A Bird Reservation: Bartlett-Angell Home for Animals

From the time it was donated in 1919 until it was sold off for the housing development that today includes the streets of Pine Grove Road, Kingsbury Drive, Bartlett Avenue, Arnold Drive and Laurel Drive, Medfield was home to a 50-acre Bird Reservation and branch of the Animal Rescue League. 

In 1890, esteemed Boston physician and surgeon Henry Clay Angell purchased that property in Medfield from John Y. Thurston, bordering West Main Street, Spring Street and running back towards Stop River. There, he built a massive stone and wood mansion and barn to use as his “summer” home to escape the heat and crowds of Boston and to enjoy its rural setting.

Dr. Angell was a graceful and vigorous writer. He contributed some of the most valuable articles to the medical journalism of this country. He was also a devoted student and an ardent admirer of art and an amateur painter of considerable skill. A great part of his summer vacations were spent in sketching from nature, which is why he so loved the wooded, meadow and river property he bought in Medfield.  

Dr. Angell married Martha Bartlett and both purchased many valuable pieces of art, much of it today donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Dr. Angell died in 1911 and when his wife Martha died in 1919, she donated the Medfield property to the Animal Rescue League of Boston. She requested that the property be used as a bird reservation and home for the Animal Rescue League, where they could use the house and barn as a temporary home for animals. She also left them a $30,000 endowment fund to help with annual expenses. Here the Animal Rescue League made plans to preserve “this beautiful woods,” for the purpose of encouraging the increase of birds. They would do this by putting up bird houses, constructing watering places, planting shrubs and trees to attract birds and making every effort to protect them from potential human dangers. They also made plans to see that any “stray, neglected, unfed, unsheltered cats roaming about the reservation would be secured and humanely disposed of, so not to harm the birds.”

The reservation and animal shelter was called the Bartlett-Angell Home for Animals. Martha Bartlett Angell’s father was a great lover of animals and she wanted the Bartlett name attached in honor of her father. The Animal Rescue League made the Medfield branch a “temporary” home, with no animals being kept indefinitely. The animals turned into the shelter would be placed in “good” homes. The reservation/shelter would also be used to educate the school age children on birds and animals and to get them interested in the proper care and treatment of birds and animals. Horses were also kept there as part of their “Home of Rest for Horses.” The large barn on the property was used to house the horses. There, the horses were able to pasture and be fed hay and grain.

During the Great Depression, the Animal Rescue League ran into difficult financial times and the Medfield branch became un-used. The stone house was, for a time in the 1930’s, used by the town as a recreational center for teens. By the 1950’s the Animal Rescue League decided to sell off the property and use the revenue for their main headquarters in Boston. The “beautiful woods,” meadows and wetlands were sold off, the Gilded Age mansion and barn were demolished and the current housing development off the Pine Grove Road area was built. Thus bringing to an end Martha Bartlett Angell’s dream of a bird reservation, a home for animals and the preservation of a beautiful part of nature for future generations to enjoy. Being sold off and not preserved, this is something Medfield’s current generation has lost and will be unable to enjoy.