By William A. Diamond, Feb 7, 1985

The next time you're standing in line at the post office, anxious to get your hands on some of the governments new 22-cent stamps, picture yourself inside an imposing, three-story structure with a long, canopied veranda just outside the door and a library and reading rooms on the floor above. From three basement bowling alley's come a crash of pins; from the rear of the first floor, billiard balls careen across felt topped tables. Perhaps the local order of Odd Fellows is holding a meeting in the large assembly hall or a group of young men have gathered in the moving picture theatre and are laughing loudly over Buster Keaton's latest antics.

The polite voice of the postal clerk returns you to the present but you quickly realize that you had traveled back in time, back to this century's second decade, when the Grand Catholic Club building stood at the present location of the Canton Post Office. Had you journeyed even farther back in time, you might have found yourself sitting in a boisterous tavern quaffing a frothy mug of ale or waiting for a horse-drawn stage coach to carry you into Boston. Had you traveled back even farther, you might have invaded the privacy of Jonathan Leonard, who originally built his house on the property in 1799, two years after Canton had been incorporation as a town and granted its independence from Stoughton.

"As a tavern," the Journal reported in 1918, the site "was famous throughout Massachusetts." Early in the nineteenth century, David Spaulding had converted the original Leonard residence into a tavern and hostelry, and I 1834, around the time that laborers were beginning construction on the Viaduct, James Bent and his sons took over the business and established regular stagecoach service to Boston. After Bent's death, the property was sold to Lyman Kinsley, who remodeled the building and added a floor.

What was the fate of this notable landmark, you ask? Sadly a frozen hydrant in January of 1918 prevented local firefighters from containing a raging blaze that destroyed the building. Named for a former pastor of St. John's Church, the John Flatley House had become a social center for at least 200 Canton residents who were members of the club and had been purchased by the church at a 1909 auction held to close out the interests of the Revere Copper Company and the Kinsley Iron Company. As the Canton Journal had editorialized in its October 14, 1910 issue, the club had filled "a long felt need in our community" and provided a young man the opportunity "to engage in games of skill and judgment, or seek a place for mental improvement through reading, study, or helpful lectures."

Over $7000 was reportedly spent to renovate the grand structure, which had by that time become known as the Massapoag Hotel. Aside from the pool and billiard tables, bowling alleys (one of which was purportedly the only lane in the State built out of sheet cast iron) and the movie theatre, the Catholic Club contained a kitchen, boilers that provided steam heat to the entire building and an assembly hall with the capacity to seat at least 200 people.. The ample meeting room had originally been dedicated on February 3, 1848 and for many years served as Canton's only dance hall. The local chapter Odd Fellows later met in the function hall.

But on the morning of January 5, 1918, fire took away one of Canton's landmarks, a loss that was estimated at $35,000. "It was an absolutely fascinating thing to watch," reminisces Town Clerk Carlton Taber, who as a young boy remembers to rushing to the scene after hearing the fire alarm split the frigid morning air. "The water became ice in nothing flat." The work of the fire department apparently attracted heavy criticism but with characteristic candor, a Journal editorial later that week offered the following advice: "people who know as much about fighting fires as they know about the way to heaven," the editor said, "had better keep still unless they have suggestions that are practical and valuable."

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