After the blast

Uneasy mix in Danvers legacy

Long before the explosion that shook Andrea Daley from her bed last week, the retired Danvers schoolteacher saw trouble when she looked at the industrial buildings sitting alongside the Cape-style and two-decker houses in her Danversport neighborhood.

Daley, who has lived all of her 68 years in Danversport, believes that waterfront property should be residential, and favors restrictions on industry. That's why she proposed a zoning change in April that would reduce the maximum height of commercial buildings from 55 to 40 feet in industrial zones, such as in the neighborhood in which CAI Inc. operated before it was destroyed in the predawn explosion last Wednesday. The zoning proposal will be heard at Town Meeting in January.

"Other towns and cities are making the best use of their waterfront land; Danvers is not," said Daley, who lives a few blocks from her childhood home.

For years, Ann Marie Ruotolo also has felt something bad was going to happen in her neighborhood. After the explosion blew open her front door and shattered windows in her house, Ruotolo took shelter at Daley's house. Long before the blast, Ruotolo proposed a zoning change that would create a 5-foot landscape buffer between businesses and homes.

"It was a ticking bomb waiting to go off," Ruotolo said. "You can't put industry next to tightly packed, small lots."

For more than four centuries, people and industry have coexisted in Danversport, as they have in many neighborhoods where housing developed around workplaces. Today, a propane distributor, a glue factory, warehouses, marinas, and two underground gas lines sit yards away from homes in the neighborhood in which the blast occurred. The number of businesses, however, is far less than it once was.

The peninsula was first developed for industry in 1752, when businessmen established grist mills along the Waters and Crane rivers, and also petitioned the town to build a road from the Danvers coastline to Salem.

By the late 18th century, the port had become a center for leather and wood processing, shipbuilding, and brick manufacturing. Privateers that were used in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were built along the rivers. And in 1798, the Salem Iron Co. was built at the lip of the Waters River -- on the lot next to where the blast occurred last week. Salem Iron was the first company to manufacture nails in the United States.

"This was an area that was built because of the attractiveness of industry to the water," said Danvers town archivist Richard Trask. "It was a way to get produce in and out expeditiously."

With a working waterfront and a nearby road to Salem, Danversport served as the town's economic center for more than 100 years. When the railroad was built in 1855, the neighborhood took a downturn as commercial transport shifted away from the water. By the late 19th century, the first homes were built on the peninsula, near the site of the nail factory, and leather factories became the prominent employers.

More than 100 years ago, immigrants made Danversport their first stop in town, finding modest homes along the water while working in the nearby leather factories. In 1946, when the town created zoning, the neighborhood in which last week's explosion occurred was designated as mixed residential and industrial.

"We were known as wharf rats, and there was a line of demarcation," said Daley, who had met her husband, Michael Daley, in the third grade at the now-closed Danversport Elementary School. "It was a cheap rent district. You had everything down here -- Portuguese, Italians, Russians, Albanians, Greeks, Polish, French-Canadians."

As the leather factories closed, neighborhood businesses, such as Dombrowski's, Louie's Meat Market, Harry Clee's Market, and Jimmy's Market, also shut their doors, as did the corner bars that once served thirsty leather factory workers.

Last week, survivors of the explosion talked about the future as they waited in line at Danvers Town Hall to meet with representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

John Joyce, whose house on Bates Street was blown off its foundation by the blast, doesn't want to live next to a factory anymore, and is unsure whether he will rebuild his house. He opposes the return of the chemical plant.

"I don't want them to rebuild," said Joyce, who was awake when the blast occurred. After the blast, he pulled his wife and daughter out of their beds and led them into the street.

Anne Vinsel, who lives a street away from the CAI property, also has trepidations about living so close to the plant. "Having an industry that has something so volatile in a residential area is just plain stupid."

Jason Kelsey, who rented an apartment in a house next to CAI, also is unsure where he will live next. He said he was aware of the dangers of living in an industrial area, and doubts the neighborhood will change much.

"It's one of those mixed-zoned areas, so obviously it's not good. But what are you going to do -- knock down all of the industry in the neighborhood? Obviously, that's not going to happen."

Steven Rosenberg can be reached at rosenberg@globe.com.

NorthTalk
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