14 Westminster Street occupies what was historically known as the Tin Shop Lot. In 1833, George Huntington, proprietor of the nearby village tavern, sold this parcel to Aaron P. Howland. At the time, the purchase included land that later became the Village Tavern lot at 10 Westminster Street. Two years later, in 1835, Howland conveyed the western 19 feet of the property to Susan Jones, establishing the narrow lot line that survives today.
Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the site was occupied by a tin shop, a utilitarian yet essential village enterprise. Such shops fabricated and repaired household goods including stove and pipework, gutters, lanterns, and cookware, services vital to both domestic life and local industry. The building was frequently leased and passed through a succession of tenants, rather than remaining in the hands of long-term owner-operators.
By the 1870s, the business operating here had expanded its offerings considerably. Advertisements from the period list ranges, furnaces, stoves, pumps, lead pipe, kitchen furnishings, and tin, copper, and sheet-iron ware, reflecting the era’s growing domestic technology and the central role of metalworking trades in village life.
In the late twentieth century, the property entered a very different chapter as the home of the much-loved Murray’s restaurant, a breakfast and lunch spot that operated here for more than thirty years. Although Murray’s closed in 2014, it remains fondly remembered by generations of Walpole residents.
The tin shop site at 14 Westminster Street thus preserves an important strand of Walpole’s economic and social history, illustrating the long continuity of small-scale enterprise and service that has shaped the village center.
Aaron Howland House 