond the door at the top of the stairs - but I didn't know it at the time.
Before we go on, we need to look back and find out who LB was and how he ended up confined to a one-room, impoverished existence in what was essentially a "flop house." The story begins on June 7, 1895, when he was born to Charles and Laura (Breed) Walker in Lynn, Massachusetts. According to Walker's own records, he was eighth in line from Allan Breed, the first settler in Lynn, and also eighth in line from Peter Walker, the first settler in Taunton. He was direct in line (on his grandmother Walker's side) from Robert Treat Paine, signer of the Declaration of Independence. |
Laurence Breed Walker
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LB with his mother and aunt, circa 1925. (Walker Transportation Collection
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His father was corporate counsel for both the Boston & Maine and the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroads; thus the stage was set for LB to travel and be exposed to various transportation modes at an early age. In the meantime, he graduated from Lynn Classical High, went on to Huntington Preparatory School, then to Boston University College of Liberal Arts and to a final stint at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
L. B. Walker followed in the vocational footsteps of his uncle, Rev. Walter Russell Breed, Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Cleveland, Ohio, and his great-grandfather, Rev. John Thompson Burrill, D. D., Rector of Christ Church of Boston (ne Old North Church), by studying for the ministry at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, New York, and Pexley Hall Divinity School of the Diocese of Ohio. He also studied abroad in England, Germany and Japan. This led to Walker's service as minister for parishes in Ohio, and locally at the First Parish Church of Saco, Maine and the Roxbury Universalist Church in Boston. He engaged in an unorthodox style of ministry, which included large helpings of public relations hype, advertising in the media, and startlingly bold and unusual preaching about current events, history, and politics! A glance through Walker' s surviving church programs (fortunately, he saved hundreds of them) gives one a good idea of his revolutionary and unconventional style.
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In the late 1930s, he was struck down with Infantile Paralysis. Though he never spoke much about it, it becomes obvious in piecing facts together that he suffered much the same disabling effects as President Franklin D. Roosevelt in losing the use of his legs.
Walker was able to get around to some extent with crutches, but his activities were severely curtailed. He went through most of his family inhertance in a futile quest to improve his physical condition in an age without medical insurance. Along with Walker's finances went his comfortable lifestyle. He had owned a series of fine automobiles, including a Cord, together with drivers, since he had never learned to drive. He became very dispirited.
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| L.B. on the cover of one of the many programs he saved from his days as a minister. This one was from his stint at the Roxbury Universalist Church. The church was located on Buena Vista Street, near Warren and was only "three minutes from the Dudley Street Station of the El" This program dates to Sunday, February 1, 1931. (Walker Transportation Collection) |
L.B. with his beloved 1930 Cord on Kennebunk Road in New Hampshire in 1932. Since he never learned to drive, he always had a driver. (Walker Transportation Collection) |
Walker eventually moved on, securing positions as a commentator on various Boston radio stations, as a public relations counsel, a public speaker, a political campaign coordinator, newspaper columnist, and even as a hotel manager. During all this time - as a hobby - he had been taking and collecting pictures of trains and street railways and organizing them into historical files.
When Walker first became ill, all his possessions were put into storage until such time as he recovered sufficiently to live on his own. When that time finally came, Walker was devastated to discover that among other things, his photo collection had been stolen. It was never found, nor was the person or persons responsible ever identified, though Walker had suspicions which were unprovable. In any event, his doctor, upon learning of this sad circumstance, encouraged LB to begin again and put together an even better collection. This was especially valuable, as it would help take his mind off of his misfortune. And so it began ... the extensive collection which now occupies the basement at Cabot House!
To begin anew, Walker contacted all the friends and associates with whom he had corresponded and sent photos to in the past. He asked them to copy some of the pictures and send him prints with which to start the new collection. Over time this had the desired effect, and, in addition, much more began to pour in from an ever-increasing circle of new friends and contacts all over New England. This is the point at which Russell Munroe and I came in.
That first visit to Room 18 was simultaneously an eye-opener and a sad experience. There, in one rather small room, were all LB's worldly possessions, most of them subordinated to the picture files! Chairs, a folding bed, a tiny hot plate stove, and a lifetime of odds and ends that had escaped the pilferer of his stored furnishings 20 years earlier completed his universe. Two windows notched into the Mansard roof gave a view down onto the square below. Loud voices in adjoining rooms would be heard, indicating the degree of drunkenness of some of the other tenants sharing these spartan quarters. LB seemed oblivious to all of it, keeping in touch with the world through a small radio which he kept on 24 hours a day.
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Soon we were seated opposite his cluttered desk. Sifting through piles of letters and photos, he would pass some on to us to keep along with stories of the subject matter. This often lasted into the wee hours. In fact, you had to make a supreme effort to leave, slowly rising and edging toward the door a good hour or more before you actually got away. Often he was still talking with you as you began your retreat down the long flights of stairs, so enthusiastic was Walker in his enjoyment of good company.
Many visits were made over the years of the 1960s. Eventually the subject of what was to become of his collection was raised. Walker long had sought a safe place for it, but had no luck finding a caretaker whom he could trust to keep it intact. Many wanted parts of it; but, to Walker it was all or nothing! He had seen too many examples of collections scattered to the winds when their owners passed way without having made provisions to have them saved. Coincidentally, I had been a member of the Beverly Historical Society since 1962 and shared a pleasant relationship with longtime BHS librarian Ruth Hill. One day I mentioned Walker's plight to her. She felt immediately that Beverly would be a suitable place to receive the collection, as it would be something different, something few other similar organizations could claim.
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It also would be popular with a wide range of people from all walks of life. She approached Arthur Appleton, the Society 's president at the time. Appleton agreed, and Miss Hill wrote to LB that very week in 1966 to inform him that Beverly would be pleased to have the entire collection. Needless to say, Walker was delighted. Sadly, the transfer of the collection came sooner than anyone expected. In the spring of 1969, it became very apparent that LB was not well, but he still managed to have visitors and to work on his collection, while stubbornly refusing medical attention. By August, LB became much worse and eventually slipped into a coma. At that point, he was removed to Salem Hospital, where he died without regaining consciousness on August 15, 1969. LB's funeral was held on August 20th and he was buried in a city lot at the local Greenlawn Cemetary, without so much as a marker at the time.
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Mr. Walker, in his room, as his visitors found him at any hour of the day...ready to talk trains! Photo taken about 1960 or so. (Walker Transportation Collection)
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The collection was packed up and moved to Beverly Historical Society and Museum and placed in the basement - which in those days was merely a dirty fieldstone-walled clutter hole. Years of volunteer work by regular Walker Collection members of the Society have transformed it into the facility it is today - while the collection itself has grown in both size and scope to
become a true memorial to this fine gentleman. Oh, yes, and there is now a grave marker in Greenlawn Cemetary; a few years after LB's death we all chipped in and paid both the total funeral expenses and purchased the grave site. We also had a flush monument set in the ground.
Other than the vast collection, we fortunately have a tape recording of LB made during one of our visits in 1966. LB sounds as he always did: enthused, full of humor, and happily leading us through a continuing adventure in transportation history, as he remembered it.
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