NORWELL /Parker Street
Serene, safe neighborhood attracts families

By KAITLIN KEANE
The Patriot Ledger Area: 21.33 square mile

POPULATION
2000: 9,765
2006: 10,275

Density: 490 res./square mile
Median age: 43
Median household income: $100,398

FINANCES
Tax rate: $10.69
Town budget: $37 million
Avg. water bill: $348/year

HOUSING
Median home price (# sales)
2007: $590,000 (104)
2008: $677,500 (23 through March)
Median condo price
2007: $425,000 (15)
2008: $0

SCHOOLS
Number of students: 2,272
Number of teachers: 144
H.S. grads to 4-yr. college: 90%
H.S. grads to 2-yr. college: 6%
Median SAT score (2006): 1672

Nearly two decades ago Jim Nally found his dream home on Parker Street in Norwell. Surrounded by woods, the home had two essentials: a stable for his daughter’s horses and a four-car garage for himself.

Eighteen years later, the children have grown up and moved out and the garage gets less use than he had hoped. But a love for the Parker Street neighborhood has kept him around.

“You couldn’t ask for a nicer place to raise a family,” Nally said. “I’ve had so many opportunities to move to other houses, but I could just never find a place I like as much as this.”

Nally’s neighbors share his love for the street, a quiet, yet convenient, cut-through that runs between Winter Street and Route 123 (Norwell’s Main Street).

Once a neighborhood of older couples, the street’s roughly 40 or so homes are now increasingly populated with young families, Nally said.

Beverly Henderson, a teacher at nearby Vinal Elementary School, said she moved to the neighborhood more than 20 years ago because the “quiet country lane” was perfect for her own children.

“I wanted my children to grow up here,” she said. “And today it is almost exactly the same as when we got here.”

One shining endorsement for the neighborhood: Norwell parents flock to the street on Halloween because they know their kids will be safe, she said.

The family atmosphere has attracted young families looking for more than Halloween candy, said Kristin Morse, an agent with Jack Conway Realty in Norwell.

Many young families have sought out the street, where homes can be more moderately priced than other parts of Norwell, Morse said.

Prices for recent home sales have ranged from $320,000 to about $600,000, she said.

Many buyers have knocked down smaller homes to rebuild, but the street has avoided the cookie-cutter appearance of new construction, Morse said.

“Its just a really eclectic, neat neighborhood,” Morse said. “There are capes and split-levels, newer homes and historic homes.”

One home on the block is a historic schoolhouse that was moved from Scituate in the early 1900s, she said.

The house has been added onto and renovated, but it maintains a charming old-world character – much like the street, Morse said.

“It’s a nice, quiet, unassuming place,” she said.

Parker Street is near the Scituate border in the eastern part of Norwell.

See more Neighborhood stories at http://tinyurl.com/patriotledger-neighborhoods