Newton Corner has passed through several stages of development on its way to becoming the populous village it is today. Newton’s first village was originally settled in the 1630s as a farming settlement of Cambridge. (It was not until 1688 that Newton was officially incorporated as a separate town.) Throughout the 17th century, the village was known by various names such as Cambridge Village and Bacon’s Corner after Daniel Bacon, a local tailor. The area continued to be little more than an outpost of scattered farms, however, until traffic along what is now Washington Street increased between Boston and its western hinterland. A cluster of small homes and shops eventually developed along Washington Street to serve the produce-laden farm wagons and travelers headed to the city, and its location along this route to Boston helped to cement Newton Corner’s identity as the City’s first village. The increase in traffic also brought a new name to the area: Angier’s Corner, taken from its popular tavernkeeper, Oakes Angier.

Although it was transportation rather than industry which played a key role in the development of Newton Corner, a surprising number of fledgling factories appeared amidst the residential streets during the 1800s. The railroad arrived in 1834, and with it came the village’s current name, Newton Corner. Named the Meteor, the new train made the inaugural Boston-Newton trip travelling at a speed of six miles per hour. Despite the slow pace, the Meteor nonetheless made history, introducing an era of suburban growth that continued through the 20th century.

With the railroad’s daily service, the village became readily accessible, creating opportunities for Newton Corner landowners and Boston businessmen. By the 1840s, a few prosperous Bostonians had built homes on Newton Corner’s hillsides. It is said that many of these new residents held on to their Boston townhouses and kept a summer place in Newton, where the country air was considered healthier than that of the city.

In the era of new prosperity that arrived in the wake of the daily commuter trains, the local population of tradesmen and shopkeepers also grew. This population began to spread southward to Church Street and Richardson Street, along Centre Street, and to the area directly north of the early central business district on Washington Street near the Boston & Worcester train station. 

The real land boom, however, occurred after the Civil War. Mount Ida Street and Park Street were opened for development during this era and new homes gradually spread across the southern and eastern sections of the village. The founding and construction of the Newton Free Library in 1865 marked the increased importance of the area to the south of the railroad tracks. Within the next 20 years, most of the village’s churches erected new buildings near the library along Centre Street and Farlow Park. Eliot Congregational Church had predated this southward migration by several years, and the present church (1957) at the corner of Centre Street and Church Street is their fourth building on this site.

Newton Corner became increasingly attractive to Boston’s white-collar work force in the 1880s. Rental housing and numerous single-family homes were built during this period as increasing numbers of bookkeepers, clerks, insurance salesmen, and small shop owners caught the suburban dream. Pressure for land became so great in the late 19th century that large estates as well as former farmlands were broken up for house lots. Initially, these house lots were generous enough to accommodate substantial homes in the Queen Anne and Italianate styles popular in this period. After 1910, though, the trend in residential development turned increasingly to smaller homes on smaller lots, and the pace of development gradually slowed as available land became more scarce. 

The Massachusetts Turnpike Extension brought a major change to the area’s appearance in the early 1960s. Constructed along the right of way for the Boston and Albany railroad, the Turnpike Extension cut a trench through the center of the village, essentially dividing it in two and requiring the demolition of most of Newton Corner’s central business district and many residences in the process. The Gateway Center high-rise was eventually built over the roadway.