39 Greenough Street

The McManus family, which lived in this house from 1930 until about 1942, owned and operated the Wiliam H. McManus Funeral Home at 54 Harvard Street for many years. Mary McManus, who was 24 years younger than her husband, became the proprietor after William's death in 1934. Mary's sisters, Marion Wall, a dressmaker, and Margaret Wall, a buyer, also lived here.

The 1930 U.S. Census showed the residents as: William H. McManus, 60, undertaker; Mary G. McManus, 36; and Marion Wall, 46, (sister), dressmaker. (Margaret Wall joined them later.) The house was valued at $18,000.

John Scahill, a realtor, and his wife Ann were the next residents, listed in the Street List for just one year (1942).

They were followed by Betty (1899-1974) and Robert Tishman, who moved here from Boston, and lived in this house until about 1956. Robert Tishman (1898-1995) was co-owner of the F&T Restaurant and Diner in Kendall Square, Cambridge, which he founded with his best friend Isaac Fox in 1924. The restaurant, according to Tishman's 1995 obituary in the Boston Globe, was "a landmark for hungry Cantabridgians for more than 50 years" with a four-foot high sign that "beckoned passers-by to 'EAT' deli sandwiches and daily specials on red-covered stools behind a long wooden bar flanked by gleaming silver coffee urns and sandwiched between a stamped-tin ceiling and linoleum flooring."

For more on the F&T, see "F&T fans recall good talk and good food."

The Tishman's son Maynard, along with Isaac Fox's son, later took over the restaurant and operated it until it was bought and razed by MIT. The Tishman's daughter, Phyllis together with her husband Bernard Rothstein, continued to live at the Greenough Street house, at least briefly, after her marriage.