The Lafayette Road neighborhood, including Farragut Rd, Prescott Rd, Putnam Rd. and Lafayette Rd. was built in the first decade of the 20th Century on farm land previously belonging to J. C. Underhill and other families along Topsfield Rd. The names of the neighborhood and streets seem to have been assigned by the developers of “Agawam Heights.”
Agawam Heights sales brochure
The Lafayette Street neighborhood did not exist in this 1884 map of Ipswich.
The hillside between Mount Pleasant Street and Topsfield Road was still farmland and orchard in the 1893 Ipswich Birdseye map.
1910 Ipswich Ma map showing Lafayette, Farragut Streets and Wayne Avenue
These photos of the earlier Underhill house no longer standing, and new houses in Agawam Heights under construction are from glass plate negatives in the collection of William J. Barton, taken by Edward L. Darling circa 1910.
The Underhill house sat on Topsfield Rd. near the tracks