Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass.

Title

American Mutual Life Insurance, 1958

Description

"The Boston-based American Mutual Life Insurance Company opened its 'ultra-modern' home office on July 14, 1958. Formerly located at 142 Berkley [i.e. Berkeley] Street in Boston, the company began negotiating with the Town in 1954 to construct its $2 million home office along a 40-acre tract of land on the shores of Lake Quannapowitt. The building, designed by Chester Lindsay Churchill of Boston and New York, was 'strikingly modern in every detail.' Special features, touted by the company in its employee pamphlet, included an employee center, complete with a cafeteria and full kitchen facilities on the lake side of the first floor of the building to provide lunch and 'coffee breaks' for more than 800 people. Other areas included a store, a chapel with a 'massive colored-glass window' from France, an employee lounge overlooking the lake that was furnished with 'modernistic and comfortable furnishings,' an electronic data processing unit off the main lobby, a personnel clinic with a full-time nurse, banking facilities provided by the Wakefield Trust Company where employees could cash their checks, an engineering research center which allowed loss prevention to develop controls, and a complete audio system that broadcast messages to all areas of the building and played music at various times throughout the day. The employees were also able to have routine physicals and check-ups at the clinic. The most impressive features of the building were the glassed-in tropical gardens - two on the first floor that extended up through the first and second floors, and a third on the third floor."

Image from the Wakefield Municipal Gas and Light Department annual calendar, 2015

Photo courtesy of JC Marketing Associates

Contributor

Institution: Lucius Beebe Memorial Library

Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light Department (Wakefield, Mass.)

D'Onofrio, Jayne M.

Coverage

Massachusetts--Middlesex (county)--Wakefield

Date

1958

Format

image/jpeg

Publisher

Wakefield, Mass. : Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light Department

Subject

American Mutual Life Insurance Company (Wakefield, Mass.)

Type

still image

Photographs

Original Format

1 picture: b & w

Extent

22 x 24 cm.