“Roadside Attraction” Gone; Warehouse to Come

Above, image of Moore family "Hudson garage" earlier in the week on Route 140, Bellingham. All structures have since been demolished.

In recent days, the last remains of a landmark property at 206 Mechanic Street Bellingham, on Route 140, just across Maple Street from the Franklin line, was wiped clean of structures and left ready to accommodate new constructions. To come, soon, will be a 101,000 square foot warehouse and office structure on a corner that has been at the center of large-scale development in both towns for the past several years.

But what finally fell to the “wrecking ball” in the last few days had held sway at the once-sleepy intersection for more than 70 years – a string of automotive-related businesses run by generations of the Moore family.

And for those who wondered about the signature “double-ended” car, the rusty remnant of what had once been a customized showpiece, a 2021 article in Hemmings, the bible of the car collector, written when the property was first put under agreement, offers hope.

According to the Hemmings article, Ed Moore, who grew up on the property, has an ample personal garage nearby, where the rusty double-ended Hudson has found a home along with the one-of a kind ‘safety car’, SirVival, created by a Worcester inventor in the 1950s.

Ed’s dad, Donald Moore, began the business in the 1940s as a gas station and repair shop and made a number of entrepreneurial efforts at the site, first as a dealer for the “new” 2-seater, the Playboy, produced briefly after World War II. The company went bankrupt, but the Moores eventually ended up with nearly a dozen of the 100 cars ever produced. Then it was on to a somewhat better bet, becoming dealers for Hudson, a respected brand that remained independent of the “Big Three” US automakers and picked up many sales in the late 1940s and early 1950s with its innovative designs – favored by bootleggers, police, and NASCAR drivers.

Hudson stopped producing cars in the mid-1950s but by keeping a license active, the Moore’s reckon they become the longest surviving and last Hudson dealer in the world.

In any case, all those distinctions and the colorful local charm are now history. And a new story, a kind of border town distinct in many ways from either Bellingham of Franklin, is rising on all sides.

Below, the "landmark" double-ended Hudson that was parked at the corner of Maple and Route 140 for decades -- in its prime...

(IMAGE From Bellingham Auto historical site. For more images and information, go here.