The Melrose Messenger

Melrose Celebrates 175 Years This Weekend

By Ellen Putnam

This weekend, Melrosians of all ages will celebrate Melrose’s 175th anniversary at Memorial Hall and throughout the city. The event marks when, in 1850, Melrose broke away from Malden to become its own town. (Melrose later became a city, in 1900.)

The 175th Anniversary celebration will include a city-sponsored event at Memorial Hall, a Victorian Garden Party at the Beebe Estate, and the Make Way for Cygnets citywide celebration of Melrose families.

City officials began planning the event last fall, explained Communications and Events Manager Tom Dalton. When the mayor’s office reached out to the Melrose Chamber of Commerce and the Melrose Historical Commission to gauge whether there might be interest in a birthday celebration, said Dalton, “we quickly heard that people would love to get involved.”

With $4,000 in remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds (“that money was floating around,” said Dalton, “because not many projects cost as little as $4,000”), the city began planning “a community-oriented, small business-oriented celebration of the occasion.”

The official city celebration will take place between 10am and noon at Memorial Hall. The event will include a brief speaking portion; recognition of “anyone who’s ever volunteered for the City of Melrose or served in an elected office,” said Dalton; and “a ton” of cake from Sweet Spot Bakery.

Follow Your Art Community Studios will also be organizing a community art project around the theme, “Our Time in Melrose,” which, explained Dalton, “is a riff on the first question everyone gets: ‘How long have you been in Melrose?’” The project will evoke the old City Hall clock tower and will eventually be hung in the City Council Chamber.

“It should be a lot of fun,” said Dalton, “and we’re hoping people will drop into Saturday’s event as their schedules permit. We want people to feel good about being in Melrose and celebrate the community together. We’ve made it 175 years, and I hope we have another 175 in us!”

The second part of Saturday's celebration came together because of Melrose Creative Alliance member Yael Mazor. “A year ago, I attended the arts summit,” she explained, “and they asked the room to come up with ideas for how the arts community and businesses could collaborate. I came up with a two-page list. I was so excited. And one idea was something inspired by Duckling Day at the Boston Public Garden - but instead of having the signature ducks, I thought we could have something honoring the swans of Melrose.”

“It was a wild idea,” Mazor went on, “But when we realized what was going to happen with the 175th anniversary, we thought, ‘that’s the opportunity we need to take advantage of.’ What would be a better way to celebrate Melrose families than to collaborate with the city’s birthday party? We hope to do this again in years to come, but we could not have asked for a better opportunity to launch than this weekend.”

The Melrose Chamber of Commerce organizes four annual events - the Summer Stroll in July, the Victorian Fair in September, Main Street Trick or Treat on Halloween, and Home for the Holidays in December - and many local businesses have been participating in these events for years.

Make Way for Cygnets, Mazor explained, “is a new event, so we needed to do a little more outreach to lay the foundation. It’s hard to explain to someone that you’re going to have families dress up as swans! But businesses reached out and signed up to participate, and the Chamber does an excellent job of connecting and promoting. We’re lucky there’s been so much interest this year in helping to make this a success.”

Make Way for Cygnets will start on the steps of Memorial Hall for a group photo at 11:30am. Members of the original Victorian Melrose Society, which helped raise funds for the gazebo in the 1980’s, will serve as marshals for the parade. Then families will proceed down Main Street to the Ell Pond Gazebo, where they can bring their lunch to picnic by the pond. There will be face painting, music, and photographer Raj Das will be taking family portraits that will be available for purchase from an online gallery.

Local businesses will be offering special activities and discounts on Melrose merchandise throughout the afternoon. Molly’s Bookstore will be creating a community mural; visitors can create their own clay cygnet at Paper and Clay or custom swan pin at Lilah Rose; and Buckalew’s will offer a free chocolate to anyone dressed as a swan. Jazz musician Oren Santillo will be playing on the porch of Follow Your Art during the event.

For those who are unsure how to dress up as a swan, Follow Your Art will be offering a free swan mask making session on Friday afternoon.

The festivities will continue at the Beebe Estate for a Victorian Garden Party featuring watercolor art and home portrait orders from Sofia Diana Creations; hand-sewn Victorian-era attire from Hannah Alice Costumes’s exquisite hand-sewn Victorian-era attire; lemonade and cookies; and storytime at 3pm with a Melrose Public Library reader. And on Sunday, Idle Hands will be hosting a beer garden at the Beebe Estate between 1pm and 6pm with a new beer celebrating Melrose.

“There’s one sad thing,” pointed out Mazor, “which is that, of all years, it seems like this year we don’t have swans nesting on Ell Pond. But who knows? Maybe this will bring them back.”

You can find a listing of all of this weekend's events on the Melrose Creative Alliance website.

Posted April 30th, 2025