The Greenleaf Building
Boston Globe/ November 6, 1899
What a handsome structure- too bad it’s gone. The Greenleaf Building was built by Luther C. Greenleaf and designed by his architectural firm of Greenleaf and Cobb, who also designed the Ames School building. The building was finished in 1900, and housed the post office, waiting rooms and offices for the trolley company, stores, a banquet room, offices, and an apartment for the janitor. For some reason (which I am still investigating), some time in the 1940’s the building was either razed, or reduced to the one-story building that occupies the site now. A Boston Edison retail store occupied the corner space for a long time. I used to wait for the “pay bus” right in front of that store while I was in high school. Look for more Lost Dedham posts to come…
Postcard from early 1900’s
May, 2010
1936
Dedham Tales 
May 17, 2010 at 4:56 am
I believe there was once a grocery store called Fresh Natural located in the Greenleaf building. My grandfather’s uncle worked there, as a butcher I think.
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May 18, 2010 at 9:54 am
That’s an approprite name for a store in the Greenleaf Building. You wouldn’t happen to have any family photos or artifacts associated with the store, would you?
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May 18, 2010 at 4:11 am
My guess is that the Greenleaf Building burned down and it was replaced with the one-story building that is there now. I remember the Edison store.
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May 18, 2010 at 9:51 am
For some reason I didn’t consider that it may heve burned down. I never came across any Transcript articles about it. I guess I was thinking that since two other “handsome structures” in the square- Memorial Hall and the train station were torn down in the same time period, the trend was out with the old, in with the new. Back to the microfilm.
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May 18, 2010 at 5:02 am
Whippersnappers don’t remember when we had to go to the store to pick up our electricity.
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July 16, 2017 at 4:38 am
I noticed the old traffic light in the 1936 view, standing in the middle of the intersection. A similar one was still there as late as I guess 2012, when the square was rebuilt. It was one of the very few traffic signals left by then that still had the old red-yellow ‘walk light’, which I bet modern driving ed manuals do not even mention. I remember it back in the 1980s and even then it was considered a little quaint, but by 2012 they had become exceedingly rare. Walpole also had one, in the middle of the main intersection, but that too is long gone.
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