Brookline Historical Society

Name: Brookline Historical Society
Address: 347 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA, 02446, US
Telephone: (617) 566-5747

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Brookline Historical Society

The Brookline Historical Society is a non-profit community organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Brookline's diverse history.

The society's headquarters are located in the heart of Coolidge Corner at the Edward Devotion House, one of Brookline's oldest colonial period structures. The Society also maintains the circa 1780 Widow Harris House as well as the Putterham School located in Larz Anderson Park. Our membership program is active and volunteers are welcome.

06/12/2025

This Date in Brookline History
June 12, 1990
Brookline restricts cigarette machines
Town Meeting voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning cigarette vending machines in town. Exceptions were made for private clubs with liquor licenses and workplaces that were not accessible to minors or the general public.

The bylaw was struck down that fall by the Massachusetts Attorney General who ruled that only the state had the authority to regulate vending machines. It was reinstated by the town as a public health measure, rather than a licensing issue, but continued to face challenges from the vending machine industry and others.

One option introduced by the industry was an electronic lock-out device that could only be overridden if a vendor verified that the purchaser was not a minor. Town officials conducted a sting operation that showed this was often not enforced. Cigarette vending machines were finally banned nationally, with the exception of adult-only facilities, in 2010.

06/11/2025

This Date in Brookline History
June 11, 1806
Second meeting house dedicated
Rev. John Pierce, minister since 1797 of what was then Brookline's only house of worship, dedicated a new meeting house for the church. The new building replaced the original 1717 structure. It stood on Walnut Street where the fourth building of the congregation (First Parish) is today.

"By solemn prayer and praise we now dedicate this temple to the service of him, who can make it the instrument of essential benefit to ourselves, and even to our children's children," said Pierce. The building, according to notes in a published version of Pierce's speech, cost just over $20,000 to build. It was designed by Peter Banner who would, a few years later, design the Park Street Church in Boston, still standing today.

The 1806 Brookline building would be replaced by a new church across Walnut Street in 1848. John Pierce died one year later after 52 years as minister at First Parish.

06/06/2025

This Date in Brookline History
June 6, 1903
First pieces of Longyear mansion arrive
Thirty railroad cars carrying the disassembled stones of a Marquette, Michigan mansion arrived in Brookline where the mansion was to be reassembled atop Fisher Hill.

The large home had been built in 1892 on the shore of Lake Superior for timber and mining magnate John Longyear and his wife Mary. Dissatisfied by the incursion of a railroad line along the shore of the lake, the Longyears, who were Christian Scientists, arranged to have the large home dismantled and shipped to Brookline, in part to be near Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science).

"Each block of stone from the 66-room mansion was wrapped in straw and cloth and numbered and put in wooden crates," wrote John Longyear. The mansion was redesigned and enlarged in its new location. After Mary Longyear's death in 1931, it housed the Longyear Museum, focused on the life and work of Mary Baker Eddy, until 1995 when the property was sold to a developer and turned into condos.

06/04/2025

This Date in Brookline History
June 4, 1930
FDR's son married at St. Paul's
New York governor and future president Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Brookline for the wedding of his son James to Betsy Cushing, daughter of renowned neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing, at St. Paul's Church. The wedding, reported the New York Times, was attended by more than 500 guests, including "leaders of the medical, political, diplomatic and social worlds."

"The church lawns," reported the Boston Globe, "were overrun with people on the Aspinwall av and St Paul sides. Verandas and steps of neighboring houses were used as points of vantage from which to watch the arrival of guests and later that of the bridal attendants and the bride herself."

The ceremony was followed by a reception on the grounds of the Cushing home on Walnut Street where about a dozen large tents were erected on all sides of the mansion, including one with a dancing floor over the tennis courts. James and Betsey Roosevelt were divorced in 1940.

05/30/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 30, 2011
Civil War tablets rededicated in Town Hall
Brookline’s 1884 memorial to its Civil War dead was restored, rededicated and installed in the lobby of Town Hall on Memorial Day.

The memorial, consisting of seven slabs of marble with the names of 72 men, originally stood in the 1873 Town Hall until it was torn down and replaced by the current building in the 1960s. The marble slabs were put in storage and later placed behind glass in a concrete structure adjacent to Town Hall. The names were often obscured by moisture and mold that accumulated under the glass in the poorly designed structure.

For more on the move of the memorial and some of the men memorialized, see this 2011 blog post: https://brooklinehistory.blogspot.com/2011/06/remembering-brooklines-civil-war-dead.html

05/27/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 27, 1875
Brookline water turned on
Water from the Charles River in West Roxbury became available for Brookline residents, three years after the town was first authorized to use the Charles for a municipal water system.

A schedule of annual rates for water usage had been published in the town's annual report in February. It ran for eight pages, with differing rates for different types of residences and businesses and different types of water consumption. (Single-family houses, for examples, were charged based on the number of faucets, water closets (toilets), urinals, bath tubs, etc.)

Users of the town's water supply could choose to have their usage metered instead of paying a fixed rate. The town's 1877 report showed that water usage was lowest in March and November when water was not used for "watering streets" (to keep down dust) or "sprinkling lawns." It was highest from December to February which, according to the report "can only be accounted for by people letting water run to prevent freezing."

05/24/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 24, 1941
Tornado in Griggs Park
A rare tornado touched down in Griggs Park, uprooting nine large trees, each more than 50 years old, and causing widespread damage in just three minutes of destruction.

The damage was described in great detail in the May 29th issue of the Brookline Chronicle: "It ripped a wooden penthouse off one apartment blocks, tore screens from a number of houses, zoomed galvanized barrels from alleyways, ripped clothes from lines, whipped pots and pans and other utensils off tables and in one house sucked a milk bottle through a window."

The falling trees took out power lines, reported the Chronicle, and several birds were killed, though no people were injured. Debris landed mostly in the park, but also in Griggs Road and Griggs Terrace, blocking traffic on those streets. A 1944 report on the tornado in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society suggested that the low-lying topography of the park was a factor in formation of the localized tornado.

05/20/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 20, 1830
Ralph Waldo Emerson in Brookline
Ralph Waldo Emerson, then a young pastor at the Second Church in Boston, moved with his wife Ellen and his mother Ruth to the old Aspinwall House on Aspinwall Avenue. (The house stood from c1660 to 1891 where the Billy Ward Playground is today.)

Emerson described the lodgings in a letter to his brother William:
“I expect mother in town Thursday or Friday & she will go to Brookline & take possession of our lodgings at Mrs. Perry’s — (in old Aspinwall House where Uncle Ralph lived one summer long ago) where we have a parlor & 3 chambers one for mother one for wife & one for you when you will come & welcome.“

It was hoped that the new home would help Ellen recover from tuberculosis, with Emerson’s mother there to keep house. Emerson, however, found it inconvenient “traveling four miles out & home daily” to and from his position at the church. In September, after only four months in Brookline, they moved into Boston. (Ellen would die of tuberculosis in February at the age of 19.)

05/19/2025

This Date in Brookline History

May 19, 1984
This Date in Brookline History
Larz Anderson Auto Museum
The Larz Anderson Auto Museum, then known as the Museum of Transportation, returned to its original home in Larz Anderson Park after a five-year hiatus. The museum, which opened in 1952 under the auspices of the Veteran Motor Car Club of America, had relocated to Museum Wharf in Boston in 1979, but closed three years later amid financial difficulties.

The return of the museum to Brookline and the former carriage house of Larz and Isabel Anderson was brought about by an arrangement between the museum and the Town of Brookline, owner of the carriage house. Under the terms of the agreement, the museum would install a new roof and heating system, helping preserve the building as well its collection of cars.

The carriage house was built in 1888 as a stable and later housed the Anderson's growing collection of automobiles. It was inspired by the Chateau de Chaumont-Sur-Loire in France and designed by Edmund M. Wheelwright, the city architect of Boston.

05/16/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 16, 1929
William Wellman's Wings wins Academy Award
The motion picture "Wings", about American pilots fighting for the French in World War I, was awarded the Best Picture award at the first Academy Awards. William "Billy" Wellman, the director, was born in the house at 4 Perry Street, still-standing today.

Wellman had himself been a pilot in France, joining other American pilots on the French side before the U.S. entered entered the war and being credited with shooting down seven German planes.

Wellman was not invited to the awards ceremony, reportedly because of tensions between him and the studio. He was nominated for Best Director three times in his career but did not win. He did win an individual Oscar (shared with Robert Carson) for Best Original Screenplay for the 1937 version of "A Star Is Born."

The Perry Street house was built in 1843 and first owned by his grandfather. His family moved to Newton when he was young and he attended Newton High School.

05/11/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 11, 1719
New road planned connecting north and south
Two years after Brookline's first church was built on the Sherborn Road (now Walnut Street) it was agreed to lay out a new road to provide better access to the church for residents in the north part of town.

The road (red arrow) was to be called the New Lane. It would run from today's Washington Street (then called the Watertown Road) to the Sherborn Road near the church (circled in red.) The sparseness of the town at the time is evident in how the end point of the new road was described in town records: "near to the Lower end of the new stone wall by an old white oak tree."

The New Lane is now Cypress Street. By 1746, it had been extended from the Watertown Road to Harvard Street. (That section is now School Street.)

05/08/2025

This Date in Brookline History
May 8, 1874
Brookline loses its Charles River riverfront
A narrow strip of Brookline land between the Charles River and today's Commonwealth Avenue became part of the City of Boston, connecting the recently annexed town of Brighton to the rest of the city. Brighton had voted in favor of annexation seven months earlier, on the same day that Brookline voters overwhelmingly rejected annexation.

There was extensive discussion in the state legislature over how much Brookline land should be given to Boston. The most extensive proposal would have given about one-third of Brookline -- the area above the red line outlined on top of an 1874 map -- to Boston. It would have included all of Brookline north of Beacon Street and a considerable portion extending southwest to encompass the Boylston Street Reservoir (part of Boston's water supply system).

One proponent of the larger land-taking argued that the thin strip eventually given would be "like the cord that holds a stationary balloon to the earth." Opponents of the broader plan, painting it as a backdoor attempt at annexation, prevailed.

Address

347 Harvard Street
Brookline, MA
02446

Telephone

(617) 566-5747

Website

http://www.brooklinehistoricalsociety.org/

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