The Town Hall Notebook

September 14, 2026

For a building that has been "just a little too small" for generations, Milford's last one-room schoolhouse has proven remarkably resilient.

The Heritage Commission is once again trying to make sure it survives. This year, members have made restoring the Laurel Schoolhouse one of their major preservation projects, raising private donations—including a recent $10,000 gift from the Arthur Keyes Memorial Trust—and planning repairs that include new doors, exterior restoration and a fresh coat of paint. It's not the first time the little schoolhouse has needed rescuing.

Long before it became the Scout House, the little white building that sits on the edge of Shepard Park was the Laurel School, where children of different ages learned together under one roof with a single teacher. The schoolhouse itself proved remarkably adaptable. Originally built by the Isaac Abbott family, descendants of one of Milford's earliest settlers, it was picked up in 1898 and moved from Ponemah Hill Road to East Milford as the town's population shifted toward the granite quarries. Records show local contractor David Stevens was paid just 250 bucks to move the entire structure.

Its new home was the growing East Milford neighborhood, where many Italian immigrant families had settled to work the nearby granite quarries. Surrounded by a modest village with its own stores, bakery, post office and railroad station, the little schoolhouse became the heart of a close-knit community for decades.

By the 1940s, however, Milford had begun to outgrow the one-room schoolhouse. The Milford Cabinet later recalled that a proposal to close the Laurel School met with "vigorous opposition," and the issue became "a point of heated discussion at school meetings." Neighborhood parents worried their children would have to "walk a long distance on bitter cold days" along snow-covered sidewalks to catch the bus into the Oval, while taxpayers argued the town could no longer justify keeping such a tiny school open.

In the end, there simply weren't enough children to fill even one room. By the school's final year, only ten students remained—two first graders, five second graders and three third graders—along with one lone teacher.

But it would not be the end for the little Laurel Schoolhouse.

In 1952, the building was leased to Milford's Boy Scouts for one dollar a year—a second career that continues more than seventy years later. One of New Hampshire's earliest Scout troops found a home there, but eventually discovered the same thing the school had: the building was charming, but it wasn't getting any bigger. Before long, Explorer Scouts were complaining there wasn't enough room to hold Saturday night dances. Volunteers responded with an addition designed by the Scouts and built under the watchful eye of local builder Waino Kokko during a major restoration in the 1980s.

Now another generation is taking its turn standing up for the little schoolhouse. More than seventy-five years after the last class ended, Milford is once again repairing and preserving the little schoolhouse that has survived against all odds.

August 17, 2026

Today, the old industrial building beside Keyes Memorial Park is hard to imagine as a symbol of promise. Its windows are covered with plywood, graffiti marks the walls and weeds grow along the edge of the building and through cracks in the pavement. It has sat unused for 11 years.

The picture was considerably different in March 1964. “Quietly, without much fanfare, a new industrial building has taken shape in Milford,” the Milford Cabinet reported that spring. The 10,000-square-foot building, tucked between the Souhegan River and Elm Street near what is now Keyes Memorial Park, was a “modern, colonial-front structure” already occupied by three small industries.

“It is clean; there is little noise and no smoke,” the newspaper reported, describing the building as typical of the small, modern light industries then reshaping New England manufacturing. But the new building represented more than floor space and machinery. “A lot of dreams have gone into that building,” the Cabinet wrote.

An even more ambitious dream belonged to Chester C. Akeson and his son Alan, who built the structure after their former Permatech Diamond Tool location on Middle Street became crowded and inefficient. They saw the building as the beginning of a small industrial park, eventually surrounded by a cluster of modern plants that would bring “diversity and strength to the town.” The industrial park never took shape, although the Akeson company remained in Milford for decades.

By 2015, the building's story had taken another turn. The town purchased the property, but the aging industrial building has remained unused. The Recreation Commission is now confronting demolition costs that may be approaching $500,000. A multigenerational community center has been proposed for the site, but for now its future remains unclear.

More than 60 years after the Cabinet described a clean, modern building filled with promise and dreams, it is difficult to see much of either behind the boarded-up windows.

August 17, 2026

Downtown parking is back on Milford's priority list.

At its March meeting, the Economic Development Advisory Council spent considerable time discussing parking and identified it as an issue to focus on in 2026. The town plans to revisit earlier parking studies and map existing and potential spaces, while a new parking subcommittee took a driving tour of downtown and the Oval in June. The possibility of a small downtown parking garage has even been raised.

If the problem sounds familiar, it should. For more than 70 years, Milford has been trying to figure out how to keep enough parking available around the Oval—and how to keep the same cars from occupying those spaces all day.

In 1951, a committee of Union Square merchants led by pharmacist Ray Dyer concluded that “parking meters are the only way to control our traffic and parking problems.” The Town Meeting nearly unanimously agreed, despite the strenuous opposition of legislator and Ober clothing store owner Fred Wadleigh, who called the meters a parking “tax” that would take away one advantage enjoyed by Milford merchants.

The new meters allowed two hours of parking at five cents an hour—or a penny for just 12 minutes. A year later, the committee declared them “successful far beyond our expectations,” saying they had eliminated all-day parkers and generated revenue.

But the meters became less popular and less profitable as Union Square storefronts emptied and shopping centers touted free parking. By the 1990s, a new generation of downtown merchants wanted them gone.

The meters eventually disappeared, but one complaint proved remarkably durable. “There is frequent criticism of merchants and clerks who occupy spaces” all day, the Milford Cabinet reported in 1951. In 2018, Union Street Grill owner Kevin Stephens struck a familiar note: “When business owners take up parking spaces on the Oval, it's ridiculous.”

The debate, it seems, has come full circle.